The teaching of medicine is as old as Medicine itself, though it has been practised and understood very differently in various societies and over the thousands of years of Man’s existence on earth.

The word Medicine derives from the Latin term mederi, which means to heal, to take care of or to medicate and these have been the main concerns in the fight against the illnesses that have affected Man since the beginning of his existence.

Despite the fact that Man has only started populating the planet a million years ago, we know that bacteria, one of the biggest sources of illness, have inhabited the Earth for about 3.8 billion years, most probably since there has been life on Earth.

The Teaching of Medicine in Pre-Historic Times

The ailments that affected primitive Man were mainly related to his activities. While in the Palaeolithic Period most diseases were of genetic origin or related to trauma resulting from the activities carried out by nomadic Man, mostly fishing, hunting or collecting fruits and roots, in the Neolithic Period, with the rise of a sedentary lifestyle, agriculture and a growing population, contagious diseases started emerging, among others.

Despite the fact that we know very little about primitive medicine, it is thanks to often complex palaeopathological experiments carried out in fossils, mummies (very rich sources for these studies, especially the Egyptian ones) and other archaeological objects, such as sculptures and paintings preserved in tombs, that we can realise that primitive Man already suffered from certain diseases such as arthritis, traumas, bone tuberculosis, pneumonia, kidney stones and skin lesions.

According to palaeontological and anthropological studies, primitive Man saw ailments as consequences of supernatural, religious, or astrological phenomena, demons, or a punishment due to a fault committed by the patient; that was the only way of understanding that an apparently healthy person could be affected by painful and limiting changes.

Treatments consisted of all sorts of spells, rituals and incantations, using plants, substances of animal origin and minerals according to traditional empirical experiments.

The first practitioners of medicine were medical wizards, priests or healers who, in order to treat their patients, used magic words, prayers and charms together with special symbols.

When, by chance, these procedures were successful, the men in charge of administering medicine passed the information on to the next generation of healers or priests.

The use of plant materials as curative elements was the beginning of experimental medicine, and many contemporary drugs, such as quinine, were passed down to us from the customs of our prehistoric ancestors.

In Classical Antiquity, from the fifth century BC onwards and with the rise of Hippocratic medicine in Greece, the teaching of medicine ceased to be merely informal, separating itself from religion, the supernatural, and irrational beliefs as causes of disease, and stopped being passed on from master to student and, subsequently, through successive generations, as mentioned in the Hippocratic Oath.

There were no public establishments for training, so the knowledge of medicine was passed on within the family, only to males. Later on, students who had no family ties to the masters were also able to take advantage of this type of specialised training. This training was paid and required a strong moral and personal commitment of the student to his master.

That was what happened with Hippocrates (460-377 BC), considered the father of Western medicine – his father, Heraclides, and his grandfather, Hippocrates I, were both physicians on the island of Kos.

Hippocrates was educated according to the aristocratic environment in which he was born, receiving a formal Greek education and, later on, his medical training. He was paid to teach medicine in various cities. He created, developed and disseminated innovative medical concepts; he was recognised and laid the foundations for a rational approach to medicine.

The medical apprentice, either the master’s son or simply a student without any family ties to him, had to follow his teacher and attend his school. This was simply a facility located in a city where the master taught his lessons.

Nothing is known about the curriculum or content of these medical lessons. However, we know that knowledge was passed on orally and went beyond issues related to medicine, including some notions of philosophy, rhetoric, anatomy, or pharmacology.

Greek medicine involved theoretical knowledge focused on practice and had an itinerant nature, as it was crucial for physicians to visit different places to learn about different diseases, new drugs, and to settle for some time in these places, writing notes and manuals that were used as teaching materials and eventually contributed to the emergence of excellent writings (some of which have survived to this day – the Hippocratic Corpus), because at the time there were no specialised libraries outside the major cultural and educational centres.

At the time, although physicians performed some surgical procedures, these activities were mainly carried out by barber surgeons, who were professionals without any specific qualifications.

Hippocratic medicine wielded great influence on Western medical thought, as its works were compiled and commented upon by the scholars of the library of Alexandria, among which Galen.

In ancient Egypt, magic was inextricably intertwined with medicine. The Egyptians believed that diseases were sent by gods as punishments or that evil spirits inhabited the human being, and that only rituals, amulets, and spells would force these spirits to abandon it. Egyptian medicine, considered the origin of modern medicine, was essentially practical and many of its methods evolved and were perfected for centuries, and much of the knowledge of the time has survived to this day.

Medical teaching in Ancient Egypt was provided in institutions known as Houses of Life, accessible only to scribes and priests, and it was so advanced that it attracted scholars from different parts of the world; these facilities served simultaneously as libraries, , archives and workshops for copying manuscripts.

In the Houses of Life, scribes were considered “Followers of Ra,” the Sun god, appointed as the greatest and most respected physician when it came to handling drugs. These institutions were also associated with the god of the rebirth, Osiris. The act of copying texts would help this god to be reborn every year at his festival.

Unlike what happened with medical education in other societies, where medical students initially acquired general knowledge about living organisms and only chose a speciality at a later stage, in Egyptian teaching physicians would specialise in a particular area of the human body right from the start, according to a specific curriculum. In addition to medicine, other areas of knowledge were also taught, such as religious doctrine, astronomy, mathematics and foreign languages.

In Ancient Egypt, medical professionals were based in a fixed and perfectly organised location, unlike in Ancient Greece, where physicians travelled from one city to another, showing their knowledge in public.

Due to their belief in life after death, the Egyptians practised mummification, which contributed to the development of a wealth of knowledge about human anatomy, a variety of techniques to preserve the body, as well as to the analysis of various parts of the body, relating them to certain diseases which could then be treated, and to the enhancement of the instruments used in surgeries.

Despite the fact that many traces of the rich and advanced Egyptian culture, which lasted more than three thousand years, disappeared over the centuries, some medical papyri managed to survive. In addition to the Berlin Papyrus, the Ebers Papyrus, has also survived to this day; it is one of the oldest and most widely known papyri, containing a variety of prescriptions, treatments and balms.

Imhotep, polymath, is considered the first physician, engineer and architect of Ancient Egypt.

Lurdes Barata

Library and Information Area

Editorial Team