Part 8

The translators evidently found a difficulty in associating the unicorn with the Hebrew Re’em in Deut. xxxiii, 17, where we read of “the horns of the unicorns.” In the Hebrew the horns are the plural but Re’em is singular. But the horns of the unicorn would have been a contradiction in terms.

The allusions to the unicorn in Shakespeare all seem to show unbelief in the legends. In the Tempest (Act 3, sc. 3) Sebastian says when music is heard in the wood, “Now I will believe that there are unicorns.” In Julius Cæsar (Act 2, sc. 1), Decius Brutus, recounting Cæsar’s superstitions, says, “He loves to hear that unicorns may be betrayed with trees”; and Timon of Athens raves about the unicorn among the legendary animal beliefs (Act 4, sc. 3). An authority on heraldry, Guillim, in 1660, however, comments thus on the scepticism of his contemporaries: “Some have made doubt whether there be any such beast as this or not. But the great esteem of his horns (in many places to be seen) may take away that needless scruple.”

The unicorn was introduced into the British royal arms by James I., who substituted it for the red dragon with which Henry VII. had honoured a Welsh contingent which helped him to win the battle of Bosworth fighting under the banner of Cadwallydr. The unicorn had been a Scotch emblem for several reigns before that of James I. (or VI.). The Scottish pound of that period was known by the name of a unicorn from the device stamped on it.

Pomet tells us that in 1553 a unicorn’s horn was brought to the King of France which was valued at £20,000 sterling; and that one presented to Charles I. of England, supposed to be the largest one known, measured 7 feet long, and weighed 13 lbs. It is also related that Edward IV. gave to the Duke of Burgundy who visited him, a gold cup set with jewels, and with a piece of unicorn’s horn worked into the metal. One large unicorn’s horn was owned by the city of Dresden and was valued at 75,000 thalers. Occasionally a piece was sawn off to be used for medical purposes. It was a city regulation that two persons of princely rank should be present whenever this operation was performed. This was in the sixteenth century.

The unicorn was a frequent sign used by the old apothecaries. It was also adopted by goldsmiths. The arms of the Society of Apothecaries are supported by unicorns.

THE DRAGON

was only associated with pharmacy by means of the “blood” which took his name and was at one time popularly supposed to be yielded by him. I know of no evidence in support of this statement, but it is sometimes so reported. According to Pharmacographia dragon’s blood was first obtained from Socotra and taken with other merchandise by the Arabs to China. Possibly it was there that it acquired the name of dragon’s blood, for the dragon has always been a much revered beast in that country. Dioscorides called this product cinnabar. I find in old books that the fruit of the calamus draconis on which the resin collects along with scales (and this is the source of our present supply), when stripped of its skin shows a design of a dragon. Lemery quoting from “Monard and several other authors,” says, “When the skin is taken off from this fruit there appears underneath the figure of a dragon as it is represented by the painters, with wings expanded, a slender neck, a hairy or bristle back, long tail, and feet armed with talons. They pretend,” he adds, “that this figure gave the name to tree. But I believe this circumstance fabulous because I never knew it confirmed by any traveller.”

The tree illustrated above is at Teneriffe, and is, perhaps, the oldest tree in the world. Humboldt, in 1799, found its trunk was forty-eight feet in circumference.]

Very likely the shrewd Arabs invented the name dragon’s blood to please their Chinese customers, and it may be therefore that the tree acquired its name from the resin, not the resin from the tree.

Dragon’s blood was given in old pharmacy as a mild astringent, and was one of the ingredients in the styptic pills of Helvetius. It was also included in the formula for Locatelli’s balsam. Now it is chiefly used as a varnish colouring, as for example in varnishes for violins. In some parts of the country it has a reputation as a charm to restore love. Maidens whose swains are unfaithful or neglectful procure a piece, wrap it in paper, and throw it on the fire, saying:

May he no pleasure or profit see Till he come back again to me.

