Member Pi9iT'}    Pharmacy  and  Medicine  in  Egypt.  505 
was  necessary  in  their  embalming  process,  and  that  office  was  per- 
formed by  individuals  called  swathers,  whose  position  in  the  com- 
munity was  comparable  to  that  of  the  executioners. 
Practice  of  Medicine  and  Pharmacy. — Herodotus,  writing  in 
the  fifth  century,  B.C.,  says  of  -the  early  Egyptians  that  "  no  doc- 
tor was  permitted  to  practise  any  but  his  own  branch,"  which 
would  indicate  that  there  were  specialists  even  at  that  remote  period. 
Other  Egyptian  historians  record  the  fact  that  the  doctors  were  all 
priests  and  they  were  paid  out  of  the  royal  treasury,  but  were  per- 
mitted to  take  fees  also,  and  that  there  were  penalties  provided  for 
attempting  to  diminish  or  vary  in  any  way  the  ingredients  of  a 
prescription — which  show  that  substitution  was  even  then  a  recog- 
nized evil. 
In  order  that  a  physician  could  practise  he  had  to  take  an  oath 
before  the  God  of  Medicine,  Horus,  the  son  of  Isis,  called  Apollo 
by  the  Greeks,  that  he  would  live  up  to  the  principles  of  his  own 
profession ;  that  is,  he  would  not  prescribe  medicine  except  when 
it  was  needed,  and  by  all  his  means  and  professional  power  heal  all 
who  were  in  need  of  his  services. 
Exudations  of  Mummies. — Thus  the  bituminous  and  fatty  mat- 
ters found  about  the  mummies  and  their  wrappings  were  employed 
as  a  sovereign  remedy,  particularly  for  wounds  and  contusions.  A 
brisk  trade  began  in  these  "  exudations  "  of  mummies.  This  led 
further  to  the  medical  use  of  fragments  of  the  mummies  them- 
selves, and,  finally,  the  starting  point  was  lost  sight  of,  so  that  the 
dried  or  prepared  flesh  became  one  of  the  official  forms  of  mummy 
in  the  Pharmacopoeia.  It  was  not  until  the  eighteenth  century  that 
the  use  of  mummy  in  all  its  forms  waned,  and  even  in  some  of  the 
least  progressive  quarters  of  central  Europe  it  survived  even  to  the 
middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  idea  of  this  is  based  upon  the 
preservative  and  antiseptic  properties  absorbed  by  the  fat  and  satur- 
ated in  the  mummy ;  the  people  believed  this  must  have  had  wonder- 
ful healing  properties.  This  idea  originated,  in  Egypt  and  was 
practised  for  some  time.  A  workingman  even  to-day  believes  that 
if  he  cuts  himself  seriously  and  goes  directly  to  an  ancient  tomb  and 
sprinkles  some  dust  on  the  wound  or  wraps  it  with  a  linen  from  a 
mummy  the  wound  will  rapidly  heal.  Of  course,  we  know  that  it 
is  contaminated  with  tetanus  spores  or  bacilli,  and  is  a  very  dangerous 
practice,  and  is  the  result  of  ignorance  and  lack  of  sanitary  and 
scientific  knowledge. 
