ries and pills, and be cured by cannibal mixtures? Surely such diet is dismal vampirism; and exceeds in horror the black banquet of Domitian, not to be paralleled except in those Arabian feasts, wherein Ghoules feed horribly.

But the common opinion of the virtues of mummy bred great consumption thereof, and princes and great men contended for this strange panacea, wherein Jews dealt largely, manufacturing mummies from dead carcasses, and giving them the names of kings, while specifics were compounded from crosses and gibbet leavings. There wanted not a set of Arabians who counterfeited mummies so accurately, that it needed great skill to distinguish the false from the true. Queasy stomachs would hardly fancy the doubtful potion, wherein one might so easily swallow a cloud for his Juno, and defraud the fowls of the air while in conceit enjoying the conserves of Canopus.

Radzivil hath a strange story of some mummies which he had stowed in seven chests, and was carrying on ship board from Egypt, when a priest on the mission, while at his prayers, was tormented by two ethnic spectres or devils, a man and a woman, both black and horrible; and at the same time a great storm at sea, which threatened shipwreck, till at last they were enforced to pacify the enraged sea, and put those demons to flight by throwing their mummy freight overboard, and so with difficulty escaped. What credit the relation of the worthy person deserves, we leave unto others. Surely if true, these demons were Satan's emissaries, appearing in forms answerable unto Horus and Mompta, the old deities of Egypt, to delude unhappy men. For those dark caves and mummy repositories are Satan's abodes, wherein he speculates and rejoices on human vain-glory, and keeps those kings and conquerors, whom alive he bewitched, whole for that great day, when he will claim his own, and marshal the kings of Nilus and Thebes in sad procession unto the pit.

Death, that fatal necessity which so many would overlook, or blinkingly survey, the old Egyptians held continually before their eyes. Their embalmed ancestors they carried about at their banquets, as holding them still a part of their

families, and not thrusting them from their places at feasts. They wanted not likewise a sad preacher at their tables to admonish them daily of death, surely an unnecessary discourse while they banqueted in sepulchres. Whether this were not making too much of death, as tending to assuefaction, some reason there is to doubt, but certain it is that such practices would hardly be embraced by our modern gourmands who like not to look on faces of morta, or be elbowed by mummies.

Yet in those huge structures and pyramidal immensities, of the builders whereof so little is known, they seemed not so much to raise sepulchres or temples to death, as to contemn and disdain it, astonishing heaven with their audacities, and looking forward with delight to their interment in those eternal piles. Of their living habitations they made little account, conceiving of them but as hospitia, or inns, while they adorned the sepulchres of the dead, and planting thereon lasting bases, defied the crumbling touches of time and the misty vaporousness of oblivion. Yet all were but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all things, and is now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh unto Memphis and old Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth semisomnous on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveller as he paceth amazedly through those deserts asketh of her, who builded them? and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not.

Egypt itself is now become the land of obliviousness and doteth. Her ancient civility is gone, and her glory hath vanished as a phantasma. Her youthful days are over, and her face hath become wrinkled and tetrick. She poreth not upon the heavens, astronomy is dead unto her, and knowledge maketh other cycles. Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth not to the sun, and Nilus heareth strange voices. Her monuments are but hieroglyphically sempiternal. Osiris and Anubis, her averruncous deities, have departed, while Orus yet remains dimly shadowing the principle of vicissitude and the effluxion of things, but receiveth little oblation.

DE PESTE.

[MS. SLOAN. 1827.]

THE learned Kircherus in his book, De Peste, cap. 7, particularly delivers what medicines Hippocrates made use of in the great plague of Athens, and particularly mentions sulphur, assafoetida, and vipers, as may be seen in that tract; which being not to be found in the works of Hippocrates, the question is, "What is to be said herein ?"

When I had read the seventh chapter of Kircherus abovementioned, I found it very singular; nor could I confirm it by any ancient author. And since, upon inquiry, I find his own expression true, that they are parum cognita; for I meet not therewith in any author which might most probably mention the same; not in Hippocrates, Galen, Etius, Ægineta, Massarias, Jordanus, and others, who have particularly written De Peste; not in Paulinus, who hath largely commented upon the narration of Thucydides, concerning the plague of Athens. Not in Nardius, or any comment upon Lucretius, where he makes a large description of this plague, conceived to be the same wherein Hippocrates exercised this cure.

