Early beginnings of medicine in Mesopotamias

De tout temps, l'humanité a été en quête de moyens de soigner, sinon de guérir les maladies. Les Mésopotamiens ont usé de l'écriture afin de colliger leur savoir médical et de le transmettre de générations en générations. Dès le IIIème millénaire avant notre ère, coexistent différentes pratiques médicales : magiques, théurgiques et empiriques. Bien que les maladies soient considérées comme un châtiment divin, les médecins ont su leur reconnaître des étiologies naturelles. Ils observaient et examinaient les malades afin d'établir un diagnostic et un pronostic. Outre les interventions chirurgicales, les thérapeutiques comportaient de nombreux remèdes. Des cordons sanitaires étaient instaurés pour contrer les épidémies et la notion de contamination par voie indirecte était connue. La médecine mésopotamienne, empirique et pragmatique, comportait déjà quelques caractéristiques de celle d'aujourd'hui. Comme sa consoeur égyptienne, elle a ouvert la voie à la grande réforme Hippocratique.Humanity has always looked for means to cure or at least to treat diseases. Mesopotamian people used to write to gather their medical knowledge. So they could transmit and improve it from generation to generation. From the third millennium B.C., cuneiform tablets testified to the coexistence of different medical practisings operating at the same time : exercises were magic, religious and empiric as well. Indeed, at that time, despite the importance of magic and religiow beliefs, and although diseases were considered to be a divine punishment, physicians could propose natural ongins for the vanous pathologies. They had a clinic observation and examination of patients in order to introduce a diagnosis and prognosis. Their therapy was composed of numerous remedies based on natural products. And when it was necessary, they did not hesitate to resort to surgical operations. Quarantine lines were e.sbblished to ward off many epidemics that were rampant in this area ; actually the idea of second-hand infection was detected fiom the second millemium B.C. Empiric and pragmatic Mesopotamian medicine was already constituted by a few caracteristics that compose it today. Like its Egyptian counterpart, it has paved the way for the great Hippocrates' reformation