It's only natural that the earliest schools of medicine, the kind that we saw in tribes, would be rooted in fear, mystery, and mysticism. But there came a time, probably several thousand years BC, when medical thinking started to evolve more toward the empirical and couched within a natural reality. Empiricism is an interesting word. It's all about observation. In the classic sense, empiricism is the basis for science. This is where observations are recorded and repeated. Science demands that there be multiple observations and even multiple observers. Medicine doesn't really give much credence to anecdotes, which is just one example of an experience. To have solid science, you need to have observations numbering even in the hundreds. The other hand, the dictionary even defines empiricism as quackery. This may sound strange, but that's because some observations can be influenced by bias or even imagination. A typical example of this is what happens in a situation where you have witnesses to a crime. For every number of witnesses, you may have an equal number of differing realities. This is just an example of how empiricism can sometimes be imaginary. The first culture to record their empiricism was Egypt around three to 4,000 BC. Moses had already taught about sanitation, quarantine, and clean food. The Hebrews felt that pigs and sea creatures that lived off the bottom were not pure in their food. There was a distinction between the clean and the unclean. Now, dissection of the body was completely taboo at this time, but the Hebrews were not beyond examining bones from cremation. They found 252, 49 more than the actual number. They probably broke a few. The Egyptian pharaohs at this point in time were responsible for regulating and systematizing medicine. There were many specialties that were created. There were gynecologists, ophthalmologists, herbologists, and a special doctor called the Eerie, the keeper of the royal rectum. This is actually an area in the body that's prone to multiple forms of disease. We can have hemorrhoids, we can have rectal fissures, we can have abscesses, we can have fistula. These may not have been life-threatening, but they were definitely a nuisance. The most famous doctor in this period of time was called Imhotep, who was a personal physician to the Pharaoh Djoser around 3,000 BC. He was also an astrologer, a priest, a sage, and a pyramid designer. Medicine at this point in time combined religious beliefs with magic, along with a large array of empirical drug treatments and surgical techniques. The techniques were mostly for treating wounds, fractures, or abscesses, but also circumcision, a practice that's incorporated into the Hebrew tradition. Physicians at this period also worked alongside seers who were expert in divine diagnosis, and priests who carried out exorcism and incantations. One common practice of the day was to have a patient sleep in the temple, and during the night, hopefully, God would come to them in a dream indicating the necessary treatment. The Egyptians also had a great determination to preserve the dead for their afterlife. This has led to much evidence for pathology and the history of disease.
