460 THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS. CHAP, XVI. 



as well as of the class of priests. Joseph is said to 

 have " commanded the physicians to embalm his 

 father * ; " and Pliny states that during this process 

 certain examinations took place, which enabled 

 them to study the disease of which the deceased 

 had died. They appear to have been made in com- 

 pliance with an order from the governmentt, as he 

 says, the kings of Egypt had the bodies opened 

 after death to ascertain the nature of their diseases, 

 by which means alone the remedy for phthisical 

 complaints was discovered. Indeed it is reason- 

 able to suppose that a people so far advanced as 

 were the Egyptians in knowledge of all kinds, and 

 whose medical art was so systematically arranged 

 that they had regulated it by some of the very 

 same laws followed by the most enlightened and 

 skilful nations of the present day, would not have 

 omitted so useful an inquiry, or have failed to 

 avail themselves of the means which the process 

 adopted for embalming the body placed at their 

 disposal. And nothing can more clearly prove 

 their advancement in the study of human diseases 

 than the fact of their assigning to each his own 

 peculiar branch, under the different heads of ocu- 

 lists, dentists, those who cured diseases in the 

 head, those who confined themselves to intestinal 

 complaints, and those who attended to secret and 

 internal maladies. t 



Their knowledge of drugs, and of their effects, 

 is sufficiently shown by the preservation of the 



* Gen. 1. 2. f Plin. xix. 5. 



X Herodot. ii. 84. Vide supra, Vol. III. \>. 389, 390. 



