In the reign of Tosorthros, of the third dynasty, five or six thousand years ago, we meet with the wise I-em-hotep in an inscription referring to the seven years of famine which befell Egypt in consequence of a succession of low Niles. He is there the adviser of Pharaoh; to him the king applies in his trouble for counsel and help.[8] In the inscriptions in the temple of Edfu[9] he is described at length as the great priest I-em-hotep, the son of Ptah, who speaks or lectures.[10] Perhaps his discourses or lectures were on medicine. Elsewhere he is described as the writer of the divine books. It may here be remarked that probably Ebers’ papyrus was one of the six divine books attributed to Thoth ceremonially, but not improbably in large part the work of I-em-hotep. Manetho, while speaking of his eminence as a physician, refers to him also as an architect, the first to build with hewn stone.[11] Not improbably he built the step pyramid of Sakkara, the tomb of his patron Tosorthros.[12] Manetho also suggests that I-em-hotep improved and completed the hieroglyphic script of Egypt. In the Hermetic literature he is famed for his knowledge of astronomy or astrology; the Westcar papyrus describes him further as an alchemist and magician.[13] These powers were always associated with medicine, and even to-day in the popular view they are not entirely dissociated from it. What share I-em-hotep may have had in those early discoveries of the movement of the blood, to which I am about to advert, we do not know. It does, however, seem clear that either through the labours of I-em-hotep or of other priest physicians, the Egyptians had discovered certain elementary facts and knew as much as the Greeks, as much as we find in the Hippocratic writings, or in those of Aristotle and the later Alexandrian school, and the hypothesis seems a natural one that the knowledge possessed by the Greeks was acquired from Egypt. Necropsies made by the Egyptian Priests