A BRIEF HISTORY OF MEDICINE. 9 
or profession is in connection with the ancient Egyptians, who 
had a most wonderful skill in preserving the dead, and we 
might suppose that they also had some knowledge as to how 
to keep the living in health. The works of these men can 
be seen to this day in the mummies to be found in almost all 
museums. The first medicinal plant we read of is the 
Balm of Gilead. There is a plant found in many countries 
bearing this name, but it cannot be accurately determined that 
it is identical with the scriptural one. Hyssop is an example 
in point, for while the scriptural plant bearing this name had 
an aperient property, our modern one has not. In Solomon’s 
time, who was contemporary with Homer, the first profane 
writer and historian, the business of an apothecary is first 
mentioned. We suppose that this included the doctor as well 
as the medicine vendor. Then Jeremiah, the prophet, asks in 
plantive tones if there is no balm in Gilead and no physician 
there. Passing on to the time of our Saviour we find Him in 
His answer to the self-righteous Pharisees saying: ‘‘'They that 
are whole neednota physician, buttheythataresick”’; and when 
that notable miracle was wrought on the woman with the 
bloody issue the writer himself (a doctor) said that she had 
spent all her living with physicians who did not then practice 
on the no cure no pay principle, which would not be a 
paying one for most doctors now-a-days. In the apostle’s time 
we read of Celsus, a doctor and one of the earliest and 
bitterest opponents of Christianity, having just before 
reading his words discussed with some infidel student of 
medicine, and knowing that many of the profession are 
unbelievers and scoffers, we thought that Celsus was a worthy 
progenitor of such, and we almost concluded that the medical 
body was wholly tainted with this poison; but when we 
thought of Luke, the beloved physician and evangelist of our 
Lord, and the matchless purity seen in his justly termed 
Immortal Gospel, and Book of Acts, which will live when all the 
learned writings of scientific infidels have been forgotten for 
millions of years, we concluded that doctors as a class can show as 
many devout Christians as other professions, Before Christ, 
