The Edwin Smith papyrus is the earliest known medical document begun around 2500 BC and finished around 1600 BC. It was written and edited in Ancient Egypt by at least three different authors, the last of which stopped mid word. It is a compilation of 48 battle field injury cases and the treatments that the victims had received. The treatmets are rational and it is resorted to magic in only one case. The papyrus contains careful descriptions of the injuries as well as the first descriptions of the cranial sutures, the meninges, the external surface of the brain, the cerebrospinal fluid, and the intracranial pulsations . Its translation in 1930 by James Breasted changed medical history as it showed that medicine on the Egyptian battle field stood in stark contrast with the irational modes of healing the rest of Ancient Egypt utilized, as exemplified in the Ebers papyrus.

History of the papyrus

Edwin Smith was an Egyptologist born in 1822, the year that Egyptian hieroglyphs were first deciphered. He bought parts of the ancient manuscript in 1862 in Luxor, Egypt. Although he recognized the importance of the manuscript and attempted to translate it, he never published about it. He died in 1906 leaving the papyrus to his daughter who gave it to the New York Historical Society. In 1920 the Society asked James Breasted to translate it, translation which took ten years to finish.

External links

• Cybermuseum of Neuro Surgery
• Translation