Medicine & Diagnosis (the Asû and the Sa-gig)
Herbs and the knife for the body, but first the diagnosis: which god, demon, or ghost had struck the patient?
Mesopotamia had a developed medical tradition. The physician (asu) prescribed drugs from a large herbal and mineral pharmacopoeia, dressed wounds, and performed minor surgery, while the exorcist (ashipu) addressed the supernatural side of illness. Their knowledge was organized in great reference works — above all the diagnostic and prognostic series Sa-gig ('symptoms'), traditionally arranged by the scholar Esagil-kin-apli, which listed symptoms a healer might observe and the divine, demonic, or ghostly cause and likely outcome of each. Medicine and the reading of signs were intertwined: to heal the body, one had also to identify which unseen power had struck it.
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