Early Medical Texts Research Articles

Clinical profile and management of nephrolithiasis

Nephrolithiasis is the most common chronic kidney condition, after hypertension, and also an ancient one: treatments for patients with stones have been described since the earliest medical texts. It affects over 25% of adults in the India [1], and the prevalence is rising. The fundamental cause for all stones is supersaturation of urine with respect to the stone components; factors affecting solubility include urine volume, pH, and total solute excretion. Calcium stones are the most common, in adults and children, and are associated with several metabolic disorders, the most common of which is idiopathic hypercalciuria. Therapy to prevent stones rests on lowering supersaturation, using both diet and medication. Effective treatment decreases stone recurrence and need for procedures for stone removal. So, this challenging subject is taken up for the present study in which we studied the clinical presentation of Nephrolithiasis at our hospital.” To evaluate age, sex, etiological, epidemiological factors causing nephrolithiasis and to study varied spectrum of clinical manifestations of renal calculi its investigations , management , outcome and complications. This prospective study was conducted on patients admitted to S.B.K.S.M.I.R&C. Dhiraj Hospital Piparia Vadodara. 150 patients with Nephrolithiasis were enrolled for the study.

Nocturnus Occurram Furor: The “Night-Mare” in Horace,Epodes5 and 17

AbstractThe puzzling nature of Horace's fifth and seventeenth epodes is well known among scholars. Recent studies have worked to interpret the poems in terms of contemporary magical practices and folkloric concepts. In this article, I aim to add an additional facet to our understanding of these texts: ancient perspectives on the “night-mare,” a perceived supernatural attack involving bodily paralysis, severe pressure on the chest, and extreme terror. I will first discuss a series of references to the night-mare in early medical texts and classifications of dreams, then turn to a possible night-mare simile in Virgil and, finally, the place of the night-mare in Horace's two magical epodes. Investigating how this phenomenon has been regarded and described through time enables us to better understand these enigmatic epodes and, more broadly, to explore how people of the past viewed a frightening affliction as old as humanity itself.

A comparison of ancient parasites as seen from archeological contexts and early medical texts in China

This paper integrates our knowledge from traditional Chinese medical texts and archeological findings to discuss parasitic loads in early China. Many studies have documented that several different species of eukaryotic endoparasites were present in early human populations throughout China. Nevertheless, comprehensive paleoparasitological records from China are patchy, largely due to taphonomic and environmental factors. An examination of early Chinese medical texts allows us to fill in some of the gaps and counteract apparent biases in the current archeoparasitological records. By integrating the findings of paleoparasitology with historic textual sources, we show that parasites have been affecting the lives of humans in China since ancient times. We discuss the presence and prevalence of three groups of parasites in ancient China: roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides), Asian schistosoma (Schistosoma japonicum), and tapeworm (Taenia sp.). We also examine possible factors that favored the spread of these endoparasites among early humans. Therefore, this paper not only aims to reveal how humans have been affected by endoparasites, but also addresses how early medical knowledge developed to cope with the parasitic diseases.

Health as Value and the Right to be Healthy in Early Chinese Culture. Daoist and Confucian Critique of Early Medical Texts

Health as Value and the Right to be Healthy in Early Chinese Culture. Daoist and Confucian Critique of Early Medical Texts

On σκορδαψός: gut-knot or eyesore? A tribute toBMGS

Forty years ago, I contributed my first independent article to Volume 1 ofByzantine and Modern Greek Studies, ‘The lament of the Virgin in Byzantine literature and modern Greek folksong’. For this fortieth anniversary issue, dedicated to A. A. M. Bryer, I have, as in the closing words of Theodore Prodromos’ seventh letter to Aristenos (Πεϱὶ Γλώττης), nothing to offer but μικϱαῖς ἀντιδεξιοῦσα σταγόσι, καὶ ταύταις θολεϱαῖς (‘meagre and murky drops’),1further sullied with speculation on possible meanings of a single rare word:skordapsos. Does it mean ‘gut-knot’ or ‘eyesore’? Is it a vulgar form ofchordapsos, an affliction of the intestines (attested in early medical texts)? Or is it a later vernacular term for ‘eye disease’, for which garlic (skordo) was, and remains, a known curative? And does it matter?

