Beer: Medicinal Use (2024-06-13)

Created by: Englund, Robert K.

This Sumerian cuneiform tablet records a list of medical practices and prescriptions used during the ED IIIb period (ca. 2500-2340 BC). The obverse of the tablet is damaged, but the reverse can be deciphered and details fifteen different medical prescriptions which can be categorized into three broad groups: potion, poultice, and complex groups. Beer is used as an integral ingredient in at least two of the prescriptions, including one poultice and one potion. Tablet is from the collection at University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

The fifteen pharmaceutical prescriptions documented on the tablet specifies the types of ingredients used and their methods of administration, but lacks context due to absence of the names of the associated diseases or the amounts of each ingredient used. The written records on the tablet indicate physicians utilized a variety faunal, botanic, and mineral materials in their treatments, including snakeskin, turtle shells, thyme, figs, fir tree, potassium nitrate (saltpeter), and sodium chloride (salt). These fundamental components were administered via mediums such as beer and river bitumen as poultices and potions (internal medicine).Below are two translations of prescriptions on the tablet involving beer: Prescription 4: Pulverize the branches of the thorn plant and seeds of the duashbur; pour diluted beer over it, rub with vegetable oil and fasten the paste over the sick spot as a poultice. Prescription 9: Pour strong beer over the resin of the plant; heat over a fire; put this liquid in river bitumen (oil), and let the sick person drink. Other prescriptions utilizing beer describe washing “the diseased part,” which probably refers to a wound, with beer and hot water, and making solutions with beer and certain herbs to be used as a sedative. Although the use of beer as a remedy has not stood the test of time and medical innovation, the tablet reveals, perhaps most significantly, that the ancient Sumerians were involved in the practice of caring for injured and ill members of the community. Moreover, the records suggest that medical practices and procedures experienced processes of standardization through documentation and distribution of prescriptions like those found on the tablet. Reference Teall, Emily K. “Medicine and Doctoring in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Grand Valley Journal of History 3/1 (2014) article 2 CDLI reference: P269190

credit: Quinn, Alexandra N.