The phylacteries still worn by modern Jews at certain parts of their services, now perhaps by most of them only in accordance with inveterate custom, have been in all ages esteemed by them as protecting them against evil and demoniac influences. They are leathern receptacles, which they bind on their left arms and on their foreheads in literal obedience to the Mosaic instructions in the passages transcribed, and contained in the cases, from Exodus c. 13, v. 1-10, and c. 13, v. 11-16, Deuteronomy c. 6, v. 4-9, and c. 9, v. 13-21. To a modern reader these passages appear to protest against superstitions and heathenish beliefs and practices, but the rabbis and scribes taught that these and the mesuza, the similar passages affixed to the doorposts, would avert physical and spiritual dangers, and they invented minute instructions for the preparation of the inscriptions. A scribe, for example, who had commenced to write one of the passages, was not to allow himself to be interrupted by any human distraction, not even if the king asked him a question. All the eastern nations trusted largely to amulets of various kinds for the prevention and treatment of disease. Galen quotes from Nechepsus, an Egyptian king, who lived about 630 B.C., who wrote that a green jasper cut in the form of a dragon surrounded by rays, applied externally would cure indigestion and strengthen the stomach. Among the books attributed to Hermes was one entitled “The Thirty-six Herbs Sacred to Horoscopes.” Of this book Galen says it is only a waste of time to read it. The title, however, as Leclerc has pointed out, rather curiously confirms the statement attributed to Celsus which is found in Origen’s treatise, “Contra Celsum,” to which allusion has already been made. Amulets are still in general use in the East. Bertherand in “Medicine of the Arabs” says the uneducated Arab of to-day when he has anything the matter with him goes to his priest and pays him a fee for which the priest gives him a little paper about two inches square on which certain phrases are written. This is put up in a leathern case, and worn as near the affected part as is possible. The richer Arab women wear silver cases with texts from the Koran in them. But it is essential that the paper must have been written on a Friday, a little before sunset, and with ink in which myrrh and saffron have been dissolved.