lar transactions during the reigns of the Pharaonic kings,
however great may have been the change introduced by the Ptolemies and
Romans into the laws and local government of Egypt.

The Egyptians paid great attention to health, and "so wisely," says
Herodotus, "was medicine managed by them, that no doctor was permitted
to practice any but his own peculiar branch. Some were oculists, who
only studied diseases of the eye; others attended solely to
complaints of the head; others to those of the teeth; some again
confined themselves to complaints of the intestines; and others to
secret and internal maladies; accoucheurs being usually, if not
always, women." And it is a singular fact, that their dentists adopted
a method, not very long practiced in Europe, of stopping teeth with
gold, proofs of which have been obtained from some mummies of Thebes.

They received certain salaries from the public treasury; and after
they had studied those precepts which had been laid down from the
experience of their predecessors, they were permitted to practice;
and, in order to prevent dangerous experiments being made upon
patients, they might be punished if their treatment was contrary to
the established system; and the death of a person entrusted to their
care, under such circumstances, was adjudged to them as a capital
offence.

If, however, every remedy had been administered according to the
sanitary law, they were absolved from blame; and if the patient was
not better, the physician was allowed to alter the treatment after the
third day, or even before, if he took upon himself the responsibility.

Though paid by Government as a body, it was not illegal to receive
fees for their advice and attendance; and demands could be made in
every instance except on a foreign journey, and on military service;
when patients were visited free of expense.

The principal mode adopted by the Egyptians for preventing illness was
attention to regimen and diet; "being persuaded that the majority of
diseases proceed from indigestion and excess of eating;" and they had
frequent recourse to abstinence, emetics, slight doses of medicine,
and other simple means of relieving the system, which some persons
were in the habit of repeating every two or three days.

[Illustration: WREATH OF OAK. (_Life Saving._)]

"Those who lived in the corn country," as Herodotus terms it, were
particular for their attention to health. "During three successive
days, eve