EGYPTIAN MEDICINE.

lasta pet.-Heraclitus.

Egypt, if not the oldest, is undoubtedly one of the oldest of civilized lands. Mesopotamia may alone with some justification dispute her claim to the first rank in antiquity. If too there is any truth in the hypothesis that, at the dawn of the world's history, the home of primeval man lay to the south-east of Africa, in the region long since submerged by the ocean. it is also probable that the progenitors of the ancient Egyptians wandered into upper Egypt along the course of the modern Bar el Asrek, and establishing here a permanent settlement, founded the earliest home of civilization. The tradition of the Ethiopians that Egypt was one of their colonies supports this hypothesis, as well as the fact that the settlement of the valley of the Nile undoubtedly followed the current of that stream. Recent investigators (including Ebers) suppose, however, that the Egyptians, undoubtedly an Indo-Germanic people, migrated across Phoenicia into their present home. But in language they belong to the Semitic stock.

The extreme antiquity of Egyptian civilization, from which many of the most ancient nations (including even the Greeks) manifestly borrowed a part of their science and their culture, is evidenced by its venerable edifices and monuments, which indicate considerable technical skill, by the records of the dynastic registers, and especially by the medical works of the ancient Egyptians, which have been preserved to our day. These reach back to a period which we can as yet indicate by trustworthy figures in the case of no other people; and yet they presuppose a long antecedent course of development, extending from the age of primeval rudeness to the attainment of such a grade of civilization as that by which they were themselves produced. In the great number of their writings already discovered, as well as in the fact that the ancient Egyptians decorated their monuments and mummy-cases with hieroglyphics, we also find evidence to the same effect. Later grades of civilization alone mature a literature so extensive as that which we find among the Egyptians. Indeed this is so considerable that, basing our argument upon it alone, we might defend the view that the Egyptian people, even at the very early period when this literature arose, had already considerably degenerated, and were in fact verging on senesFor youthful peoples are especially proud of physical abilities, and devote attention to these alone, while it is only nations which are growing old that lay the chief importance upon scientific culture, and are fond of writing. The truth of this statement is confirmed by the history of the Greeks, the Romans, and even by our own age.

cence.

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In accordance with such facts and considerations, there is no internal improbability in assigning the foundation of the first kingdom of Egypt to the sixth millennium before Christ.' An especial ground for referring this event to so early a period, a period of whose medical writings especially we have acquired no knowledge in the case of any other people, may be found in the fact that the sober, earnest and heavy intellect of the ancient Egyptians, as we meet it in their surviving and characteristic works of architecture, sculpture and painting, unlike the boundless vanity of the Chinese, or the overflowing fancy of the natives of India, was not suited to originate supposititious history.

The Egyptians, like all other people, had several divinities who presided over the cure of disease. The principal of these deities, Isis, was at once the sister and the wife of Osiris. For among the Egyptians, as well as the pagan North-Germans (though in contrast with the custom of the Jews), marriages with sisters were permissible and usual even for their gods, and this custom, in accordance with popular prejudice, was adopted or retained by the Grecian Ptolemies. Isis had demonstrated her eminent medical skill by recalling to life her son Horus. Imhotep, the Egyptian Esculapius, whose temple stood at Memphis, and Chunsu, the counsellor of the sick, were of lower rank. The cat-headed Pacht (Bubastis) and Ape were worshipped as the deities of parturient women or of child-blessedness; for children among the Egyptians were esteemed a great blessing, as they were, and indeed still are, by their docile pupils the Jews. The cat was sacred to Pacht, and this animal was held in such honor that the death penalty was prescribed for killing a "mau" (cat). Thot (Thout, Thuti), a god represented sometimes with the head of an ibis, sometimes with that of a dog, enjoyed greater respect, and was regarded as the inventor of art in general, and especially of the healing art. By many he is regarded as the Egyptian Esculapius, though he enjoys many peculiarities in common with the Greek Hermes and the Phoenician Esmun."

Thot is supposed to have been the author of the oldest Egyptian medical works, whose contents were first engraved upon pillars of stone. Subsequently collected into the book Ambre or Embre (a title based upon the initial words of this book, viz.: "Ha em re em per em hru", i. e. "Here begins the book of the preparation of drugs for all parts of the human body") they formed a part of the so-called "Hermetic Books", from

1. The period of Chufu (Cheops), who built. the famous pyramid, and had the Sphinx restored, is assigned (according to Buchta) by Lepsius to 3124 B. C., by Brugsch to 3733, by Unger to 4845, and by Champollion to B. C. 5000. Wiedemann takes as the mean date 4845 B. C. Now since the Sphinx at this period already required to be restored, its erection must be referred to a period hundreds, indeed thousands of years before the days of Cheops, for the climate of Egypt (unlike that of America is very favorable to the preservation of stone monuments.

2. Esmun was one of the ancient Cabiri, and the Esculapius of the Phoenicians. Famous temples in his honor stood at Carthage and Berytus. (H.)

whose prescriptions no physician might deviate, unless he was willing to expose himself to punishment in case the patient died. This punishment was threatened because the substance of the medical, as well as the religious works of the Egyptians-and the science of the priests united in itself medicine, theology and philosophy-was given, according to their view, by the gods themselves, and a disregard of their prescriptions would be nothing less than sacrilege. The remains of these books' are probably preserved to us in the two papyri of Leipzig (papyrus Ebers) and Berlin, especially in the former. The Leipzig papyrus was committed to writing in the 16th century B. C., and is the offspring of an epoch of high civilization in Egypt for in this same century of Sesostris or Ramses-Miamun' (died B. C. 1511) lived and sung the old Egyptian epic poet Pentaur, and Mesu (Moses) was also educated at the same period in Egypt (Lauth). The Berlin Papyrus was committed to writing in the middle of the 14th century B. C., and the substance of both these works is referred back to the fourth millennium before our era. Thosortes (Athotis), who also reigned during the course of this latter period, received the surname of "Imhotep”, i. e. "physician", in consequence of his medical knowledge!

