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To treat a wound in the ancient world was to take part in an experiment:
would ground malachite help it to heal swiftly (the copper killed bacteria)?
How could you close a gaping cut? Ants (see right) provided the solution:
their powerful jaws closed as they were pushed into the skin pinched together
round the wound. Then their bodies were twisted off, leaving a row of ant
heads locked into a primitive suture. Fascinating details from the paperback
edition of The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World by Guido
Mano (Harvard, pp 571, £9.95). It recounts the different practices
and what is known of the theory that lay behind them from around the world.
Some practices seem sadly mistaken – a rustling sound in the lungs to a
Greek in classical times was a fallen lung, one that had slid forward and
down in the chest and now rubbed the ribs – others are more acute. For example,
the treatment for snakebite in Southern India hundreds of years ago involved
keeping the victim still, sucking out the poison from the puncture wound
and trying to prevent the venom from circulating.