Surgical instruments and the actual cautery were in use, also steam inhalations, massage, ointments, plasters, poultices, suppositories, injections, and emetics, and the importance of temperature in disease was to some extent recognized. Prescriptions were written out in due form and sometimes at great length, fully equalling those of the most enthusiastic therapeutist of our own day. Some hundreds of prescriptions have come down to us in papyri. The longest prescription which I have read contained thirty-five ingredients. To read it was a formidable task; to take it I should think a much more formidable one. Some prescriptions are wise and rational, a few strange and repulsive, and some are associated with charms and spells. Human nature is the same in all ages; hence one was not surprised to meet with hair invigorators, hair dyes, cosmetics, pain killers, insect powders, and a soothing syrup for small children containing opium in use three thousand five hundred years ago. It was rather interesting to find that the symbol for a half tenat often used in their prescriptions is identical with that indicating a drachm with us, though the amounts are not the same. I trust that the drachm will soon be as obsolete as the tenat. The writings of Dr. Grant Bey contain the information that during the Hyksos period a law was enacted to the effect that if any physician adopted a method of treatment not authorized by the sacred books and in case the patient died under that treatment, the life of the physician should also be forfeited. It is to be hoped that a principle so absolutely fatal to all progress was not permitted long to remain in operation.[32] II A Suggestion in Regard to Preventive Treatment of Valvular Disease I have referred to certain facts, mostly of recent discovery, bearing on the existence of our profession in the remote past and in reference to the partial knowledge to which the priests of I-em-hotep attained as to the circulation of the blood, a subject not without a certain interest, but the advances of that knowledge made subsequently, which have on more than one occasion been dealt with in this room, those now making, and those yet to be made in the future are of more practical importance to us. The genius and the marvellous industry of Harvey first clearly unfolded the great secret of the course of the circulation, thus opening a wide door for the work of others, physiological and therapeutic. A recognition of the principles of blood pressure, and of the action of vasomotor nerves, and other advances have followed. We have attained to a larger, though I believe as yet only to a partial and provisional, hold of truth in these matters. As such we shall regard our knowledge if we are wise. The great mistake in all times has been that of believing that the truth already attained is the whole and that nothing remained behind.