Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 1).djvu/57

Reduced Facsimile of a page of the Papyrus Ebers.

The Papyrus Ebers has been reproduced by photography in facsimile, and published in two magnificent volumes by Mr. Wilhelm Engelmann, of Leipzig. Mr. Engelmann has kindly permitted me to copy one of the pages from his work for this book. The above is a reduced reproduction of page 47 of the Papyrus. The photograph was taken at the British Museum.

The first line of this page is the end of the instructions for applying a mixture of powders rubbed down with date wine to wounds and skin diseases to heal them. That compound was made by the god Seb, the god of the earth, for the god Ra. Then follows a complicated prescription devised by the goddess Nut, the goddess of heaven, also for the god Ra, and like the last to apply to wounds. It prescribes brickdust, pebble, soda, and sea-salt, to be boiled in oils with some groats and other vegetable matter. Isis next supplies a formula to relieve Ra of pains in the head. It contains opium, coriander, absinth, juniper berries, and honey. This was to be applied to the head. Three other formulas for pains in the head, the last for a pain on one side of the head (migraine), are given, and then there is a break in the manuscript, and afterwards some interesting instructions are given for the medicinal employment of the ricinus (degm) tree. The stems infused in water will make a lotion which will cure headache; the berries chewed with beer will relieve constipation; the berries crushed in oil will make a woman's hair grow; and pressed into a salve will cure abscesses if applied every morning for ten days. The paragraph ends (but on the next page), as many of them do, with the curious idiom, "As it shall be a thousand times." The translation is given in full (in German) in Dr. Joachim's Papyros Ebers. Das ȧlteste Buch über Heilkunde (Berlin, Georg. Reimer. 1890).