Читать книгу Unveiling Diabetes - Historical Milestones in Diabetology - Группа авторов - Страница 12

The idea that the Egyptians had identified diabetes as a specific disease is incorrect. The only known source of information is the Ebers Papyrus (ca. 1500 BC), the most extensive and best-preserved medical papyrus to have survived, collecting notions on health matters going back perhaps to 3000 BC. Found between the legs of a mummy in Luxor, it was bought in Thebes in 1862 by the American Egyptologist Edwin Smith, who sold it in 1872 to Georg Moritz Ebers (1837–1898), professor of archaeology in Berlin and Leipzig and a good writer of popular, not only scientific, literature (Fig. 1). It is currently housed in the university library at Leipzig. The papyrus, a 20-m long, 30-cm wide roll, contains information on more than 700 recipes and 400 medicinal preparations for the treatment of stomach, heart, eye, skin, tooth diseases and numerous other conditions, including some mental disorders such as dementia and depression. Prescriptions include all possible resources from the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, together with the ancillary mystical-magical-religious rituals. No specific mention is made of diabetes as such, except for a group of 15 prescriptions for excessive urination: infusions, pills, enemas, and the like. Ingredients include gum, resins, minced wheat, sundry fruits and roots, coloquintida, honey, juniper berries, grapes, terebinth, ochre, barley, linen seeds, hematite, verdigris, sweet beer, oil, animal fat, urine itself, and salt from low Egypt. Mention is made of a potion consisting of pond water, elderberry, asit fibers, fresh milk, beer foam, cucumber flower, and green dates. Except for occasional remarks (“excellent”), we have no reports on the effectiveness of such remedies [1, 5].

Fig. 1. George Moritz Ebers (1837–1898). Portrait, ca. 1890. Reproduced with permission of Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, UK.