rly equivalents of the physician's prescriptions. There
were different incantations for different diseases; and they were
as mysterious to the masses as are the mystic formulas of the modern
physician to the bewildered, yet trusting, patient. Indeed, their
mysterious character added to the power supposed to reside in the
incantations for driving the demons away. Medicinal remedies accompanied
the recital of the incantations, but despite the considerable progress
made by such nations of hoary antiquity as the Egyptians and Babylonians
in the diagnosis and treatment of common diseases, leading in time to
the development of an extensive pharmacology, so long as the cure
of disease rested with the priests, the recital of sacred formulas,
together with rites that may be conveniently grouped under the head of
sympathetic magic, was regarded as equally essential with the taking of
the prescribed remedies."(14)

(14) Morris Jastrow: The Liver in Antiquity and the
Beginnings of Anatomy. Transactions College of Physicians,
Philadelphia, 1907, 3. s., XXIX, 117-138.

Three points of interest may be referred to in connection with
Babylonian medicine. Our first recorded observations on anatomy are in
connection with the art of divination--the study of the future by the
interpretation of certain signs. The student recognized two divisions
of divination--the involuntary, dealing with the interpretation of signs
forced upon our attention, such as the phenomena of the heavens, dreams,
etc., and voluntary divination, the seeking of signs, more particularly
through the inspection of sacrificial animals. This method reached an
extraordinary development among the Babylonians, and the cult spread to
the Etruscans, Hebrews, and later to the Greeks and Romans.

Of all the organs inspected in a sacrificial animal the liver, from its
size, position and richness in blood, impressed the early observers as
the most important of the body. Probably on account of the richness in
blood it came to be regarded as the seat of life--indeed, the seat of
the soul. From this important position the liver was not dislodged for
many centuries, and in the Galenic physiology it shared with the heart
and the brain in the triple control of the natural, animal and vital
spirits. Many expressions in literature indicate how persistent was this
belief. Among the Babylonians, the word "liver" was used in hymns and
other compositions precisely as we use