The first picture that we have of a physician in history is, indeed, one to make us proud of our profession. The first physician was I-em-Hetep, whose name means "the bringer of peace." He had two other titles according to tradition, one of which was "the master of secrets," evidently in reference to the fact that more or less necessarily many secrets must be entrusted to the physician, but also, doubtless, in connection with the knowledge of the secrets of therapeutics which he was supposed to possess. Another of his titles was that of "the scribe of numbers," by which, perhaps, reference is made to his prescriptions, which may have been lengthy, for there are many "calendar" prescriptions in the early days, but may only refer to the necessity of his knowing weights and measures and numbers very exactly for professional purposes. I-em-Hetep lived in the reign of King Tchser, a monarch of the third dynasty in Egypt, the date of which is somewhat uncertain, but is about 4500 B.C. How distinguished this first physician was in his time may be gathered from the fact that the well-known step pyramid at Sakkara, the old cemetery near Memphis, is attributed to him. So great was the honor paid to him that, after his death he was worshipped as a god, and so we have statues of him as a placid-looking man with a certain divine expression, seated with a {358} scroll on his knees and an air of benignant knowledge well suited to his profession. I called attention in 1907 [Footnote 21] to the fact that the earliest pictures of surgical operations extant had recently been uncovered in the cemetery of Sakkara near Memphis in Egypt. These pictures show that surgery was probably an organized branch of medicine thus early, and the fact that they are found in a very important tomb shows how prominent a place in the community the surgeon held at that time. The oldest document after that which we have with regard to medicine is the "Ebers Papyrus," the writing of which was done probably about 1600 B.C. This, however, is only a copy of an older manuscript or series of manuscripts, and there seems to be no doubt that the text, which contains idioms of a much older period, or, indeed, several periods, probably represents accumulations of information made during 2,000 or even 3,000 years before the date of our manuscript. Indeed, it is not improbable that the oldest portions of the "Ebers Papyrus" owe their origin to men of the first Egyptian dynasties, nearly 5,000 years B.C. To be members of a profession that can thus trace its earliest written documents to a time nearly some 7,000 years ago, is an honor that may be readily appreciated and that may allow of some complacency. [Footnote 21: _Journal of the American Medical Association_, November 8, 1907.]