On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art | Page 9

his physician
Barzoueh made various journeys into India, one of which was specially
for the purpose of obtaining copies of Indian literature, and another to
obtain medicaments and herbs.
How to account for the strange fact that all schools of medicine which
have risen, flourished, and disappeared, have left some trace in
historical records, with the exception of that of India, is most difficult,
unless under the hypothesis that the language in which the science and
philosophy of India was recorded has been almost a sealed book to the
world, and is even now quite unintelligible to the people of India itself,

generally speaking, and that thus the only way in which the results of
the long ages of philosophic study, which unquestionably have had a
place in India, have only been known by this dark reflection from the
writings of Greek and Arabic writers, which were scattered broadcast
over the ancient world. The Greeks, we know, borrowed their science
largely from the Egyptians, both in respect to theology and philosophy;
and we might, with much profit, pursue the examination of our subject
amongst the records of that highly civilized amongst the ancient
nations.
Many authors have attempted to show that there is a wonderful
resemblance between the Egyptians and the Hindoos, the sculptures on
the monuments of the former are most wonderfully like those of India,
and the features, dress, and arms are all as like as may be.
Both nations had the various arts of weaving, dyeing, embroidering,
working in metals, and the manufacture of glass, and practised them
with but little difference in their methods. The fine muslins of India
find their counterparts as "woven wind" in the transparent tissues
figured on the Egyptian temples. The style of building, the sciences of
astronomy, music, and medicine were assiduously cultivated by both
nations, and there was direct intercourse between them, perhaps even
before historical time begins.
Rameses the Great (III.), called also Sesostris, fitted out not only war
ships but merchant vessels for the purpose of trading with India, in B.C.
1235, and Wilkinson in his book on the Ancient Egyptians, tells us that
in 2000 B.C. there were no less than 400 ships trading to the Persian
Gulf. There is, after all, nothing surprising in this when we remember
the fact, which is, however, not generally known, I am afraid, that
under the reign of Pharoah Necho, a fleet of his ships safely
circumnavigated Africa, from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, this
being in advance of the celebrated voyage of Diaz and Vasco da Gama
by no less than 2100 years.
No less than seven centuries before Thales went to study in Egypt,
astronomical calculations were inscribed on the monuments at Thebes,
so that we can see how modern by comparison the Greek philosophy

appears.
In a note Wilkinson says that "The science of Medicine was one of the
earliest cultivated in Egypt. Athothes, the successor of Menes of the
first dynasty, is said to have written on the subject, and five papyri on
the subject have survived.
"They are of the period of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties.
"One known as the Papyrus Ebers, from its discoverer, is attributed to
the age of Kherpheres or Bikheres.
"The second, that of Berlin, found in the reign of Usaphais of the first
dynasty, was completed by Senet or Sethenes of the second line.
"The third, that of the British Museum, contains a receipt said to have
been mysteriously discovered in the reign of Cheops of the fourth
dynasty.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"The curatives employed were ointments, drinks, plasters, fumigations
and clysters, and the drugs employed were taken from vegetables,
minerals, and animals.
"Those for each draught were mixed together, pounded, boiled, and
strained through linen.
"The doctors belonged to the sacred class, and were only permitted to
practice their own particular branch.
"These were oculists, dentists, those who confined their practice to
diseases of the head, and those again who only attended to internal
diseases; they were paid from the public treasury, and were compelled,
before being permitted to practice, to study the precepts laid down by
their predecessors."
Homer, in the Odyssey, describes Egypt "as a country whose fertile soil
produces an infinity of drugs, some salutary and some pernicious,

where each physician possesses knowledge above all other men."
The mixing of various drugs and minerals must have produced effects
which could not be lost on such observant men as the doctors must,
from their training, have been, and it would be absurd to suppose that
some, at least, of the simpler chemical decompositions and
combinations were not known to them.
The manufacture of glass would seem to have been very ancient
amongst the Egyptians, and the insufficiency