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20
ANCIENT TIMES.
Studies were not limited to the sons of the favoured classes
but were accessible to all. Industry and talent were held
to be the only conditions imposed upon those who sought
admission to a course of study. Instruction was founded
upon "the sacred books" in which all the wisdom of the
Egyptians was contained. THOTH,* the god of Wisdom,
was looked upon as their author "who also conferred
enlightenment upon doctors." The sacred or hermetic
books formed a kind of encyclopedia and consisted of
forty-two parts. They dealt with the mandates of religion,
church ceremonies, the administration of justice, philosophy,
the art of writing, geography, cosmogony, astronomy, the
knowledge of weights and measures, medicine etc. With
medicine the last six books were concerned, being called the
" Ambres" and the first of these contained a description of
the different parts of the body ; the second, instruction
concerning diseases ; the third, discussions about surgical
instruments and probably about operations also ; the fourth,
instruction in materia medica; the fifth, a description of
diseases of the eye, which, it is well known, are widely
spread in Egypt, and the sixth, instruction on diseases of
women.f The Author begins with anatomy as the groundwork
of medicine, passes on to pathology and finally mentions
the specialities which presuppose a knowledge of the
other parts of medicine: he arranges his matter in such a
way as to correspond closely with the rational system of our
modern scientific method. Unfortunately the text-book of
general medicine has been lost. Only some fragments are
said to have been preserved which are probably to be found
in the Book of the Dead, published by LEPSIUS, and in the
EBERS papyrus. G. EBERS is of opinion that the papyrus
named after him contains the fourth of the medical hermetic
books—the treatise on materia medica.J Although
* THOTH is the Hermes of the Greeks. Gi UGNI AUT ; de "Kp.uoO seu Mercurii
mythologia, Paris 1835.
t Cf. CLEMENS ALEXANURINUS : Stromata, lib. vi, cap. 4; Edit. Dindorf.
% G. EBERS: Papyios Ebers, Leipzig 1875, T. i, S, 9.