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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    For cataract a combination of incantation and prescription is recommended : “ Come, ver¬ digris ointment! Come, verdigris ointment!” so runs the charm. “ Come, thou verdant one ! Come, efflux from the eyes of Horus ! Come, thou effusion from the eyes of the god Turn ! Come, eye stuffs, ye who proceed from Osiris ! Come to him (the patient) and take from him the water, the pus, the blood, the pain in the eye, the chemosis, the blindness, the flow of matter which are worked there by the god of the in¬ flammations, of each kind of death, of each kind of pain, and of all evil things which are found in these eyes—so many of them there are, too.” Directions are given that “ it is to be recited over the verdigris ointment, dissolved in beetle honey, with which we should mix cyperus, which should then be laid upon the eyes in the prescribed fashion.” The Papyrus Ebers gives directions that the following words be used in preparing medicines for all parts of the body of the patient : “ May Isis cure me, as she cured Horus of all the suf¬ fering which his brother Set had inflicted upon him when he killed his father Osiris. O Isis, thou great enchantress, heal me, deliver me from all evil, bad, typhonic things, from demoniacal and deadly diseases, and pollutions of every sort which rush upon me, as thou didst deliver and release thy son Horus ; for I have been forced to go into the fire and pass through the waters.