his patients. Both these conditions were present in Egypt, where, in the reign of Amasis, 20,000 towns and villages filled the valley of the Nile, and where the physicians shared in the general income of the temples, to which the contributions of their patients were probably added. Some of the stories told by the late writers, though of rather doubtful authenticity, are worth repeating. Thus, the people of the Delta are said to have found the squill (Scilla maritima) so useful in dropsy that they erected a temple in its honour; and we are told that Euripides, the poet, was recommended by the priests to take a course of sea bathing, and was much benefited thereby. But the most remarkable thing about Egyptian medicine is its non-progressive character. More than a thousand years before Hippocrates we find a knowledge of anatomy and physiology quite equal to that of the Father of Medicine, together with a copious and varied materia medica, comprising mineral as well as vegetable remedies; yet when, in the sixth century B.C., Egyptian physicians come in contact with a Greek, they prove hopelessly his inferiors, and, as we shall see, owe their very lives to his skill. The Greek physicians of Alexandria seem to have learnt nothing from the Egyptians, and Galen mentions their medical writings with contempt. Let us try to find some causes for this remarkable failure. It used to be thought that Egypt, for some mysterious reason, stood still for forty centuries, and that it made little difference to an ancient Egyptian whether he was born 4000 or 400 years B.C., but we now know that the nation underwent many changes, social and intellectual, no less than political, during this vast period. Had that ancient practitioner, Sekhet'enanch, returned to life in the days of Moses, he would have found his language scarcely understood, his dress worn only by statues of the gods and Pharaohs, and the state of society entirely altered. What changes he would have noticed in his own art, we unfortunately do not know; though, in all probability, medicine had already assumed a more formal and priestly character. EGYPTIAN SCIENCE. 23. But, while this predominance of the priesthood was doubtless a chief cause of the failure of the early promise of Egyptian medicine, there were others almost as important. The Egyptians were essentially a matter-of-fact race; types. of those practical people of whom it has been well said that they practise the errors of their fathers. Learning, indeed, is often praised by ancient writers, but only as a means to some material benefit; nor is there a trace of that love of knowledge for its own sake, without which no great progress in science has ever been made. "My son, apply thyself to learning, that thou mayest be a scribe," writes an old Egyptian. "The people are heavily laden asses, but the scribe is the driver. The scribe is never hungry; he sits at Pharaoh's table, and his belly is filled by reason of his wisdom." The Greek was the very reverse of this, and ever ready to speculate upon or investigate any subject for the mere pleasure of doing so. Science to him was a majestic goddess, a clear-eyed Pallas Athené: to the Egyptian she was a domestic cow, good only for what could be got out of her. Again, the learned Egyptian was, before all things, a scribe or writer. He had invented no less than three forms of that art, an achievement of which he was justly proud, and one of the commonest figures in representations of Egyptian life is the scribe with his ink-pot taking notes. It is easy to see how this might lead to excessive reverence for what was written, insomuch that "book" and "science "came to be expressed in Egyptian by the same word. The Greek, on the contrary, was a man of speech and argument. Plato tells us that a physician did not prescribe for a free man till he had persuaded him, and though the custom of a patient arguing with his doctor has obvious disadvantages, it tends at least to keep the latter from sinking into a sleepy routine. NOTES. 1 Mariette (Les Mastaba de l'ancien Empire, D, 12) gives a facsimile of the tombstone, which he calls an exquisite inscription 66 engraved in the best style of that epoch". A partial translation may be found in Meyer, Geschichte des alten Egyptens, ii. 95. Berlin, 1885. The frontispiece is a portrait of Sekhet'enanch and his wife copied from the tombstone. He carries two sceptres, emblems of power and rule confined to the highest dignitaries, and wears the panther skin which in the Old Empire formed part of the gala dress of the grandees, but was afterwards confined to a special class of priests. She wears the huge wig and single close-fitting garment which formed the universal and invariable dress of all Egyptian women from the fourth to the eighteenth dynasty (4000-1600). She is pictured three times on the tombstone, but in each case her name has been carefully erased. 2 Compare the names of the two physicians here mentioned Sekhet'enanch (Sekhet, my Life); Nebsecht (Sekhet, my Mistress). 3 At a still later period we find a special God of Medicine, Imhotep, son of Ptah and Sekhet, in whose temple at Memphis "incubation (p. 40) was practised. * In the Berlin Museum, see official catalogue. 