Mental Insanity in the Hippocratic Texts: A Pragmatic Perspective

The terminology of insanity in the Hippocratic texts appears often confusing to the reader for its variety and ambiguity. Scholarship has dealt with this problematic group of words in different ways, attributing the phenomenon to accidents in the composition of early medical texts or their status as part of a developing technical language and fundamentally reducing them to synonymous. In this piece I propose to look at them not in a semantic perspective, but from the point of view of pragmatic linguistics. How does the grammar and position in which these words are used influence their effect within the individual narrative? How are nuances of emphasis and intensity expressed? How do aspects of subjectivity and chronology emerge through narrative strategies? Through a close reading of one illustrative passage from the patient cases of the Epidemics I attempt to extract further information about the use and meaning of early medical psychiatric vocabulary.

Woman’s Milk in Anglo-Saxon and Later Medieval Medical Texts

Women’s early history provides a long tradition of attested textual evidence associating female bodily secretions with impurity, particularly in relation to menstruation, childbirth, and sexual intercourse. But we notice among early medical texts the mention of another female secretion, woman’s milk, and its use as a healing ingredient in medical recipes. This paper argues that textual sources of woman’s milk as a female secretion in this early tradition demonstrate a complex mixture of sometimes conflicting values, not all of which were unpleasant, nor irrational. The paper first describes how woman’s milk as a healing ingredient is presented in Anglo-Saxon medical texts and compares that presentation to the description and treatment of woman’s milk in a sampling of later English medieval medical texts. The texts themselves are rich in their demonstration of the use of women’s bodies for the preparation of medicinal products, and for this reason, the descriptive aspects of this paper are meant to offer one aspect of women’s history that is still widely unknown.

Medical illustration: from caves to cyberspace‡

AbstractThe human body has been depicted in ancient cave‐paintings, in primitively sculpted figures, and through all the ages in various forms of artistic expression. The earliest medical texts were descriptive but not illustrated. Later, as it became clear that knowledge of the human body and all its systems was essential to the practice of healing, texts were accompanied by illustrations which became an integral part of the teaching process. The illustrators included artists, whose interest was primarily artistic, but who were sometimes employed by surgeons or physicians to illustrate their texts. Occasionally, the physicians or scientists accompanied their texts with their own illustrations, and in the last century, medical illustration, in its infinite variety of techniques, has been developed as a profession in its own right.As knowledge was extended, permitted by social and cultural change, as well as by technological advances, the types of illustrations have ranged from gross anatomy through dissections showing the various organ systems, histological preparations, and radiological images, right up to the computerized digital imagery that is available today, which allows both static and dynamic two‐ and three‐dimensional representations to be transmitted electronically across the world in a matter of seconds.The techniques used to represent medical knowledge pictorially have been as varied as the illustrators themselves, involving drawing, engraving, printing, photography, cinematography and digital processing. Each new technique has built on previous experience to broaden medical knowledge and make it accessible to an ever‐widening audience. This vast accumulation of pictorial material has posed considerable problems of storage, cataloguing, retrieval, display and dissemination of the information, as well as questions of ethics, validity, manipulation and reliability. This paper traces these developments, illustrating them with representative examples drawn from the inexhaustible store of documents accumulated over more than two millennia.

Medical illustration: from caves to cyberspace.

The human body has been depicted in ancient cave-paintings, in primitively sculpted figures, and through all the ages in various forms of artistic expression. The earliest medical texts were descriptive but not illustrated. Later, as it became clear that knowledge of the human body and all its systems was essential to the practice of healing, texts were accompanied by illustrations which became an integral part of the teaching process. The illustrators included artists, whose interest was primarily artistic, but who were sometimes employed by surgeons or physicians to illustrate their texts. Occasionally, the physicians or scientists accompanied their texts with their own illustrations, and in the last century, medical illustration, in its infinite variety of techniques, has been developed as a profession in its own right. As knowledge was extended, permitted by social and cultural change, as well as by technological advances, the types of illustrations have ranged from gross anatomy through dissections showing the various organ systems, histological preparations, and radiological images, right up to the computerized digital imagery that is available today, which allows both static and dynamic two- and three-dimensional representations to be transmitted electronically across the world in a matter of seconds. The techniques used to represent medical knowledge pictorially have been as varied as the illustrators themselves, involving drawing, engraving, printing, photography, cinematography and digital processing. Each new technique has built on previous experience to broaden medical knowledge and make it accessible to an ever-widening audience. This vast accumulation of pictorial material has posed considerable problems of storage, cataloguing, retrieval, display and dissemination of the information, as well as questions of ethics, validity, manipulation and reliability. This paper traces these developments, illustrating them with representative examples drawn from the inexhaustible store of documents accumulated over more than two millennia.

