FOR most people a hangover will have them reaching for the painkillers and greasy breakfast, but those living in ancient Egypt had a rather different approach.
Historians have discovered a 1 900-year-old hangover cure written on an ancient Egyptian papyrus. Written in Greek, one of the medical recipes offers advice for how to tackle a “drunken headache” with the leaves of a shrub called Alexandrian chamaedaphne, or sometimes Alexandrian laurel.
The text recommends stringing the leaves of the evergreen plant, also called Ruscus racemosus, together and possibly wearing it around the neck.
The treatment was discovered as part of an ongoing effort to translate the Oyrhynchus papyrus – more than 500 000 documents found at the ancient Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus.
The hangover treatment was one of 24 new medical texts that are the latest to be translated – the 101st volume of translations to be published.
Among the documents, researchers at the University of Oxford and University College London have found 11 versions of known medical texts by Galen and Hippocrates alongside the new medical texts. They also found four documents that appeared to be doctors’ notes.
Professor Vivian Nutton, a historian at University College London, said: “It is the largest single collection of medical papyri to be published.” – Daily Mail