Ancient Egyptian medical knowledge influenced on later civilizations, including different spheres of pre-Hippocratic medicine. Both employed the same scientific and rational systems for the patient’s diagnosis, treatment and therapeutic procedures based on accurate observation. Egyptians transferred the knowledge and use of same drugs and remedies, a similar conception about the causes of sickness, Greek literary works repeated Egyptian sources about pregnancy tests or dream interpretations. In addition, the Hippocratic tradition adopted the incubation practices of the Egyptian temples.
But the most outstanding transfer was the etiological theory of gastrointestinal toxins or wxdw (‘ukhedu’), relating to unhealthy food that marked the kick-off of the evolution of the Greek thought inside medical schools. This bright Egyptian hypothesis on the role of putrefaction, arrived to develop, step by step, through various trials in Greek medicine, as the well-known Hippocratic humoral doctrine of the Cos school.
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