Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

and international bodies play a major part (Figure 2). The method of communication
changed from oral in the first instance to the written word and then finally to the
printed word. The method used would have influenced the form of the message and
comprehension of the recipient. Only the literate would have been able to
understand the message and so another person, again a health professional, would
have had to interpret the message for the masses. The means of communication
were:
3200 BC Small clay tablets were used by Assyrians, Sumerians and the
Babylonians (from Mesopotamia) (Bottered, 2000), which was between
the Tigris and the Euphrates – present-day Iraq). Cuneiform characters
were engraved on the tablets using a stylus. Later the tablets were left
to dry or even fired in a kiln.
3000 BC Papyrus is an early form of paper produced from the pith of the papyrus
plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the
Nile Delta of Egypt. Papyrus is first known to have been used in ancient
Egypt and was produced as early as 3000 BC, but it was also widely
used throughout the Mediterranean region, as well as inland parts of
Europe and south-west Asia. Siddha practitioners from southern India
wrote recipes on palm leaves.
c1200 BC In China, documents were written on bone (Oracle bone) or bamboo,
making them heavy and awkward to transport. The earliest examples of
Chinese writing date to the late Shang period.
301 BC Parchment was first mentioned. Parchment is a thin material made from
calf skin, sheep skin or goat skin. Parchment is not tanned, but
stretched, scraped, and dried under tension, creating a stiff white,
yellowish or translucent animal skin. The finer quality parchment was
called vellum.
794-5 AD Paper was introduced by the Arabs (Holmyard, 1935).
973 AD First Chinese Herbal printed.
1040 AD Invention of movable type in China.
1452 AD The printing press was invented by Johann Gutenberg (1398-1468). It
was a further 100 years before the number of medical books started to
soar.
1476 AD William Caxton set up his printing press in London.
The communications described here fall into different categories:
a) Poetry, in which the aim is solely to entertain rather than to be helpful to patients;
here the information is stated as common knowledge.
b) Aphorisms, many of which are succinct statements whose frequent aim is to
appear witty; others are statements of principles. There is a very strong
publication bias in favour of decrying drugs.