Ancient Egyptian medicine : a bibliographical demonstration in the library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 12th January, 1893 / by James Finlayson.

James Finlayson

Date:: 1893

Credit: Ancient Egyptian medicine : a bibliographical demonstration in the library of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow, 12th January, 1893 / by James Finlayson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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$hutyrum et lac mulieris pueruni lacfcantis potui exhibeto— omitting, as Littrd does, any mention of aiKvri (cucumber), which is so important in the argument. Mr. Renouf says:— The word ^ovTvpov is, I believe, generally understood in this place to signify butter. But this is clearly a mistake. The prescription leaves a choice between aiK\)r]v ?') ^nvrvpov, the former of these objects being a plant of the cucumber kind, and Hesychius explains /Bovrvpog as ^oravtig tiSog—a kind of plant. We may infer, from a passage of Athenjeus, that it was an odoriferous plant. . . . It is most probably identical with the Egyptian buteru (or, as it is called, 'Bull's buteru'), for so I venture to transcribe the name of the plant called batutu by M. Chabas, and boudodou by Dr. Brugsch. Mr. Renouf also calls attention to another test of pregnancy or sterility found in this Papyrus, which has a pretty close resemblance to formulae continued into comparatively modern prescriptions. This is also translated by M. Chabas. The following is rendered from Brugsch's slight modification of this translation :—- (Yerso, page 2, line 2.) Another test of who will bear a child and who will not. Take wheat and barley which a woman steeps in her own urine for the period of a day; put in the same way the wheat termed ANR and that named SA.T, in two sacks; if they sprout and shoot out within, she will bear. If it is the wheat which sprouts it will be a male child, if it is the barley it will be a female; if they do not sprout at all she will not bear. In a book, vulgarly ascribed to Aristotle, but bearing on the title page Culpepper's compleat and experienc'd midwife. The fifth edition, (London n.d.) we read on page 121 :—■ Culpepper and others also, give a great deal of credit to the following experiment. Take a handful of barley and steep half of it in the urine of the man and the other half in the urine of the woman for the space of four-and-twenty hours, and then take it out and set it : the man's by itself, and the woman's by itself :$