Dragons are mentioned many times in the Authorised Version of the Old Testament. In most of these instances jackals are substituted in the Revised Version, and only once, I think, the alternative of crocodiles is suggested in the margin, though in many instances it would obviously be a better rendering, as has been pointed out by many scholars.

THE SCIENCE OF MYTHOLOGY

which seeks to explain how the old myths, some poetical, many disgusting, and all impossible, originated, is a modern study which has fascinated a large number of learned scholars. The old notion that they were merely allegorical forms of representing facts and phenomena is not tenable in view of the universality of the legends among the least cultivated races. Professor Max Müller initiated a lively controversy some forty years ago by suggesting that myths were a consequence of language, a disease of language, as Mr. Andrew Lang has termed it. He traced many of the Greek myths to Aryan sources, and insisted that they had developed from the words or phrases used to describe natural phenomena. Thus, for example, he explained the myth of Apollo and Daphne (mentioned on page 9) by supposing that a phrase existed describing the Sun following, or chasing, the Dawn. He even maintained that the Sanskrit Ahana, dawn, was the derivation of Daphne. Words, of course, were invented to convey some mental conception; that conception, while it was intelligible, would (according to Max Müller’s system) be developed into a story. The argument was most ingeniously worked out, but it has not proved capable of satisfying the conditions of the problem. How could it suffice, for instance, to explain the occurrence of almost identical myths treasured by the most degraded and widely separated peoples? The more likely theory is that in a very early stage of the savage mind the untrained imagination tended inevitably to associate the facts of nature with certain monstrous, obscene, and irrational forms. Perhaps the most able exposition of this view, or something like it, expounded within moderate limits, is to be found in an article on Mythology contributed to the “Encyclopædia Britannica” by Mr. Andrew Lang.

PHARMACY IN THE TIME OF THE PHARAOHS

“Go up into Gilead and take balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt: in vain dost thou use many medicines; there is no healing for thee.”

So wrote the prophet Jeremiah (xlvi, 11), and the passage seems to suggest that Egypt in his time was famous for its medicines. Herodotus, who narrated his travels in Egypt some two or three hundred years later, conveys the same impression, and the records of the papyri which have been deciphered within the last century confirm the opinion.

Whatever may have been the case with other arts and sciences, it does not appear that much progress was made in medicine in Egypt during the thousands of years of its history which have been more or less minutely traced. The discovery of remedies by various deities, by Isis especially, or the indication of compounds invented for the relief of the sufferings of the Sun-god Ra, before he retired to his heavenly rest, is the burden of all the documents on which our knowledge of Egyptian pharmacy is founded. It was criminal to add to or vary the perfect prescriptions thus revealed, a provision which made advance impossible to the extent to which it was enforced.

“So wisely was medicine managed in Egypt,” says Herodotus, “that no doctor was permitted to practise any but his own branch.” That is to say, the doctors were all specialists; some treated the eyes, others the teeth, the head, the skin, the stomach, and so forth. The doctors were all priests, and were paid by the Treasury, but they were allowed to take fees besides. Their recipes were often absurd and complicated, but there is reason to suppose that their directions in regard to diet and hygiene were sensible, and there is evidence that they paid some attention to disinfection and cleanliness.

The physicians were always priests, but all the priests were not physicians; Clement of Alexandria says those who actually practised were the lowest grade of priests. They prepared as well as prescribed medicines, but relied perhaps more on magic, amulets, and invocations than on drugs. The secrets of magic were, however, especially the property of the highest grade of priests, the sages and soothsayers. According to Celsus, the medical science of Egypt was founded on the belief that the human body was divided into thirty-six parts, each one being under the control of a separate demon or divinity. The art of medicine consisted largely in knowing the names of these demons so as to invoke the right one when an ailment had to be treated.

