التبخير و استخداماته في معالجة بعض الأمراض عند العراقيين القدماء

Abstract EN

The cuneiform texts relevant to the medicine and treatment reflected what indicates that the style of fumigation was one of the remedial style which was used in ancient Iraq for treatment of many disease cases or contribution to their treatment.

Irrespective of the reasons which caused the diseases and the look of the ancient Iraqis to that point; therefore the treatment by fumigation was also included with the styles of the priest (Ašipu), and the treatment of the physician Asū, the medical treatment.

Because of the prevailing thinking previously with the population of Mesopotamia that the disease in its first origin was that the act of the gods because of their anger with the human who committed an ignominious sin them or encroached on their sanctities, or disobeyed his parents, or committees a sin against his brothers or against one of the members of his family or clan, or other religious reasons; hence the gods were dominating the evil spirits over him which cams the diseases, and that these diseases as they think were not treated firstly but by expel those evil spirits from the human's body; therefore one of the important means they thought in treatment and expelling those evil spirits was through fumigation and spreading of incenses near to the patient or in his environ in which he lives, as many relevant cuneiform texts showed to the priest practices and rituals for treatment.

In addition, fumigation according to the Babylonian texts and treatment prescriptions was one of the medical styles of (Asū) the role of which started to be clear in treatment independently since the beginning of the second millennium B.C., whereas many of those texts bestowed upon us with what indicated that the style of fumigation was used for treatment many disease cases beginning from the head to the two feet.

Some of them were irrelevant to the feet, diseases of head, eyes, ears, chest, stomach, then urinary diseases, also the states of poisoning.

Those prescriptions showed that the style of treatment by using fumigation was according to the nature of the disease state and its development.

The use of this style is not restricted in the treatment to the Mesopotamians only, but an analogue was found also in the ancient Egyptian medicine and other medicine of the ancient nation it is still used until now to treat many of the various disease cases.

Therefore; lights are shed on this subject, whereas this research was divided up into four axes, the first axis dealt with the origin of derivation of the word fumigation and its meanings in the two languages Arabic and Akkadian.

The second axis included the uses of fumigation in the religious rituals and the practices of the priests relevant to the remedy.

Then, the third axis has concentrated on examples of the medical prescriptions relevant to the treatment of the diseases by means of fumigation.

Besides, the fourth one included the style used in treatment some diseases by fumigation and the ways of its uses at present.