Some 300 years ago a large trade was carried on, mostly by Jews, who imported mummies for medicinal purposes, as they were much used by the ancient physicians; but there is little doubt that a great deal of fraud was practised by the mummy merchants, and that many were specially manufactured for the purpose. Pomet, alluding to this in his _History of Druggs_, writes: “We may daily see the Jews carrying on their rogueries as to these mummies, and after them the Christians; for the mummies that were brought from Alexandria, Egypt, Venice, and Lyons are nothing else but the bodies of people that die several ways. Those from Africa called white mummies, are nothing else but bodies that have been drowned at sea, which, being cast upon the African coast, are buried and dried in the sands, which are very hot.” When the ancient physician prescribed mummy for a bad headache, he rarely got what he imagined. “For,” the writer continues: “I am not able to stop the abuses committed by those who use this commodity. I shall only advise such as buy to choose what is of a fine shining black, not full of bones and dirt, of a good smell, and which being burnt does not stink of pitch. Such is reckoned proper for contusions, and to hinder blood from coagulating in the body. It is also given in epilepsies, vertigoes, and palsies. The dose is two drachms in powder, or the same made into a bolus. It also stops mortifications, heals wounds, and is an ingredient in many compositions.” In a price list, dated 1685, mummy is quoted at 5s. 4d. per lb. Of the mummies used in medicine five kinds were known. Factitious.—Those in which bitumen and pitch were largely used in the process of embalming. Those bodies dried by the sun in the country of the Hammonians between Cyrene and Alexandria, being mostly the bodies of passengers buried in the quicksands. True Egyptian. The Arabian, being those bodies embalmed with myrrh, aloes, and other aromatic gums. Artificial mummies. Crollius in his _Royal Chemist_ gives the following process for preparing artificial mummy:— “Take the carcass of a young man (some say red haired), not dying of a disease but killed, let it lie twenty-four hours in clear water in the air, cut the flesh in pieces, to which add powder of myrrh and a little aloes, imbibe it twenty-four hours in spirit of wine and turpentine, take it out and hang it up for twelve hours, then imbibe it again, twenty-four hours in fresh spirit, then hang up the pieces in a dry air and a shady place.” A rather cheerful operation for the apothecary. It would possibly account for many a mysterious disappearance in those days.