pain which comes over me; as thou hast freed, as thou hast
released thy son Horus, whilst I enter into the fire and come
forth from the water," etc. Again, when the invalid took the
medicine, an incantation had to be said which began thus: "Come
remedy, come drive it out of my heart, out of these limbs strong
in magic power with the remedy." He adds: "There may have been a
few rationalists amongst the Egyptian doctors, for the number of
magic formulae varies much in the different books. The book that
we have specially taken for a foundation for this account of
Egyptian medicine-- the great papyrus of the eighteenth dynasty
edited by Ebers[5]--contains, for instance, far fewer exorcisms
than some later writings with similar contents, probably because
the doctor who compiled this book of recipes from older sources
had very little liking for magic."

It must be understood, however--indeed, what has just been said
implies as much--that the physician by no means relied upon
incantations alone; on the contrary, he equipped himself with an
astonishing variety of medicaments. He had a particular fondness
for what the modern physician speaks of as a "shot-gun"
prescription--one containing a great variety of ingredients. Not
only did herbs of many kinds enter into this, but such substances
as lizard's blood, the teeth of swine, putrid meat, the moisture
from pigs' ears, boiled horn, and numerous other even more
repellent ingredients. Whoever is familiar with the formulae
employed by European physicians even so recently as the
eighteenth century will note a striking similarity here. Erman
points out that the modern Egyptian even of this day holds
closely to many of the practices of his remote ancestor. In
particular, the efficacy of the beetle as a medicinal agent has