arments." The use of magical words was often accompanied by remedies,
which were for the most part both grotesque and disgusting in their
composition: they comprised bitter or stinking wood-shavings, raw meat,
snake's flesh, wine and oil, the whole reduced to a pulp, or made into
a sort of pill and swallowed on the chance of its bringing relief. The
Egyptian physicians employed similar compounds, to which they
attributed wonderful effects, but they made use of them in exceptional
circumstances only. The medical authorities in Chaldaea recommended them
before all others, and their very strangeness reassured the patient as
to their efficacy: they filled the possessing spirits with disgust, and
became a means of relief owing to the invincible horror with which
they inspired the persecuting demons. The Chaldaeans were not, however,
ignorant of the natural virtues of herbs, and at times made use of them;
but they were not held in very high esteem, and the physicians preferred
the prescriptions which pandered to the popular craving for the
supernatural. Amulets further confirmed the effect produced by the
recipes, and prevented the enemy, once cast out, from re-entering the
body; these amulets were made of knots of cord, pierced shells, bronze
or terra-cotta statuettes, and plaques fastened to the arms or worn
round the neck. On each of the latter kind were roughly drawn the most
terrible images that they could conceive, a shortened incantation
was scrawled on its surface, or it was covered with extraordinary
characters, which when the spirits perceived they at once took flight,
and the possessor of the talisman escaped the threatened illness.

However laughable, and at the same time deplorable, this hopeless medley
of exact knowledge and gross superstition may appear to us at the
present day, it was the means of bringing a prosperity to the cities of
Chaldaea which no amount of actual science would ever have produced. The
neighbouring barbaric peoples were imbued with the same ideas as the
Chaldaens regarding the constitution of the world and the nature of the
laws which governed it. They lived likewise in perpetual fear of those
invisible beings whose changeable and arbitrary will actuated all
visible phenomena; they attributed all the reverses and misfortunes
which overtook them to the direct action of these malevolent beings;
they believed firmly in the influence of stars on the course of events;
they were constantly on th