118 PRIMITIVE PSYCHO-THERAPY
superstition in their prescriptions. While fully appreciating the benefit of a stimulus to the patient's imagination, they did not, however, neglect the employment of medicinal remedies.
In a papyrus medical treatise of the sixteenth century b.c., discovered at Thebes in the winter of 1872-73, by the German Egyptologist George Ebers, are to be found numerous incantations and conjurations. Nevertheless the same treatise affords evidence of a careful preparation of complex recipes.[1] Some of the prescriptions in this document are considered by Miss Amelia B. Edwards to be of mythological origin, while others appear to have been derived from the medical lore of Syria.[2]
Egyptian medical papyri contain both prescriptions for remedies to be used for various ailments, and conjurations for the expulsion of demons, together with petitions for the present intervention of deities.[3]
The Chaldean magi also employed many formulas and incantations for repelling evil spirits and for the cure of disease. Specimens of such formulas are to be seen on clay tablets exhumed from the ruins of ancient Nineveh. They consist chiefly in a description of some disease, with the expression of a desire for deliverance
- ↑ Journal of Science, vol. xiii, p. 101; 1876.
- ↑ Pharaohs, Fellahs, and Explorers, p. 219.
- ↑ Alfred Wiedmann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 272.
