Mesopotamia:

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers impacted Mesopotamians differently than the Nile river on ancient Egyptians. The Euphrates and the Tigris reach their high water levels between March and May, when crops are already growing. Dams, dikes and canals must be developed to shield and use the river flood for agriculture. Still, violent and unpredictable floods occured. In 3000 BC, 900 miles east of Giza's site for pyramids, a dynamic civilization evolved.

The Chaldean Empire:

Babylonians - the Last Mesopotamian Monarchy (626 - 529 BC). Around the ninth century BC, history mentions for the first time a country called Chaldea with inhabitants called Chaldeans. This reference came from the reign of the Assyrian King Shalmanassar III (850 BC). Shalmanassar had come to the aid of his ally Babylon against the Aramaeans, where he encountered among others, the Chaldeans. This is the first mention of the people who were to play a leading role in history.

Chaldea as a county was mentioned for the first time in the annals of the Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (884 - 859 BC). Before this time, the geographical area was called "Sea-lands." King Shalmanassar III of Assyria raided the area around 850 BC, and reached the Persian Gulf. He called the country the "Sea of Chaldea.

These Chaldeans lived among the swamps and lakes along the lower courses of the Tigris and Euphrates. Their organization was tribal, and each Chaldean "Baita" (house, family, clan) was under the leadership of Malka who at times called himself a "king". The political strength of each individual Malka was largely a matter of a personal ability and prestige. The largest of the tribes, the Baith Dakuri, was located south of Borssipa, no far from Babylon.

Further south were the Baith Amukani, and along the Tigris to the east bordering Elam the Baith Yakin. Chaldean tribes lived in an area of flourishing date palms. They kept large herds of horses and cattle; they were merchants in control of the southern trade routes along which traveled such exotic luxuries as ebony, ivory, elephant hides and gold.

The Chaldeans established a number of states which resisted extinction and assimilation during the Assyrian conquest of the eighth-seventh centuries BC.

Little is known of the first Chaldean King of Babylon, but he was succeeded by another sea land Malka, (Eriba Marduk) (770 BC). He seemed to have had some success in ridding the immediate neighborhood of Babylon and Borssipa of the ever encroaching Aramaeans. (Eriba Marduk) is remembered by later Chaldean Kings as the true founder of their dynastic line. He was succeeded by Nabonassir in 747 BC.

At this time, we enter a new era in the history of Babylon. Hence forth, precise records of historical events were systematically kept. These "Chronicles" were an account of the succession of the kings of Babylon.

They also contained highly accounts of astronomical observations. This is why the "Nabonassir Era" is recognized as a turning point in the history of science. In fact, the very term "Chaldean" became synonymous with "an astronomer."

After the death of Nabonassir, a rebellion occurred in Babylon, which led to the murder of his son, and the take over by Assyrian the army.

Merodach Baladan (721 BC):

Following the death of the Assyrian king Shalmanassir V, a Chaldean Malka, the ruler of the Family of Baith Yakin, came to power in Babylon Merodach - Baladan seized the Babylonian throne in 721 BV and held it until 710 BC. Merodach Baladan was then forced to flee to the Marshes where he was reinstated as king of the Baith Yakin clan, leaving Babylon under the control of Assyrian officials.

Around the year 700 BC, Ben Ibri, another Chaldean, attempted to come to power in Babylon. Seven years later, Mushezib Marduk tried to regain independence from the Assyrians, but he fled by the sea and died there.

By the end of the first half of the seven century BC a mysterious ruler by the name of Chaldalanu appeared as king of Babylon (649 - 627 BC).

All of this period, the Chaldeans remained strong, creating a threat to Assyrian power which was nearing the point of collapse. A Chaldean Malka named Nabupolassar seized the throne of Babylon. He established a wealthy and politically stable Chaldean empire, which for the next eighty years was the principal power in Western Asia.