Ideal pain terminology is parsimonious, jargon-free, and scale-appropriate

H yperalgesia and allodynia are recognized in the earliest medical texts. Bonica, in an excellent historical survey [1], notes that cutaneous tenderness caused by non-noxious , .. stimulation was used by ancient physicians in Egypt, India, China and Greece as an aid in the diagnosis of painful disorders [of the viscera]. The year 1996 marks the, thousandth anniversary of Avicenna's (980-1038) taking up the study of medicine.Avicenna's monumental Canon enumerates 15 types of pain: boring, squeezing, corrosive, dull, tiring, heavy, cutting, irritating, itching, pricking, relaxinq, stabbing, tearing, pulling, and throbbing [12]. Bonica credits Morgagni in 1761 as the first to employ the word hyperesthesia to connote upper abdominal skin sensitivity in a patient with basilar pneumonia, a finding we would now call allodynia. By Morgagni's time, an abundance of words were at clinicians' disposal to describe every sort of pain and altered sensation.These words were harnessed to provide vivid reports-still unsurpassed-of syndromes such as left arm allodynia during angina and hyperalgesia and allodynia after a musket ball wound of the arm. Indeed, the pain descriptors in the McGillMelzack questionnaire were originally derived from patients' descriptions of their own pain. Yet pain terminology continues to generate controversy [4]. Sufficient imprecision, confusion, and frank conflict surround the use of pain terminology that Chaplan and Sorkin agonize over this sorry state of affairs. This commentary presents two arguments for abandoning the introduction of terms intended to be used by both preclinical scientists and clinicians and recommends instead that one strive for jargon-free description of a reality unfiltered by categories and expectations.

Possible Role of the Pessary in the Etiology of Toxic Shock Syndrome

Medical technology often has unforeseen effects on human health. For example, indwelling urethral catheters promote gram-negative endotoxin shock, and improved absorbency in tampons triggered an epidemic of toxic shock syndrome. The pessary is an ancient gynecologic device used to support or position a displaced or prolapsed uterus. As an invasive device, similar to a vaginal tampon or contraceptive diaphragm, the pessary may have increased a woman's risk of vaginal infections, possibly including toxic shock syndrome, especially during the 19th century when prolapsus uteri was a common diagnosis among young women. Evidence for the involvement of the pessary in the syndrome is drawn from early medical texts that attribute toxic-shock-type symptoms, specifically high or fatal fevers, to absorbent pessaries. Further evidence comes from the culture of Staphylococcus aureus from nonabsorbent pessaries.

Traditional methods for the treatment of animal diseases in Croatia.

Traditional methods of treatment for animal diseases, particularly non-infectious diseases, occupy a special place in the history of the Croatian veterinary profession. The use of medicinal herbs in the treatment of various diseases has been described in a large number of publications. Folk medicine also frequently contains an element of magical practices, as well as the use of animal and plant matter and minerals. Dreckapotecke (so-called 'dirty' medicines and 'dirty' pharmacy) also formed part of healing practice in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the veterinary ljekarusas (collections of early medical texts), the best recommendations relate to surgical interventions; few instructions were given for the treatment of parasitic and internal ailments, even fewer for obstetrical problems and infectious diseases. In folk medicine, there existed some harmful treatment methods, and a number of indifferent medicaments were in use. In most cases, the value of the treatment applied was dubious. However, since the very beginning of the 'empirical' phase of the fight against disease, a number of relatively effective practices from folk medicine have been adapted and introduced into scientific medicinal praxis.

Historical landmarks in the treatment of burns

Since man first learned to make fire, burns and scalds have been one of his commonest injuries. It follows, therefore, that even the earliest medical texts and certainly all surgical treatises have a section on burns and their treatment. The material available to the historian is immense, and ruthless selection is needed for a coherent account. I have limited myself to the earliest writers who probably carried on the methods of their illiterate predecessors and to those who were responsible for specific innovations.