The Egyptians religion, however, prevented them from finding out the structure of the human body, as they must preserve the mummified bodies. This disagrees with the statement.
Another important factor is that the River Nile (that the people were forced to settle by because of the physical geography of the land) flooded each year leaving the land around it fertile, excellent for growing crops. Egyptians were not nomadic, as were prehistoric people, meaning they could farm this land and use the produce in medicines. They grew produce such as radish and henbane for this purpose.
This disagrees with the statement, as without their produce to use in treatments there would be fewer treatments.
Because farming was successful by the Nile, it left the Egyptians time to study into other things such as lawyers, doctors, priests and scribes.
This meant they had a more advanced and organised society and developments (for example, in medicine) spread quickly and everybody had a position in society. As well as being an advanced society, they were advanced in technology eg; the building of pyramids.
This also disagrees with the statement as without an organised and advanced society there would be few or no doctors.
Most businesses were passed on from father to son. Doctors had to follow instructions on treating patients. If one of their patients died after seeing the doctor, and the if doctor had not followed out the correct procedure, they would be executed. This meant doctors could not experiment with medicine.
This supports the statement as doctors could not improve the development of medicine, they could only carry out what knowledge they already knew.
The used common sense cures such as bandaging, ointments and inhaling steam. If a patient was ‘blocked’ they tried treatments such as making them vomit, deliberately made them bleed and purging their bodies.
They knew to wash regularly and shave to keep clean and healthy. From this they also learnt about infections and antiseptics. They also used their common sense to look at nature’s herbs and cures.
This does not support the statement as these are common sense treatments and are not to do with their religion.
However, they also believed in the supernatural: lucky charms. They believed evil spirits entering the body caused diseases if there was no obvious physical reason for it. They explained what they did not know (mysteries) by saying it was an act of the Gods.
This does not support the statement, as this side of their religion did not allow them to develop medicine.
Another important factor is that Egyptians had a written language. This meant they could record cures or treatments that did not. They used trial and error to develop their medical knowledge. They recorded these in the Book of Thoth and Papyrus Eber from 1500bc.
This disagrees with the statement as without their written language they could not have written down any findings and their medicine would not develop.
In conclusion to this, the statement is not 100 percent correct. As it was very important in the development of their medicine but their religion also restricted them. However, without their religion Egyptians may have never discovered the human anatomy and may have believed everything was an action of the gods. Other things such as their written language and farming are equally important and smaller factors such as common-sense cures and positions in society are important, but not as much as others.