The Babylonians( Hammurabi Period):

The importance of medicine and surgery in Western Asia before 2000 BCE was revealed by the presence of a legally established tariff for the services of both the physician and the surgeon embodied in the Code of Hammurabi (1800 BCE). These legal regulations of medical and surgical practice toward the beginning of the 2nd millennium BCE would indicate that medicine in ancient Babylon was already centuries old at that time, and that the beginning of medical knowledge must therefore reach back well toward 3000 BCE, perhaps into the Sumerian civilization. In fact, the famous Code of Hammurabi appears to be a systematic rewrite of much older Sumerian laws. The Code carried with it some rather harsh penalties for therapeutic failure. Whether any were actually carried out is not clear.

It has been suggested that certain parts of the Code clearly allude to the procedure of lens couching for cataract -- something not described in Greek literature until the Alexandrian School in 300 BCE [1,2] The evidence for this supposition is not decisive nor is the translation of the pertinent parts of the Code without controversy). What is intriguing is that the Aryans, who conquered the Indus valley, came from this area and there is a possibility that they may have brought couching with them. It is strange, however, that such a technique did not pass over into Egyptian medicine and it is probably not a coincidence that the Greeks first described the procedure at the time of Alexander's conquest of India. That these ancient people performed surgery is not in doubt, however, and the invention of couching may well lay with them.

At that time a reasonably complete anatomical vocabulary was in use and ophthalmology as well as other specialties practiced. As to ametropia and/or spectacles.

Unfortunately the actual tablets upon which were recorded the medical literature of ancient Babylonia and which obviously must have existed in Hammurabi's day have practically all vanished from our ken. The treatises which have survived to us are copies made in the Assyrian Empire (7th century BCE). These copies, furthermore, are themselves in a very incomplete and fragmentary state. We may derive from them, nevertheless, an impression of the range and character of medical writings in Western Asia for probably some 2,000 years before the Christian Era. They cover a wide range of ailments grouped roughly according to the part of the body chiefly affected. The leading treatises deal with ailments of the head, including mental troubles, infections, baldness, and affections of the eyes, ears, and temples; ailments of the respiratory and digestive organs, and of the muscles and ligaments. There were, besides, specialized works on pregnancy, child-birth, obstetrics, and diseases of the genital organs.

The materia medica employed in treatment of these ailments includes a long list of vegetable, mineral and animal substances (including excreta), most of which are impossible to identify. A frequent method of use, after special preparation, was by direct application to the affected part, or by binding it on. The commonest method of administering was by mouth, and occasionally by the use of a rectal suppository.

There is no clear indication that the physician knew anything of the real nature of the ailment encountered or, except in the more obvious cases, the function of the organs affected. Among the long list of available remedies, a few, like oil for stiff limbs, or milk for stomach troubles, salt peter and crushed ostrich shell for kidney stones, may have been beneficial, but some of the remedies employed seem to be entirely valueless. This may even have been realized at the time as indicated by the seeming indifference with which the physician moved through a long list of medications, shifting from one to another for the same disease.

Therefore, while these tablets have revealed a wide range of observed diseases and an extensive list of herbs and minerals in the physician's pharmacopoeia, there was no systematic fund of knowledge of the human body; neither was there any rational consideration of disease. The causes of disease and the operation of remedies, as conceived by the physician, were so intertwined with belief in supernatural forces, that a rational understanding of the organs and functions of the human body, sick or well, or of the operation of remedies when applied, was not likely or even possible. It is evident that primitive folk medicine, with all its superstitions, completely dominated the medical teaching of the ancient Babylonians, just as such superstitions suffused their general outlook on the natural world.

Ancient Babylonian knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and pathology was therefore limited, and under these circumstances the contributions of Babylonian medicine to later medical science can not be said to have been important. There is, in addition, little or no evidence of cultural crossover into other civilizations -- except, perhaps, that of India. Our own knowledge of Babylonian attainments, unfortunately, is limited by the fact that not a single Babylonian tablet on surgery has descended to us. We cannot, however, doubt the existence of such treatises in early Babylonia in view of the legally recognized and regulated position of the surgeon in Babylonian society of the 20th century BCE already mentioned. Recent examinations of some of the tablets have revealed, in addition, that as revealed in the Egyptian Smith Papyrus, some physicians in Mesopotamia --as their fellows in Egypt -- practiced without recourse to the temple. Whether they operated for cataract or not -- the answer is: maybe (see Indian Medicine).

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