dinary ingredients. "The Royal
Pharmacopoeia" of Moses Charras (London ed., 1678), the most scientific
work of the day, is full of organotherapy and directions for the
preparation of medicines from the most loathsome excretions. A curious
thing is that with the discoveries of the mummies a belief arose as to
the great efficacy of powdered mummy in various maladies. As Sir Thomas
Browne remarks in his "Urn Burial": "Mummy has become merchandize.
Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams."

One formula in everyday use has come to us in a curious way from the
Egyptians. In the Osiris myth, the youthful Horus loses an eye in his
battle with Set. This eye, the symbol of sacrifice, became, next to the
sacred beetle, the most common talisman of the country, and all museums
are rich in models of the Horus eye in glass or stone.

"When alchemy or chemistry, which had its cradle in Egypt, and derived
its name from Khami, an old title for this country, passed to the hands
of the Greeks, and later of the Arabs, this sign passed with it. It
was also adopted to some extent by the Gnostics of the early Christian
church in Egypt. In a cursive form it is found in mediaeval translations
of the works of Ptolemy the astrologer, as the sign of the planet
Jupiter. As such it was placed upon horoscopes and upon formula
containing drugs made for administration to the body, so that the
harmful properties of these drugs might be removed under the influence
of the lucky planet. At present, in a slightly modified form, it still
figures at the top of prescriptions written daily in Great Britain
(Rx)."(11)

(11) John D. Comrie: Medicine among the Assyrians and
Egyptians in 1500 B.C., Edinburgh Medical Journal, 1909, n.
s., II, 119.

For centuries Egyptian physicians had a great reputation, and in the
Odyssey (Bk. IV), Polydamna, the wife of Thonis, gives medicinal plants
to Helen in Egypt--"a country producing an infinite number of drugs
. . . where each physician possesses knowledge above all other men."
Jeremiah (xlvi, 11) refers to the virgin daughter of Egypt, who should
in vain use many medicines. Herodotus tells that Darius had at his court
certain Egyptians, whom he reckoned the best skilled physicians in all
the world, and he makes the interesting statement that: "Medicine is
practiced among them on a plan of separation; each physician treats
a single disorder, and no more: thus the country swarms with medical