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?
Also: medicine · physician · asu · asû · Sa-gig · Sakikku · diagnosis · Esagil-kin-apli · healing · pharmacopoeia
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.
In short
The Mesopotamian healing arts — the physician (asû) with his herbal and surgical materia medica, and the diagnostic-prognostic series Sa-gig that correlated symptoms with the gods, demons, or ghosts thought to cause them.
Where it’s found
The diagnostic-prognostic series Sa-gig/Sakikkû (Esagil-kīn-apli) and the therapeutic corpus (akkadian-pending; Scurlock, Sourcebook of Ancient Mesopotamian Medicine)
How the idea developed across Sumer, Babylon & Assyria
The diagnostic series Sa-gig (Sakikkû) is traditionally ascribed to the scholar Esagil-kīn-apli (a redactional ascription, like Sîn-lēqi-unninni for Gilgameš). The asû (physician) and āšipu (exorcist) are complementary practitioners. Therapeutic and diagnostic texts are mainly first-millennium Akkadian.
Esagil-kīn-apli is the traditional redactor-ascription of the diagnostic series, not a modern 'author' in our sense.