Under the Knife: A History of Surgery in 28 Remarkable Operations

by Arnold van de Laar

After all, as a doctor in Persia you had to comply with the thousand-year-old laws of King Hammurabi of Babylon. Known as the Code of Hammurabi, they have been preserved for posterity on a large pillar of black basalt more than two metres high, which can now be seen in the Louvre in Paris. The code was based on the rules of trade and surgeons would enter into an agreement with their clients: if the treatment was successful, they were paid. If not, they received nothing. If it went wrong, they were called to account – an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth – just like everyone else. Article 197 of the code states that if a man should break the bone of another, one of his bones should also be broken – unless the bone in question belonged to a slave. Then, under article 199, it was sufficient to pay half the value of the slave or – under article 198 – one gold mina if it were a freed slave. Article 218 says that if a patient died at the hands of a surgeon, the surgeon’s own hands were to be cut off. It may have been less lucrative to treat slaves, but it was much safer; under article 219, if a slave died during treatment, you could replace him with a slave of equal value