— 14 — 
In certain parts of this investigation I have received invaluable 
he\]) from Dr. W. A. Schmidt, Professor of Chemistry in the School 
of Medicine and Mr. A. Lucas, the Director of the Chemical 
Laboratory of the Survey Department. Dr. Douglas E. Derry, 
my Colleague in the Anatomical Department at the Cairo School 
of Medicine, has constantly assisted me in the anatomical work. 
The Treatment of the Brain and the Cranial Cavity. 
Herodotus has given us an account of the diflEerent modes of 
embalming practised in Egypt, presumably in the fifth century 
before the Christian era. The Greek original and Laurent's 
translation into English have been given in full by Pettigrew, ' 
from whose work I have derived all the references to the Greek 
classics in the following account. Herodotus states that "in the 
first place with a crooked piece of iron they pull out the brain by 
the nostrils ; a part of it they extract in this manner, the rest by 
means of pouring in certain drugs" (op. cit., p. 46). Pettigrew 
says that Greenhill, in his " Art of embalming," p. 249, speaks 
of the extraction of the brain through the nostrils as an amusing 
story of a thing "impracticable and amusing" (op. cit., p. 52, 5th 
footnote). Pettigrew himself was " at first tempted to conceive 
that it was not possible to empty the skull of its contents by these 
means," but the examination of several specimens convinced him 
that it had certainly been accomplished. " It would appear that 
the crotchets (two of which, made of bronze, Pettigrew represents 
in his Plate lY) had been introduced up the nostrils, made to 
perforate the ethmoid bone at the upper part of the nostrils and 
then by a circular rotatory movement to break down the cribriform 
plate of that bone, x x x [through the opening thus made] the 
' Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, A History of Egyptian Mummies, London, 1834, pp. 44, 
45 and 4G. 
