2015. Introduction to Fumigation in Mesopotamia

Athar Alrafedain

Fumigation is a term for healing through the power of smoke. It is a wide-spread therapy in many traditional healing systems and it was also used in Ancient Mesopotamia.

Fumigation in Babylonian Medicine played a role in the therapy of different illnesses such as “epilepsy”, “heartbreak” or “fever”. On the one hand it had a rash physical effect, because of the swift way of administering drugs, but on the other hand it had psychological effects as well, which could compare with aromatherapy. The preserved textual information shows that a separate textual series on fumigation emerged first in the last quarter of the 4th century BC. It was compiled by the important Neo-Babylonian scholar Iqīšâ. Analogous information can be found not only in texts from the time of Iqīšâ, but also from 7th century BC Assyria, where different texts on fumigation were probably still not collected into a distinct series. The paper surveys the origins of the Iqīšâ’s series on fumigation and examines how this series was formed, using older material. The paper will scrutinize, which were the internal criteria for building up such a series. Moreover, it will be explored how building up an extensive commentary on that very same series, most probably by Iqīšâ himself, standardized and legitimized the series in his environment.

2016

The two most important limitations of phosphine fumigation are: (a) long exposure times; and (b) the danger of developing resistant insect populations. It is evident that insect resistance is a serious concern that threatens the continued effective use of phosphine. Phosphine fumigation protocols have been revised in different countries to tackle the problem of insect resistance to the fumigant. In many countries, fumigation is performed under tarpaulins or a liner with high permeation to the fumigant, with permeable floors where retention of the fumigant is not measured. This requires repeat fumigations that most probable increases resistance levels and selects for insects with a higher phosphine tolerance. To deal with the question ‘what degree of gastightness is needed for a successful fumigation’ some comparative assessments were made to provide practical guidelines. In this paper other registered fumigants are reviewed, they suffer from the limitation that they may be useful fo...

Ancient science of life, 1988

The study assess some herbal agents used for fumigations as listed in Ayurvedic literature for various applications. Here coarse powder of 19 freshly collected and dried herbal agents were used for fumigating a room of about 594 cu .ft. volume. Air samples were collected using Nutrient Agar plates just before , 15 minutes and 45 minutes after fumigation from both ground and top. Assessment of the agent was done by means of colony counts after incubation of air samples . In relation to Formaline (disinfection by 100%) all the herbal agents have reduced the microbial colony counts in air samples considerably. Five agents were markedly effective in destroying micro-organisms in ground samples while the rest have disinfected significantly the top samples. Potent disinfection was seen with "Devadāru" and in line "Apamārga" stands second while "Sarsapa" has reduced aeroganic micro-organisms.

2005

Fumigation as a healing procedure was a widely used technique in Mesopotamian medicine with textual references to the existence of the medical-magical series 'Fumigation' known from the Late Babylonian period. BM 38438 represents a new manuscript of this text. In the first part of this paper, I provide a summary of all manuscripts of this medical-magical series 'Fumigation', while in the second part an edition of the new fragment will be presented.1

Medicinski pregled

Discovery of fire at the dawn of prehistoric time brought not only the benefits to human beings offering the light and heat, but also misfortune due to burns; and that was the beginning of burns treatment. Egyptian doctors made medicines from plants, animal products and minerals, which they combined with magic and religious procedures. The earliest records described burns dressings with milk from mothers of male babies. Goddess Isis was called upon to help. Some remedies and procedures proved so successful that their application continued for centuries. The Edwin Smith papyrus (1500 BC) mentioned the treatment of burns with honey and grease. Ebers Papyrus (1500 BC) contains descriptions of application of mud, excrement, oil and plant extracts. They also used honey, Aloe and tannic acid to heal burns. Ancient Egyptians did not know about microorganisms but they knew that honey, moldy bread and copper salts could prevent infections from dirt in burns healing. Thyme, opium and belladon...

Medicina, 2020

The last century brought about more rapid new developments in the treatment of burns, which significantly lowered the mortality of burn injuries. However, burns were already treated in antiquity, where the threshold from spirituality to scientific medicine originated. The existing literature on burn treatment is very limited and there are many cross-references, some of them incorrect. The aim of this work by an interdisciplinary team of historians and physicians is to offer a more precise reproduction of the burn treatment of Greek and Roman antiquity using original texts in context and with a modern scientific background. There are many sources from ancient doctors on the subject of burn treatment, as well as the treatment of burned-out wounds and frostbite, which have not yet been mentioned. The literature research also showed an understanding of scientific contexts in ancient medicine, such as antiseptics or rheology. Interestingly, there was a change in burn medicine from everyd...

2016

In search for methyl bromide alternatives along with the wide use of phosphine, which its efficacy is in decrease due to resistance development of stored-products insects and the need for longer exposure times, two candidate fumigants have been tested against stored-products insects. Both fumigants have the property to act within short exposure times on storage insects, comparable to methyl bromide. Both fumigants were tested in: (a) laboratory scale trials on 2.85 L desiccators, (b) semi-commercial scale trials in 1.5 m3 PE laminated envelopes, and (c) commercial trials scale trials on 8 m3 PE laminated envelopes or woven PVC cocoons. The PE laminated envelopes and the PVC cocoons are suitable for fumigation of stored commodities, can serve as flexible fumigation chambers, and have low fumigant permeability. Ethyl formate (EtF) was tested for 12 h exposure time on the larval stage of Carpophilus hemipterus (L.) and Plodia interpunctella (Hubner). Propylene oxide (PPO) was tested fo...