In the Ebers Medical Papyrus is an example of old Egyptian diagnosis and therapeutics: “When thou findest any one with a hardness in his _re-het_ (pit of the stomach), and when after eating he feels a pressure in his intestines, his stomach (_het_) is swollen, and he feels bad in walking, like one who suffers from heat in his back; then observe him when he lies stretched out, and if thou findest his intestines hot, and a hardness in his _re-het_, say to thyself, this is a disease of the liver. Then prepare for thyself a remedy, according to the secrets of the (botanical) science, from the plant _pa-che-test_ and dates; mix them, and give in water” (Ebers).[154] The famous medical papyrus roll in the Museum of Berlin is described by M. Chabas in the chapter on “The Medicine of the Ancient Egyptians,” in his work entitled _Mélanges Égyptologiques_. From this papyrus we learn that plaisters, ointments, liniments, and friction were employed as external remedies. Many of the names of the herbs and medicaments employed cannot be translated, but are merely transcribed. We find a number of recipes for tumours of the breast, for pimples, for “dissipating divinely parts injured by bruises,” for destroying the bites of vermin, for cuts (common salt the chief ingredient), etc. The prescriptions seem very simple and brief. Magical invocations were frequently employed in the treatment of disease. Chabas thinks that one of the maladies so treated was intestinal inflammation, with a feeling of heaviness, and hardness, and a griping pain. He translates the diagnosis of such a malady: “His belly is heavy, the mouth of his heart (_os ventriculi_) is sick, his heart (his stomach) is burning, ... his clothes are heavy upon him. Many clothes do not warm him; he is thirsty at night; the taste of his heart is perverted, like a man who has eaten sycamore figs; his flesh is deadened as a man who finds himself sick; if he goes to stool, his bowels refuse to act. Pronounce on his case that he has a nest of inflammation in his belly; the taste of his heart is sick, ... if he raises himself, he is as a man who is unable to walk.” The text of the papyrus gives the remedies to be used in such a case. “Apply to him the means of curing inflammation by warmth; also the means of destroying the inflammation in the belly.” The diagnosis and treatment here described apply very well to what we term peritonitis; but Dr. Baas suggests that gastric cancer may be indicated.