Mesopotamia was one of the first civilizations to use herbal remedies to cure patients, as well as the most common form of medicine found before the development of herbal medicine, witch doctoring. .
Most of the information found about Mesopotamian medicine is found on clay tablets, with cuneiform writing on it. These tablets told about everyday life, and many other things to do with their culture, on of them being medicine.
Illnesses were often blamed on gods and spirits, and they also though that your recovery was down to the decision of the spirit or god that possessed you. The herbal remedy wasn't as such a medicine, more an offering.
There were two types of medical practitioner, the ashipu, and the asu. The job of the ashipu was to determine which god or spirit had caused the illness, he also determined why the person had become ill, whether it was through some misdeed by the patient that had made the spirit or god angry. He tried to bring the spirit out of the body to heal the patient. The ashipu often referred to another healer, called an asu. These healer was the on that used herbal remedies to try and cure the patient, by feeding the patient the remedy as a sort of offering to the spirit possessing the patient. The asu is often called the "physician" because he used what were often classified as the empirical applications of medication. It was called this because when treating wounds the asu generally relied on three fundamental techniques: washing, bandaging, and making plasters. The asu often kept a small satchel of herbs, and drugs. This array of medicine often included spices, plants, and tree resins. .
Mesopotamia was also one of the first civilizations to have people performing surgery. The asu often preformed the surgery, because they were more skilled at actual curing then diagnosing the patient. Surgery was very risky and following King Hammurabi's law, the surgeon risked having his hand cut off if his patient died, although the punishment varied depending on the patient's position in the hierarchy.
