Surgery in ancient Mesopotamia.

Many medical and therapeutic cuneiform texts have been recovered from sites in ancient Mesopotamia, but no specifically surgical text has yet been found. Although it is possible that surgical texts may be found in the future, it is rather unlikely. Their absence cannot be taken as proof that the ancient Mesopotamians did not practise surgery; it is probable that surgical techniques were handed down orally and demonstrated by actual example.' Some degree of expertise must have been acquired by military surgeons in the field when they accompanied Assyrian and Babylonian armies on military campaigns. Mention of some actual surgical operations is found in Hammurabi's code of law, in which a knife was used by the doctor (A.zu, asui) to operate on the patient.2 However, treatment of superficial traumatic lesions was very conservative; operative surgery apparently was rare.3 More serious lesions were also treated conservatively; fractures were usually not reduced and then immobilized by the surgeon,4 treatment being restricted to bandages and oil dressings. Trephining of the skull occasionally took place in antiquity. A trephined child's skull dated to Iron Age II (c. 1100-800 BC) was discovered in north-west Iran, and the patient probably survived the operation.5 But evidence for trephining has not been