The Egyptians had a written language and laws, and had made considerable advances in many mechanical arts—had reduced astronomy to a science, and had built the Pyramids, long before they began to employ any rational means for the cure of their sick. Their practice consisted wholly of superstitious rites and ceremonies. One of their earliest medicinal remedies was the onion. This was not given to the patient to swallow, but was suspended over his door, placed upon his bed, or hung about his neck. The ceremonies and manipulations were performed by the priests, and this remedy, thus employed, was thought to be so efficacious that the onion came to be regarded as an object of religious worship, and enrolled in the catalogue of Egyptian deities; and so great was their veneration for the onion, that, even after the patient was dead, they sometimes placed it in his clenched hand, and embalmed it with his body. Not long since, one was taken from the hand of a mummy, where it had probably remained for more than two thousand years, and was afterwards planted and found to grow. This would seem to be al-
