The romance of medicine / by Ronald Campbell Macfie.

  • Ronald Campbell Macfie
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The romance of medicine / by Ronald Campbell Macfie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    about iioo b.c. Some of the cures mentioned in these documents are said to have originated in the time of Cheops, i.e., 3700 years or so B.c., and in the Berlin Papyrus, King Athosis, who lived six thousand years ago, is said to have written a book of medicine. All these treatises show that medicine had been theretofore, and was then, essentially a magic art. The world was still a mystery ruled by the caprices of mysterious spirits, and it was inevitable that the body should be conceived as under similar lawless law. Pharmacy, accord¬ ingly, was chiefly thaumaturgy, prescriptions mainly incantations, and the physician more or less a priest. The high priest of Sais, indeed, bore the title Chief of the Doctors, and practi¬ tioners were compelled to conduct their prac¬ tices according to the rules in the sacred book of Thoth. The attitude of the Egyptians towards disease and death is well described by M. Maspero. “ The Egyptians,” he says (we quote Attitude of the a. p Morton’s translation), “ are not Egyptians to- resigne(j to think that illness and wards disease ° . and death. death are natural and inevitable ; they think that life once com¬ menced should be indefinitely prolonged. If no accident intervened, what reason could there be for its ceasing ? In Egypt, therefore, a man does not die, but someone or something assassinates him. The murderer often belongs
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