ted for cataract. Imperfectly united fractures and artificial teeth have been found in mummies the latter an evidence that dentistry and dentists are, at all events, as old as the coquetry for which Egyptian women were notorious. From the preceding remarks we might infer that the Egyptians were experienced in the construction and invention of instruments, but, in addition to this, a great number of surgical instruments have been actually discovered.

The pathological knowledge of the ancient Egyptians comprised a knowledge of fever and of diseases of the eyes, in the treatment of which Egyptian physicians enjoyed special reputation throughout all antiquity. They must therefore be regarded as the earliest oculists. They were even summoned to foreign courts, and furnish us the earliest examples of practitioners who traveled among foreign people. Gray cataract was called an "ascent of the water," out of which the Greeks made a "descent."

The Egyptians were also acquainted with pterygium and the arcus senilis, with inflammation in the vascular parts of the eye, ophthalmic catarrh, lippitudo, smaragdus, or green disease (glaucoma ?), blood in the eye, fatty degeneration, granulations and whitening of the latter; with diseases of the heart, of the ears, of the skin (including leprosy, small-pox, acne of the face, eruptions upon the head, erysipelas, itching of the leg, sweating of the feet, etc.); with diseases of the hair, verminous diseases, hæmaturia, dysuria, too frequent urination, the urinary troubles of children; with diseases of the sexual organs, of the stomach, tooth-ache, head-ache, etc.

Under the titles Sti, Hmaou, disease of the Ra, Chatj, Bosou, Zanarojt, Uchedu (pains) etc., are preserved certain forms of disease, whose analogues of the present day cannot be precisely determined. example of Egyptian symptomatology we quote the description of the disease last mentioned (gastric cancer?):

"His belly is heavy, the mouth of his stomach is diseased, his heart burns, his clothes hang down loose, even abundant clothing cannot warm him. In the night thirst torments him, his taste is perverted like that of a man who has eaten the figs of the sycomore: his flesh is wasted away as that of a man who is ill. If he goes to stool his bowels refuse to act. In his belly there is inflammation, the savor of his heart is ill when he rises he is like a man who is restrained." (Haeser.)

The following passage may serve as an example of old Egyptian diagnosis and therapeutics :

"When thou findest anyone with a hardness in his re-het (pit of the stomach), and when, after eating, he feels a pressure in his intestines, his stomach (het) is swollen, and he feels bad in walking, like one who suffers from heat in his back; then observe him

1. The ancient Greek terms for our modern cataract" were, &ñózva or hypochyma, and ózóquats, hypochysis, both of which, like the equivalent Latin "suffusio", imply a "pouring down". The use of the Latin "cataracta" or "cataractes" to designate a disease of the eyes, is of comparatively recent origin. The earliest Latin writers in whom I have met it, are Gilbertus Anglicus, and the "Four Masters" of Salerno, both of whom flourished probably in the last quarter of the 13th century. Ambroise Paré says the term cataract was employed by the Arabians. According to Pliny, the Alexandrian herb Anagallis arvensis was employed as a mydriatic. (H.)

when he lies stretched out, and if thou findest his intestines hot, and a hardness in his re-het, say to thyself this is a disease of the liver. Then prepare for thyself a remedy, according to the secrets of the (botanical) science, from the plant pa-che-test and dates, mix them (misce), and give (da!) in water, etc." (Ebers.)

We have little information concerning the midwifery of the Egyptians, except that they had midwives (meschennu), and that the Egyptian women, who were delicate and luxurious, bore children with greater difficulty than the Hebrew. In difficult cases physicians were also called in, and there were special lying-in apartments. From their gynæcology we know, among other things, certain prescriptions for the promotion of conception, and certain rules for the recognition of fruitfulness, and of existing pregnancy in women. If e. g. a woman takes a drink prepared from the herb boudodou-ka and the milk of another woman, who has borne a boy, and-vomits-she is pregnant: if, however, she simply eructates, she is not. (Idiosyncrasy of the pregnant?)

In physiology they held that until the age of fifty years the heart gains annually about two drachms in weight, but that afterwards it loses about the same amount each year, so that finally, in old people, death is occasioned by this continual loss. They also assumed that four demons ruled over the body. Hunger and thirst were not regarded as bodily wants, but as quasi-poisonous substances, which forced themselves into the body and required to be neutralized by eating and drinking, in order that they might not destroy it. A similar superstition also prevailed regarding the dead, and thus these too required food. (Buchta.)

The Egyptians, who did not shrink from human dissection as much as the Greeks, were, indeed, acquainted with anatomy, but not to the degree which we might expect from their other medical knowledge. Yet Athotis, the son of king Menes (lived according to Boekh B. C. 5702, according to Lauth B. C. 4157), who is himself said to have been a physician, had written on anatomy. Both of these were kings, and thus furnish evidence of the high estimation of medicine and of physicians in Egypt. The Egyptians assumed theoretically the existence of two kinds of vessels and nerves (or tendons, metu), of which there were in the body from 24 to 32. Such a "metu" e. g. extends from the little finger to the heart; hence the custom of dipping this finger into their libations. They were acquainted with the heart, the lymphatic glands and the crystalline lens of the eye. When we consider the method in which the operation of embalming was performed, it is manifest that the custom could result in no anatomical knowledge, even if the persons who made embalming their business had been of a different class from that to which, as a matter of fact, they really belonged. The bodies of handsome women (when they could not be embalmed by their own sex, as was the usual custom), were never entrusted to the embalmers until three or four days after death. The mode of procedure in embalming was as follows: in the first place it was determined by the friends of the deceased in which of the three prevalent styles the ope