Egypt is naturally a very salubrious country, and the Egyptians boasted that they were "the healthiest of all mortals;" but they did not neglect any precautions to maintain their health. "Every month, for three successive days, they purged the system by means of emetics or clysters. The study of medicine with them was divided between specialists; each physician attending to one kind of illness only. Every place possessed several doctors; some for diseases of the eyes, others for the head, or the teeth, or the stomach, or for internal diseases." But the subdivision was not carried to the extent that Herodotus would make us believe. It was the custom to make a distinction only between the physician trained in the priestly schools, and further instructed by daily practice and the study of books,--the bone-setter attached to the worship of Sokhit who treated fractures by the intercession of the goddess,--and the exorcist who professed to cure by the sole virtue of amulets and magic phrases. The professional doctor treated all kinds of maladies, but, as with us, there were specialists for certain affections, who were consulted in preference to general practitioners. If the number of these specialists was so considerable as to attract the attention of strangers, it was because the climatic character of the country necessitated it. Where ophthalmia and affections of the intestines raged violently, we necessarily find many oculists[*] as well as doctors for internal maladies. The best instructed, however, knew but little of anatomy. As with the Christian physicians of the Middle Ages, religious scruples prevented the Egyptians from cutting open or dissecting, in the cause of pure science, the dead body which was identified with that of Osiris. The processes of embalming, which would have instructed them in anatomy, were not intrusted to doctors; the horror was so great with which any one was regarded who mutilated the human form, that the "paraschite," on whom devolved the duty of making the necessary incisions in the dead, became the object of universal execration: as soon as he had finished his task, the assistants assaulted him, throwing stones at him with such violence that he had to take to his heels to escape with his life.[**] * Affections of the eyes occupy one-fourth of the _Ebers Papyrus_. ** Diodorus Siculus, i. 91.