The National Library of Medicine is proud to announce its next online Turning the Pages project featuring the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, the oldest surviving surgical text: http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/flash/smith/smith.html .
The Smith Papyrus was written in Egyptian hieratic script around the 17th century BCE but probably based on material from a thousand years earlier. This collaborative online representation features an important new translation by James P. Allen, formerly of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and high-resolution scans lent by the scroll’s owner, the New York Academy of Medicine. Curatorial text was written by Michael North of the National Library of Medicine.
The ancient text is a treatise on trauma surgery and consists of 48 cases dealing with wounds and trauma. Each case is laid out using a carefully prescribed formula: a description of the injury; diagnosis; prognosis; treatment; and further explanations of the case, which resemble footnotes.
The website also includes a gallery of high resolution images of the papyrus itself which scholars and the public can view more closely:
http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/smith_home.html
To view other Turning the Pages projects, visit the main webpage:
http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/books.html
