Medicine and surgery were practiced by the ancient Egyptians, about whom the historian Herodotus wrote (II, 84): “The practice of medicine is so divided among them, that each physician is a healer of one disease and no more. All the country is full of physicians, some of the eye, some of the teeth, some of what pertains to the belly, and some of the hidden diseases.”

In Egypt surgical techniques included cauterization to control hemorrhage, and elevating a fragment of bone that might be pressing against a person’s brain in cases of skull fracture. Splints were used for broken bones, some mummies even having been discovered with splints made of tree bark fastened with bandages. (Compare Eze 30:20, 21.)

Concerning Egypt’s physicians and their remedies, The International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia (Vol. IV, p. 2393) states: “From the ancient medical papyri which have been preserved, the largest of which is the Papyrus Ebers, we know that the medical knowledge of these physicians was purely empirical, largely magical and wholly unscientific. In spite of their ample opportunities they knew next to nothing of human anatomy, their descriptions of diseases are hopelessly crude, and three-fourths of the hundreds of prescriptions in the papyri are wholly inert. Even their art of embalming was so imperfect that few of their mummies would have remained in any other climate than that of Egypt.”​—Edited by J. Orr, 1960.