“I have magic formulæ made by the Universal Lord to drive out the stroke of god and goddess, the Male Death and Female Death, et cetera,[1] that is in this my head, in this my neck, in this my shoulder, in this my flesh, in these my limbs, to punish the above-named enchanters (?) who introduce disturbance into this my flesh.”
Such formulæ, evidently for recitation during the treatment, continue for a page and a half. The book has thus no general title, but plunges at once into the mysteries of the profession.
“Beginning of the mystery of the physician who knows the motion of the heart. There are vessels in it to every limb. When any physician, doctor, or amulet-maker puts his fingers upon the top of the head, upon the occiput, upon the hands, upon the chest, upon the arms, upon the legs, he communicates (?) with the heart, for its vessels extend to every limb, wherefore it is called the starting-point of every limb.”
The following may be taken as an example of the recipes given in the manuscript:—
“A remedy for the belly that is painful: Cummin 1∕64 hin, goose-grease 1∕8 hin, milk 1∕16 hekt; cool, strain, and drink”. The hin is about 29 cubic inches, and the 1∕16 hekt 18 cubic inches; the prescription is thus roundly 1∕2 cubic inch of cummin, and 4 of goose fat, in half a pint of milk.
This papyrus contains 110 pages, each page consisting of about twenty-two lines of bold Hieratic writing. It may be described as an encyclopædia of medicine as known and practised by the Egyptians of the eighteenth dynasty, and it contains prescriptions of all kinds of diseases—some borrowed from Syrian medical lore, and some of such great antiquity that they are ascribed to the mythological ages, when the gods yet reigned personally on earth. Among others is given the recipe for an application whereby Osiris cured Ra of a headache. In this papyrus is an example of an old Egyptian diagnosis and therapeutics, as follows: “When thou findest any one with a hardness in his re-hit (pit of the stomach), and when, after eating, he feels a pressure on his intestines, his hit is swollen and he feels bad in walking like one who suffers from heat in his back, then observe him when he lies stretched out, and if thou findest his intestines hot and a hardness in his re-hit, say unto thyself, This is a disease of the liver. Then prepare for thyself according to the secrets of the science from the plant pa-che-test and dates, mix them, and give in water.”
It also contains numerous recipes for the treatment of diseases, for internal and external use. Most of the drugs mentioned are derived from indigenous plants, and such chemical bodies as alum, salt, nitre, and sulphate of copper are included in some of the prescriptions.
It seems probable that most of the medicines used in these early times were first tried as foods; and those which when taken in large quantities or in special conditions influenced the functions of the body, these and others found to be too strong for dietetic use were relegated to the books of medicine.