ut the religious or funeral
ceremonies, and after having perfumed the living, they embalmed the
dead. Besides the shops in which the excavators have come suddenly upon
a stock of fatty and pasty substances, which, perhaps, were soaps, we
might mention one, on the pillar of which three paintings, now effaced,
represented a sacrificial attendant leading a bull to the altar, four
men bearing an enormous chest around which were suspended several vases;
then a body washed and anointed for embalming. Do you understand this
mournful-looking sign? The unguent dealer, as he was called, thus _made
up_ the body and publicly placarded it.

From the perfumery man to the chemist is but a step. The shop of the
latter tradesman was found--so it is believed, at all events in clearing
out a triple furnace with walled boilers. Two pharmacies or drug-stores,
one in the Street of Herculaneum, the other fronting the Chalcidicum,
have been more exactly designated not only by a sign on which there was
seen a serpent (one of the symbols of AEsculapius) eating a pineapple,
but by tablets, pills, jars, and vials containing dried-up liquids, and
a bronze medicine chest divided into compartments which must have
contained drugs. A groove for the spatula had been ingeniously
constructed in this curious little piece of furniture.

Not far from the apothecary lived the doctor, who was an apothecary
himself and a surgeon besides, and it was in his place that were
discovered the celebrated instruments of surgery which are at the
museum, and which have raised such stormy debates between Dr. Purgon and
Dr. Pancratius. The first, being a doctor, deemed himself competent to
give an account of these instruments, whereat the second, being an
antiquary, became greatly irritated, seeing that the faculty, in his
opinion, has nothing to do with archaeology. However that may be, the
articles are at the museum, and everybody can look at them. There is a
forceps, to pull teeth with, as some affirm; to catch and compress
arteries, as others declare; there is a specillum of bronze, a probe
rounded in the form of an S; there are lancets, pincers, spatulas,
hooks, a trident, needles of all kinds, incision knives, cauteries,
cupping-glasses--I don't know what not--fully three hundred different
articles, at all events. This rich collection proves that the ancients
were quite skilful in surgery and had invented many instruments thought
to be modern. This is all that it is