ABSTRACT
The historical edifice, especially as regards medicine, is far from perfect; but at least it corresponds to the truth in its principal lines. All memory of these great civilizations that have been engulfed by the march of time was already lost in the periods that followed after. About the year 2000 b.c. the land between the Euphrates and the Tigris represented the centre of Mediterranean civilization. At this time, characterized by a firm and rigid administration of civil and military powers and governed by a powerful monarchy, medicine was entirely in the hands of a priestly cast. In Babylonia and in Assyria the practice of medicine was thus confided to a special caste, as is also shown by some seals of physicians that have been preserved. Certainly Babylonian medicine represents a closed system, organically constructed on concepts that were partly erroneous, but justified by the environmental conditions in which it arose.