The papyrus Ebers is only partially deciphered, but it is believed to have been written between 1550-1547 B. C., and it exhibits to us a compilation, whose contents are the work of several persons, for even an oculist of Byblos in Phoenicia is mentioned as one of the associate authors. In this we have proof that, even at this extraordinarily early period, medical science was international, and that even then (as we see in Ziemssen's Codex to-day) savants of a foreign, though neighboring nation, took part in such compilations. This papyrus compiled under the king Ba-kerh-ra, probably at On (Heliopolis), where was located a famous sacerdotal college (in which, as in the Museum at Alexandria at a later period, policlinical treatment was practised), 1. The "Todtenbuch" (Book of the Dead), also belongs among them. This was "a sort of guide-book, which every Egyptian must possess in order to travel with safety in the other world. The use of this book was extremely simple and ingenious. It was sufficient to have learned it by heart, or to have merely transcribed it, in order to know it after death. For those who had neglected this precaution during life, the son or some other relative performed the service of reading or reciting the necessary chapters at the burial. Finally by the donation of a more or less complete copy of the work, sufficient knowledge of the formulæ inscribed therein was secured to the dead." (Buchta.)

2. The mummy of Ramses II., Miamun, is still preserved in the museum at Bulaq. The complete name of the king was Ra-Userma Sotep-en-ra Ramessu Miamun A-nachtu (the victor).

3. A thousand years before this the Egyptians possessed an exercise-book of elementary mathematics (papyrus Rhind), probably composed under Amenemha III, (B. C. 2221-2179). This was copied about B. C. 1700 by a writer named Ahamesu, and its contents, almost word for word, are again found in a book of the Alexandrian Heron. Probably there also existed a theoretical text-book of mathematics in Egypt, which Euclid had at his command. The work first mentioned comprises exercises in the four primary rules of arithmetic, and especially fractions (Eisenlohr). Brugsch has recently discovered in a papyrus the fables of Esop, which must either have been of Egyptian origin or imported into Egypt from Greece.

bears the title given in the preceding paragraph, and contains: remedies for diseases. of the stomach, the abdomen, the urinary bladder; for the removal of the glands in the groin (buboes) and the "kehn-mite"; "The book of the Eyes"; remedies for ulcers of the head, for grayness of the hair, and promotion of its growth; ointments to heal and strengthen the nerves; medicines to cure diseases of the tongue, to strengthen the teeth, to remove lice and fleas; remedies for the hearing and for the organs of smell; the preparation of the famous Kyphi; "The Secret Book of the Physician (The Science of the Movement of the Heart, and the Knowledge of the Heart, according to the priestly physician Nebsuchet)"; prescriptions for the eyes according to the views of the priest Chui, a Semite of Byblos; "Book of the Banishing of Pains"; recipes for mouth pills for women, to render the odor of the mouth agreeable; the various uses of the tequem tree, etc. The papyrus has marginal notes, like "nefer" (good) etc., which Lauth assigns to the year 1469 B. C., an evidence that its prescriptions had been tested in practice.

These so-called "Hermetic Books" in the post-Alexandrian age, and still later, served as the source of, and a mask for, the vagaries of magic, and the extravagances and frauds of the alchemists. Most of them, however, are forgeries. Apis and Serapis were also regarded as skilled in the healing art, and the ibis was popularly supposed to have been the hallowed inventor of one of the most useful medical operations-the use of clysters-for it was believed that when constipated she administered them to herself with the aid of her long bill.

The magnificent and wealthy sacerdotal schools were the institutions for instruction in medicine. The best of these were located in Thebes "with its hundred gates," in Memphis, Saïs, Heliopolis (Egyptian Anu, Heb. On, now Matarieh near Cairo), and Chennu (Silsilis). They corresponded somewhat with the later colleges of Alexandria, but had a purely esoteric character. We may regard them also as the universities of that ancient period, provided, as they were, with a library, laboratories, boarding-houses for students, etc. Heliopolis especially was considered a school of practical medicine.

The medical knowledge of the ancient Egyptians was tolerably extensive, and gauged by the measure of those early ages, by no means unimportant. It was at all events quite characteristic. Medicine was divided into the science of higher degree (conjurations, dissolving the charms of the gods by prayer, interpretations of the revelations received by the sick during incubation in the temples), and ordinary medical practice.

The highest class of priests (sages, soothsayers), whose privilege and duty it was to study the first 36 Hermetic books, officiated as physicians of the higher science.' Ordinary medicine was practiced by priests of the lowest grade, the Pastophori. The latter-hence their name-carried the image of the sacred (sam-) barge in their religious processions, and it was their duty to study the last six of the Hermetic books. These treated of anatomy, pathology, pharmacology (papyrus Ebers ?), ophthalmology, and gynæcology, if we employ modern terms for their designation. There

1. Undoubtedly the oldest physicians known to us by name are the primitive medical colleagues and kings Teta and Tseshorta (5th millennium B. C.), Nebsuchet, the Sénac of the Egyptians, and Chui, an oculist.