Nippur Old Drugstore

HERB doctors, Medicine men, and Drugstore prescriptions, may now trace their origin to a respectable antiquity: a welcome piece of news to the Bulletin readers. Among the many clay tablets from Nippur preserved in the Museum collections, there is a remarkable document, inscribed in the cuneiform character, of early pre-Sargonic style – about 2600 B. C. – which roused considerable interest at a recent surgical convention held in Philadelphia. It would have proved just as interesting to Friend John Bartram, in his famous botanical garden on the bank of the Schuylkill, or to his London patron, Sir Hans Sloane, whose Chelsea Medical Garden and Herbarium were the cornerstone of the British Museum foundation.

The tablet 16 x 9.5 cm.- so long dormant in our drawers, is well preserved on the reverse. The obverse is unfortunately almost illegible except for a few lines. Photograph, transliteration and translation, as far as possible will help to realise the early use of drugs, prescriptions and the elaborate treatment of a burnt foot.

The drugs include various herbs, plants, seeds, flour, wheat, barley, cassia, balsam, salt, sesame and cedar oils, powdered woods, thorn root and twig, hot beer, water, etc., which it is prescribed to wash, pound, boil on fire, pour, sprinkle, plaster, anoint, clean- peel! – and mix with the water.

For the treatment of a burnt foot, strange things like a water snake, a cow’s teat, perhaps as an artificial skin are prescribed, also an ingenious dripping machine for washing the dust from the foot.

But the old text may speak for itself.

L. L.

C. B. S. 14221.

[Obv. destroyed]