Wearing Several Hats
A lesson in occupational health and safety from ancient Egypt
By Henry Petroski
We have long known that the first engineer whose name has come down to us was the ancient Egyptian Imhotep, who was responsible for the stepped pyramid at Saqqara. It was built for the pharaoh Zoser near Memphis in the 27th century b.c., and is believed to be the first pyramid.
Although the details of the construction of a pyramid continue to be debated, there is little doubt that a large number of workers were engaged in the task. It was in the engineer’s interest to keep the workforce healthy and to know how to treat job-related injuries.
Imhotep evidently knew how to care for his workers, but I did not know until recently that among historians of medicine the first engineer is also considered the first physician. This was revealed to me during a routine medical checkup by the nurse who was taking my vital signs. He began abruptly by saying that pyramid workers were well cared for — by the likes of Imhotep. Furthermore, if Imhotep’s medical talents had been known earlier, it would be he and not Hippocrates who would hold a privileged place in the medical profession.
While direct writings by Imhotep are not known to have survived, historians believe that a manuscript dating from about 1600 b.c. records his medical wisdom. This 15-foot-long scroll was unearthed by grave robbers in 1862, and it was soon sold to British Egyptologist Edwin Smith. After Smith’s death in 1906, the papyrus was given to the New-York Historical Society. Eventually it found its way into the New York Academy of Medicine.
A 1930 translation of the papyrus showed it to contain an analysis of four dozen cases of traumatic injury of the kind expected on a construction site. What makes the cases remarkable is how modern sounding are the recited descriptions, examinations, diagnoses, prognoses, and treatments. Rather than the magical and superstitious approaches to medicine that the Egyptians were believed to have practiced at the time, the Imhotep approach was rational and scientific two millennia before Hippocrates, who had previously been believed to be the first to attribute diseases to natural rather than mystical causes.
In 2005 and 2006, the Edwin Smith Papyrus was on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which also published a new translation that made even clearer the work’s medical significance. The resulting publicity brought Imhotep’s brand of ancient Egyptian medicine to the forefront to overthrow, at least among historians of medicine, the common view that Hippocrates was the father of modern medicine.
My chance encounter with a nurse who had been reflecting on how important good medical care was for keeping an ancient construction project on track got me thinking of how engineers generally have to wear several hats in the course of their work. Engineers have always had to be more than engineers.
They have had at least to learn the specialized art and science of whatever it was they were working on at any given time, whether it was the quarrying, dressing, and placement of the stone for a pyramid or the care and feeding of the workforce. When art and science were found wanting, the engineer improved upon them as surely as he did upon the design of the structure itself.
Thus, Imhotep’s recognition as first engineer must be paired with his recognition as first physician. Such seemingly disparate roles do not fit into the stereotypes of engineer or physician, but they are not unheard of even today. Many pre-med students now follow engineering curricula, and some of my faculty colleagues in biomedical engineering also have appointments in the medical school. They are professors not only of engineering but also of surgery, following in the ancient tradition of Imhotep.
Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering and a professor of history at Duke University. His latest book, The House with Sixteen Handmade Doors: A Tale of Architectural Choice and Craftsmanship, will be published by W.W. Norton in early May.
Photo by Catherine Petroski