Symbolical names were given to many of the herbs used as medicines. The plant of Osiris was the ivy, the vervain was called Tears of Isis, saffron was the blood of Thoth, and the squill was the eye of Typhon.

Until the mystery of the Egyptian writings was unlocked, the key being found about a century ago in the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, of which Napoleon first took possession, and which was subsequently taken from the French by the British, and is now a familiar object in the British Museum, knowledge of Egyptian science and life was limited to the information which came to us from Greek and Roman authors; and this was often fabulous. Now, however, the daily life of the subjects of the Pharaohs has been revealed in wonderful minuteness by the papyri which have been deciphered.

Among the papyri preserved in various museums a number of medical and pharmaceutical records have been found. Some medical prescriptions inscribed on a papyrus in the British Museum (No. 10,059) are said to be as old as the time of Khufu (Cheops), reckoned to have been about 3700 years B.C. Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, the Director of the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum, informs me that these prescriptions have not been translated, and that no photograph of them is available. The Papyrus itself may be of about 1400 B.C., but it refers to some medical lore of the time of Khufu, as a modern English book might quote some prescriptions of the time of Alfred the Great.

By far the most complete representation of the medicine and pharmacy of ancient Egypt is comprised in the famous Papyrus Ebers, which was discovered by Georg Ebers, Egyptologist and romancist, in the winter of 1872-3.

Ebers and a friend were spending that winter in Egypt, and during their residence at Thebes they made the acquaintance of a well-to-do Arab from Luxor who appeared to know of some ancient papyri and other relics. He first tried to pass off to them some of no particular value, but Ebers was an expert and was not to be imposed on. Ultimately the Arab brought to him a Papyrus which he stated had been discovered fourteen years previously between the knees of a mummy in the Theban Necropolis. After examination Ebers was convinced of its genuineness and bought it. His opinion was fully confirmed by all the authorities when he brought it to Germany, and the contents have proved to be of extreme value and interest in the delineation of the medical manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians.

This papyrus was wrapped in mummy cloths and packed in a metal case. It is a single roll of yellow-brown papyrus of the finest quality, about 12 inches wide and more than 22 yards long. It is divided into 108 columns each separately numbered. The numbering reaches actually 110, but there are no numbers 28 and 29, though there is no hiatus in the literary composition. Ebers supposes there may have been some religious reason for not using the missing numbers. The writing is in black ink, but the heads of sections and weights and measures are written with red ink. The word “nefr” signifying “good” is written in the margin against many of the formulæ in a different writing and in a paler ink, evidently by someone who had used the book. It has been considered possible that this was one of the six hermetic books on medicine mentioned by Clement of Alexandria; but it is more likely to have been a popular collection of medical formulæ from various sources.

Internal evidence, satisfactory to experts, the writing, the name of a king, and particularly a calendar attached to one of the sections, establish the date of this document. The king named was Tjesor-ka-Ra, and his throne-name was Amen-hetep I., the second king of the 18th dynasty. The date assigned to the papyrus is about the year 1552 B.C., which, according to the conventional scriptural chronology, would correspond with about the 21st year of the life of Moses. If this estimation is approximately correct it follows that the prescriptions of the papyrus are considerably older than those given in the book of Exodus for the holy anointing oil and for incense, which in old works are sometimes quoted as the earliest records of “the art of the apothecary.”

The papyrus begins by declaring that the writer had brought help from the King of Eternity from Heliopolis; from the Goddess Mother to Sais, she who alone could ensure protection. Speech had been given him to tell how all pains and all mortal sicknesses might be driven away. Here were chapters which would teach how to conjure away the diseases “from this my head, from this my neck, from this my arm, from this my flesh, from these my limbs. For Ra pities the sick; his teacher is Thuti” (Thoth or Hermes) “who has given him words to make this book and to save instructions to scholars and to physicians who will follow them, so that what is dark shall be unriddled. For he whom the God loveth, he maketh alive; I am one who loveth the God, and he maketh me alive.”