was too still another class of priestly physicians, who followed the army and enjoyed a salary from the state, military physicians. Besides these, there were veterinary physicians, whose methods of treatment are still partially preserved upon the monuments, and who were mainly specialists, fowl-doctors, cattle-doctors, etc. In fact their general system of specialties (as we learn already from the papyrus Ebers) was so complete, that according to the account of Herodotus, there were physicians in Egypt for each part of the body. This specialism is per se an evidence of a civilization of high development, indeed of one tending towards its downfall, and in Egypt it attained a perfection which our own system, with all its completeness, has not yet reached. We know that the sick were visited and treated at their homes by the physicians. The latter must first, however, be sent for to the President of the temple, who then selected and despatched to the patient the specialist best suited to his case. The sick were also treated as outpatients in the temples. Persons of rank had their physician-in-ordinary. Whether there were hospitals in Egypt is doubtful; at all events the statement that the sick were exposed in the streets, so that passers-by might impart advice to them and inform them how they had themselves been cured, is opposed to such a supposition.

In consequence of the strict division of castes which stamped its impress upon all the arrangements of the ancient Egyptians, the adoption of the medical profession was permitted to the sons of physicians only, and was associated with birth and hereditary succession. The distinctions of caste were not, however, so rigid as among the Indians, and persons of a lower caste could, by means of eminent services, work themselves up into a higher.

The income of the priestly physicians was partially independent of their "practice," inasmuch as it depended upon the proceeds of extensive and untaxable temple endowments. Besides this, the patients dispensed to the gods (as well as to the priests) votive offerings, which, under certain circumstances, were required to be promised in advance, so that, even at that time, it was customary to chaffer about fees.

Coined money was unknown to the Egyptians before the time of Alexander the Great, but instead of it they made use of weighed rings of gold and silver, of different values. Herodotus reports of the Egyptian priests and physicians: "Their profits are large, they eat the cooked offerings and receive every day many geese and much beef. Wine is also given to them." So they had no very bad time. Such were the ordinary offerings.

A special form of payment or offering, of which examples have been preserved to us, were the so called "anathemata,” models in silver, gold, etc. of diseased limbs, feet, hands, or deformed arms, which the sick hung up in the temples for the benefit of the gods. These were then sold anew by the priests to other patients, and again offered to the gods, and so on ad infinitum, a primitive, lucrative and pious practice which has been preserved in our pilgrimage churches of the present day, though obsolete in

private practice. The object was the same as that sought even to-day in Kevlaar:

"Whoe'er a wax hand offers, regains his own hand sound,

And who a wax foot offers, his foot is freed from wound." Ordinary hygienic measures were daily baths, friction and inunction of the body, abstinence from certain kinds of food, e. g. cow's flesh and pork (though the flesh of oxen might be eaten), the flatulent bean (while the far more suspicious onion and garlic were much liked), and less frequently gymnastic exercises. In addition the Egyptians maintained a simple mode of life and practised a careful system of nurture and hardening from childhood. For the sake of cleanliness linen clothing was worn.

The simplicity of their system of rearing children was so great, that the expense of raising a child to manhood amounted to only about $4,00, an inexpensiveness due chiefly to the cheapness of all the necessaries of life.

Moreover the Egyptians took a purgative and an emetic regularly three times a month (on the principle that all diseases arise from the food, and are to be prevented in this way), and for these, as well as for the daily evacuations, and even for coitus, definite times were prescribed. It is dif ficult to understand how such prescriptions (especially the last mentioned) could have been carried out in practice, for the ancient Egyptians were very obscene, and, like the Scythians, Persians and-modern studentswere very fond of drinking to excess. Beer was the favorite beverage, while with the Persians it was wine. The prescriptions of the Egyptian physicians for the expulsion of vermin from houses and clothing, several of which have been preserved to us, may also be classed under the head of sanitary regulations. In order to avoid defilement before the gods by such vermin, the priests likewise wore linen clothing, and shaved off every day the hair upon their whole body. In epidemics fumigations were practised to purify the air.

In surgery, and especially in operative surgery, the physicians of the warlike Pharaohs' accomplished considerable, and obtained results fully capable of refuting the denials of this fact dictated by the self-sufficient national vanity of the old Greek writers. They bandaged suppurating ulcers (ubennu), practised venesection and cupped by means of horns sawed off near the point. They performed circumcision, in accordance with the precepts of their religion, using apparently knives of flint, and they also practiced castration by crushing or pounding the testicles, and more rarely with the knife. In fact this latter operation was performed with such success and dexterity, that, even as late as the Roman period, most of the eunuchs were supplied by Egypt. They practised lithotomy with a dexterity preserved as a secret, and, indeed, performed amputations, as pictures found at Thebes and Denderah testify. In ophthalmic surgery they were especially skilful, and it is highly probable that they even opera

1. Pharao is the Hebrew form of the Egyptian royal title "Per-aa", "Great House", about equivalent to our modern "Sublime Porte".