The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character.

Dr. Kramer has devoted a lifetime to translating the cuneiform script on the tab- lets in the Babylonian Collection of the University of Pennsylvania's University Museum and in the collections of other museums. Two Sumerian medical tablets have survived, although there is a vast treasure of tablets remaining untranslated. One tablet is small, containing one prescription. The other contains 15 prescriptions and is dated from some time in the last quarter of the third millennium BC. The Sumerian physician went to botanical, zoological, and mineralogical sources for his materia media. It is entirely free from magic spells and incantations which are a regular feature of the cuneiform Akkadian medical texts of the first millennium BC; not a single deity or demon is mentioned in this text. Another "first" is the first physician on record. He was a practitioner named Lulu; the words "Lulu, the doctor" are found on a tablet