古埃及《埃伯斯纸草》眼科知识探析

Analysis of ophthalmic knowledge in Ebers Papyrus in Ancient Egypt

《埃伯斯纸草》是现存世界上最古老的医学文献之一。其中有独立的眼科篇章,是了解古埃及眼科知识的重要文献。本文通过对《埃伯斯纸草》眼科篇章进行分析,总结了95条眼科条文的内容体例,并对其中眼科疾病的认识、疗法、用药等内容进行了梳理。其眼科篇章有浓厚的经验医学色彩,涉及眼科疾病种类较丰富,有多种病名记载和症状描述,但病因阐述很少。在治疗上除少部分条文与巫医共存外,主要以膏剂、水剂、散剂、锭剂等外用制剂来治疗眼科疾病,并注意到了用药的时间性。其药物来源丰富,以矿物药和树脂药应用最多。其眼科知识影响了后世古希腊-罗马医学、阿拉伯医学。部分药物应用与中医药古籍记载也较为相似,值得进一步探讨。

Ebers papyrus is one of the oldest medical documents in the world,with an independent chapter on ophthalmology in the papyrus,which makes it an important document for understanding the ophthlmic knowledge of ancient Egypt.This paper summarized the content and style of 95 ophthalmic articles,and combed the understanding,treatment,medication and other contents of the ophthalmic diseases by analyzing the ophthalmic chapters in Ebers papyrus.Its ophthalmic chapters were greatly influenced by experience-based medicine,involving multiple ophthalmic diseases,with a wide variety of recorded disease names and symptom descriptions.However,there were few explanations for etiology.In terms of treatment,except for a few articles coexisting with medicine,medications in the form of ointment,water,powder,tablet,pastille and other external preparations were used to treat ophthalmic diseases.Also,time for medication was noticed.The sources of those drugs were rich,with mineral and resin medicine being the most widely used.Its ophthalmological knowledge influenced the later ancient Greek-Roman medicine and Arabic medicine,and the application of some drugs was also quite similar to the records in ancient books of Traditional Chinese Medicine,which is worthy of further discussion.