5 The exceptional interest of this letter may justify a complete translation. "To the wise soul (Ka) of the Lady Anchera. What evil have I done thee, that I find myself now in this miserable state in which I am? What have I done unto thee, that thou shouldst lay thy hand upon me, though no evil has been done unto thee? From the time I became thy husband until now, have I done anything against thee that I had to keep secret? Thou wast the wife of my youth, and I lived with thes. Then I filled all kinds of offices, and I lived with thee, and caused thy heart no sorrow. Behold, when I ruled over the captains of Pharaoh's footmen, and of his chariots, I caused them to come to thee, to throw themselves on their bellies before thee, and they brought many good things and laid them at thy feet. When thou wast sick, etc. Then when I had to go with Pharaoh and his company to the South land, my thoughts were with thee, and I passed the eight months without being able to eat or to drink. And when I returned to Memphis I besought Pharaoh, and came to thee, and made a great mourning for thee, I and my people before my house. I gave bandages and stuffs for thy burial, and had much linen woven, nor was I lacking in making good offerings for thee. Since then I have past three years mourning, without entering my house, or acting as I might have acted; and lo! I did all this because it was for thee!" A pathetic letter, though one suspects that the gallant officer got a scribe to compose it for him at so much a line. See Maspero, Études Egyptiennes, i. 145; Erman (op. infra cit.), i. 218. It is believed to date from the twentieth dynasty, i.e., about B.C. 1200. 6 Ebers, Report of the Oriental Congress, London, 1874; Zeitschrift für Egyptische Sprache, 1873. The entire papyrus has recently been translated into German by Dr. Joachim, Berlin, 1890. 7 Chabas, Mélanges Egyptologiques. Further information on the subject may be found in Erman, Ægypten und Ægyptisches Leben im Alterthum, to which I am much indebted; Maspero, Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria; Mahaffy, Prolegomena to Ancient History; Sayce, Herodotos, i.-iii.; Newbery House Magazine, July, 1890; Rawlinson, Herodotus, and Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, revised by Birch, 1878; Finlayson, Medicine in Ancient Egypt, Brit. Med. Journ., 1893. V. HINDU MEDICINE. THE earliest documents of that Indo-Germanic race to which we ourselves belong are the Vedas, or books of revealed "wisdom"-the two words having the same root. The oldest of these, the Rig-Veda (knowledge of praise), consisting of hymns composed B.C. 2000-1000, already mentions a special class of physicians; it also contains passages in praise of the healing power of herbs, and waters, and notices at least two diseases-phthisis and leprosy. But the fourth, or Atharva-Veda (knowledge of spells), compiled about 700 B.C., is, as might be expected, the most medical in character of the four great religious books. As we have already considered this aspect of the healing art, only one example need be given here; an invocation against Takman, the demon of fever, evidently adapted to high caste patients only: "May refusal meet Takman, who has glowing weapons. O Takman, go to the Mujavant or farther. Attack the Sudra (low caste) woman, the teeming one; shake her, O Takman." The most select remedies seem to have been preserved for princes; thus, when the son of Bimbisara—King of Magadha, about 600 B.C.—fainted, he was placed in six tubs full of fresh butter, and afterwards in a seventh filled with the most costly sandal-wood, after which it is interesting to know that the prince survived, and succeeded his father.1 Though the incantations of the Atharva-Veda were, doubtless, recited by Brahmans, it is important to notice that the physicians of the Vedic age did not belong to this priestly caste. They are classed in the ancient laws of Manu among those unclean persons who are excluded from the funeral feasts, and their origin is attributed in the Brahmanic writings to intermarriages between men and women of different caste. The majority, however, probably belonged to the great Hindu middle-class, the Vaisyas (agriculturists and traders), and in later times a physician might take as pupil a member of any caste except a Sudra.2 Besides the four great religious Vedas, the Hindus have certain supplementary "Upa "-Vedas later in date, and dealing with more worldly subjects-medicine, music, architecture, etc. The first of these is the Ayur-Veda (knowledge of life), a term not confined to any particular book, but including all works on medicine thought to have been in any way supernaturally "revealed ". It is especially applied to the works of Charaka, said to have been revealed by Indra himself through the medium of a Rishi, or sage, and to those of Susruta, dictated by the divine physician Dhanwantari, who became incarnate for that purpose. The story of the birth of this Hindu Esculapius is too curious to be omitted. A blight had fallen upon the universe, and the anxious gods came to their father, Vishnu, for advice. He declared that they must obtain the "Amrita," or drink of immortality, and that for this purpose the ocean of milk must be churned. Gods and demons, forgetting for a time their hostility, united in this stupendous work. The great serpent, Vasuki, twined himself round the mountain Mandara, and the gods and demons, grasping the monster by its head and tail, twirled the mountain round in the milk ocean upon the back of Vishnu himself, who lay in the shape of a huge tortoise at the bottom. Long they laboured, and the demons, who were nearest the serpent's head, became permanently blackened by the poisonous fumes from his hood; but at last the work was done, and there rose from |