THE HARVEIAN ORATION, 1904 19
IMPORTANCE OF THE MEDICINE AND SANITATION OF
ANCIENT EGYPT
It is clear from the study of these medical papyri that medicine advanced considerably amongst the Egyptians, and from them medical and sanitary knowledge has descended to us by two channels-namely, by the Greeks and through the Jewish race, while probably much of it was lost irrecoverably. Josephus quotes from Manetho a statement that Osarsiph, who Josephus says was the great Hebrew leader Moses, was a priest at Heliopolis, where medicine was taught.' It is highly probable that the sanitary laws of the Jews were derived from the Egyptians. Just as the Jews remembered the diseases of Egypt (Deut. xxviii, 60) so they also remembered the sanitary and remedial measures they had learnt there. Those of us who have seen in the later excavations at Knossos the evidences of sanitary knowledge of a somewhat high type, possessed by the Cretans at a remote period, exemplified among other things by drainage pipes, scarcely excelled by our own to-day, knowing as we do the close connexion between Crete and Egypt, may well believe that here we have an example of sanitation derived from Egyptian sources.
In England we have overlooked the im- portance of Egypt as a primary source of the science and art of medicine. If we regard with reverence the dim traditional form of Asklepios 1. Josephus C. Apionem I, 26
