PHARMAKOS AND MEDICINE 261 



classical Greece during the times of abnormal wrath on 

 the part of the gods or in times of scarcity, if the Phar- 

 makos represented, as he often must have done, the spirit 

 of winter. 



It would, of course, be interesting to get some early 

 references to the use of farmagion, but it is very difficult 

 to trace any Oriental expression before mediaeval times. 

 One has to remember that using the pen was, in its way, a 

 solemn rite. Up to the tenth century every sheet of 

 writing was headed among the Mahommedans, " In the 

 Name of Allah, the Compassionate and Most Merciful " ; 

 and is still in all literary work. An Orientalist friend of 

 mine to whom I have referred asks, " How, with such 

 a headline, would a pious scribe dare to refer to a blood- 

 drinking satanic farmagion ? Such a combination might 

 have made some dreadful formula capable of shooting 

 the writer into the infinities of the nth dimension of space." 

 Such an attitude of mind is especially characteristic of 

 the Oriental. Although magic was utterly condemned by 

 Mahomet, it was believed in none the less because he 

 condemned it as a practice, and it is still believed in. 

 My friend tells me that the word has been used for a long 

 time in the traditional comments on a portion of the ritual 

 of a secret society into which he was initiated in an obscure 

 town on the Tigris. The actual early papyrus was totally 

 indecipherable and belonged to no known language. 

 Indeed, those who held these documents, which had 

 probably been transcribed many times by men who did not 

 understand the script, were of the romantic opinion that 

 the original was to be referred to the era of Khamurabi, 

 although the comments were probably not older than 

 the eighth century a.d. Of course, such a statement as 

 this is not evidence without further support. And yet, if 



