"(11)
(11) John D. Comrie: Medicine among the Assyrians and
Egyptians in 1500 B.C., Edinburgh Medical Journal, 1909, n.
s., II, 119.
For centuries Egyptian physicians had a great reputation, and in the
Odyssey (Bk. IV), Polydamna, the wife of Thonis, gives medicinal plants
to Helen in Egypt--"a country producing an infinite number of drugs
. . . where each physician possesses knowledge above all other men."
Jeremiah (xlvi, 11) refers to the virgin daughter of Egypt, who should
in vain use many medicines. Herodotus tells that Darius had at his court
certain Egyptians, whom he reckoned the best skilled physicians in all
the world, and he makes the interesting statement that: "Medicine is
practiced among them on a plan of separation; each physician treats
a single disorder, and no more: thus the country swarms with medical
practitioners, some under taking to cure diseases of the eye, others of
the head, others again of the teeth, others of the intestines, and some
those which are not local."(12)
(12) The History of Herodotus, Blakesley's ed., Bk. II, 84.
A remarkable statement is made by Pliny, in the discussion upon the
use of radishes, which are said to cure a "Phthisicke," or ulcer of the
lungs--"proofe whereof was found and seen in AEgypt by occasion that the
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