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certainly have all become known to the nations of the West, 
through the medium of Egypt, which was early visited 
by Grecian Philosophers ; and to which, from remote 
antiquity, an active commerce was carried on along the 
Red Sea, by the Arabs of Yemen. They, as well as the 
Phoenicians, may have been enabled to visit India even 
in the infancy of navigation, either by coasting or by the 
aid of the monsoons. But this commerce, long as it 
had been established, and extensive as it no doubt was, 
cannot be compared, in the opinion of Heeren, with that 
which had, from probably earlier times, always taken place 
by land. 
As the Persian Court and kingdom were for nearly 
twelve centuries in the most flourishing condition, they 
necessarily became the resort of travellers and merchants 
from all parts of the world. Here, therefore, the products 
of the East must at an early time have been in great 
demand : and, here, as well as in Egypt, -they may have 
become known to the philosophers and physicians of Greece. 
That these resorted to, and were held in high estimation 
at, the Court of Persia, when this held sway over some of 
the north-western provinces of India, is easily proved. 
Even as early as 430 B.C., or during the plague of 
Athens, with which the inhabitants of Persia were also 
afflicted, Artaxerxes is said to have invited Hippocrates to 
his Court: and though neither the proposal, nor the answer 
of the latter refusing to leave his countrymen at such a 
juncture, is credited, there can be no doubt of the high 
estimation in which Greek .physicians were then held, as 
only thirty years later, Ctesias was Physician to the Persian 
sovereign, and remained in that capacity for seventeen 
years, during which he wrote a history of the Persian 
Empire, and an account of India, the latter of which has 
been shewn by Professor Wilson, in a paper read to the 
