1886.] on Anatomical and Medical Knowledge of Ancient Egypt. 383 



side, carrying the vital spirit into the one right ear, the breath of 

 death into the left ear, that is, it enters on the right-hand side, the 

 breath of death enters on the left-hand side." 



]N'ebse;i(t next describes the vessels of the upper and lower limbs, 

 and the arteries of the viscera. 



The anatomical description is followed by a series of aphorisms 

 regarding the pathology of vascular disease, arranged in separate 

 sentences ; protasis and apodosis beginning respectively with Ar and 

 pu, reminding us of the -qv fxe of HipiDOcrates ; indeed, there is such a 

 Hippocratic aspect about these that one cannot resist the conviction 

 that we have reached here the source of much of the Hippocratic 

 learning. It is possible that the earlier phrase may be interrogative, 

 and the latter an answer ; but it is more likely that the protasis is 

 conditional than interrogative. They relate to such conditions as 

 syncope, cardiac disturbance from abdominal distension, enlargement 

 of the heart, pericardiac adhesion and effusion, dilatation, and enlarge- 

 ment of the heart, &c. There are twenty-two such queries, and some 

 of them point to careful pathological observation ; thus there is an 

 allusion to valvular stenosis in one, which says, " If the orifice of the 

 heart be turned back, then constricted is the mouth of the heart." 



Of the Berlin papyrus a fac-simile has been published, and it has 

 been discussed by three eminent scholars, Brugsch, Eenouf, and 

 Chabas. It is also written in hieratic characters, which are clear and 

 legible, and was executed in the reign of Kameses II., the Pharaoh of 

 the oppression, who reigned about 1300 B.C. The document consists 

 of twenty-one leaves, two of which are written on both sides. The 

 text is for the most part easily read ; the chief difficulty presented by 

 it, as by the other, is that of understanding the names of diseases and 

 of remedies, to which no cognate words in Coptic, nor derivative 

 words in other languages, have come down to us. 



The other fragments are of literary rather than of medical 

 interest. They abound in mystical formulae, and seem to have been 

 magical and occult rather than scientific. Of the Coptic MS. a 

 transcript was published by Zoega, and it is evidently a fragment of 

 a larger work; it deals chiefly with eruptive fevers and similar 

 diseases. 



[A. M.] 



Vol. XI. (No. 80.) 2 c 



