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The Egyptians are already famous as physicians in the Odyssey; cf. iv. 227-32 Helen has drugs from Egypt where πλεῖστα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα φάρμακα. Maspero (p. 89) doubts whether H. does not exaggerate; there were general practitioners as well as ‘specialists’; for an Egyptian oculist cf. iii. 1. 1.

For Darius' Egyptian physicians and their drastic methods of treatment cf. iii. 129, 132.

Egyptian medical science goes back to the Old Kingdom, e. g. in the B. M. Papyrus 10059 some prescriptions date from the time of Cheops; it was a curious mixture of sense and magic, e. g. it was believed that a decoction of a black calf's hair kept off grey hair. A specimen of it is the famous papyrus edited (1875) by Ebers. It greatly affected European medicine; Erman (E. 364) quotes a curious instance of an old Egyptian prescription for determining the sex of an unborn babe, which survived down to late in the eighteenth century.

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