According to Herodotus and Diodorus, medical practice was carried on in a highly rational way at an early period in Egypt. Mr. Sayce ventures to say that in the period of the eighteenth dynasty medicine was “in almost as advanced a state as in the age of Galen; the various diseases known were carefully distinguished from one another, and their symptoms were minutely described, as well as their treatment. The prescriptions recommended in each case are made out in precisely the same way as the prescriptions of a modern doctor.”[323] Mr. Sayce bases these statements on the “Papyrus-Ebers.” However, we are informed by Herodotus that specialists were common when he visited the country, which was about 450 years before our era; but this must not be accepted as proof that medicine was necessarily in a very advanced state. Here is what the Grecian historian says: “Medicine is practiced among them on a plan of separation; each physician treats a single disorder, and no more. Thus, the country swarms with medical practitioners, some undertaking to cure diseases of the eye; others, of the head; others, again, of the teeth; others, of the intestines; and some, those which are not local.”[324] As to their philosophy of morbid conditions, he says: “They have a persuasion that every disease to which men are liable is occasioned by substances whereon they feed.” This doctrine led them “to purge the body by means of emetics and clysters” for “three successive days in each month.”[325] In respect to medical specialism in Egypt, I may further say that, according to Ebers,[326] as early as 1500 before our era, any one requiring a physician sent for him, not to his house, but to the temple. There a statement was obtained from the messenger concerning the complaint from which the sick person was suffering; and then it was left to the principal of the medical staff of the sanctuary to select that master of the healing art whose special knowledge and experience qualified him to be best suited for the treatment of the case. No honorarium was expected from the patient. The fee was paid by the State. According to Canon Rawlinson, it is an open question whether, as is often said, the physicians of ancient Egypt formed a special division of the sacerdotal order; “though, no doubt, some of the priests were required to study medicine.”[327] It is interesting to connect with this the following statement from an authoritative work: “There is no sign in the Homeric poems of the subordination of medicine to religion, which is seen in ancient Egypt and India.”[328]