Franciscus Rota, a learned Italian, having read in Marini, an eminent poet of Italy, that Averrhoes was put to death by the cruel death of the wheel, consulted many learned men in Europe where such a passage might be found in any other writer; and none could satisfy his question. But this learned author,1 yet living, is able to afford a resolution, and may probably do it in following editions of this or some other work, which he shall hereafter publish, though he hath not performed it in his Mundus Subterraneus, wherein he largely discourses upon sulphur.

Meanwhile referring unto further inquiry, this account may be taken from some unusual manuscript, from some ancient comment on Hippocrates or some work ascribed unto him or author.] Kircherus.

his successors, known only to some libraries, or else from some Arabic writer; the Arabians being very careful to preserve the works of ancient Greeks, which they often translated, and sometimes fathered other works upon the best of them, which are now very rare or quite lost

2

among us. Now, although the whole relation be allowed, and the remedies to be approved, yet, whether these were the secrets of Hippocrates in the plague of Athens, or whether they were so successful in that pestilence, some doubt may be allowed; for Thucydides, who passed the same disease, affirmeth that there was no remedy (probably meaning inward) that did any good; but that which did profit one did hurt another: "nec ullum prorsus remedium repertum est3 quod adhibitum prodesset; nullumque corpus, sive firmæ sive infirmæ valetudinis esset, tanti mali violentiæ resistere potuit ; sed omnia absumpsit." From which description some doubt may arise whether Hippocrates came not to Athens rather in the declination than in the raging time of the disease.

Galen, "De Theriaca ad Pisonem," ascribeth this cure of Hippocrates only unto his fires. "Vehementer laudo admirandum Hippocratem, quod pestem illam quæ ex Æthiopia Græcos invasit non alia ratione curavit quam aerem immutando. Jussit igitur per totam civitatem accendi ignem, qui non simplicem incendii materiam habeat, sed coronas et flores odore fragrantissimos. Hæc consuluit ad ignem alendum, et ipsi etiam inspergere unguenta delibata et suavissimi odoris." And the same course they put in practice at Venice, in the great plague which happened under Duke Foscaro, about two hundred years ago.

Again, if this account of the cure of Hippocrates, set down by Kircherus, be ancient, and in times when it might have best been known, some wonder it is how it escaped the pen of Galen, a superlative admirer of him, and who had good opportunity to know what elder times had delivered on this subject; for Thessalus, the son of Hippocrates, left expositions upon his epidemics. Lycus, Sabinus, Satyrus, and Quintus, the preceptors of Galen, had also left tracts upon the

2 who passed, &c.] AUTÓS TE VO67σας.-Thuc. Β. μή.

3 nec,&c.] οὐδὲν κατέστηἴαμα. Ib. νά. De Theriaca, &c.] Cap. 16.

narration of Thucydides; and Galen himself had written a discourse upon the same, as he testifies in his work,5 megi dúomvoras.

Actuarius, an author of good esteem, who wrote many hundred years ago, undertakes to set down the antidote of Hippocrates, which he used against the plague; which he believed to be this:-B. Calami aromatici, junci odorati, sabinæ, ana 3iii; cardamomi, cyperi, crocomagmatis, ana 3v; nardi Celtici, lib. 5; aspalathi, 3vii; cupressi ros. an. iii. Ladani, myrrhæ, thuris, an. lib. 1; bac. junip. 40; mastic. Ziiii; nardi spicæ lib. 5; costi, ziiii; fol.6 Zviii; cassiæ. lib. 5; amomi, žiii; styracis 3x; terebinthinæ, lib. 3; mellis Attici, lib. 5; vini veteris, q. s. This he affirmeth to be the same which he used at the plague of Athens; et cujus causa coronatus fuit. This, however learned by him, is admitted by Massarias and others; and is a very different medicine from those so highly commended by Kircherus, who in all equity is obliged to make use of some author of equal credit and authority with him.

Now, while I discourse of this obscurity, some others arise which I cannot omit to propound unto you; particularly, why Hippocrates left no distinct description of this plague, together with his remedies? Why Thucydides, in his large description of the plague of Athens, makes no mention of Hippocrates; and may also consider that this cure of the plague by fires, and even in Athens itself, was elder than Hippocrates, and practised by Acron Agrigentinus, (as testified by Pliny, Ætius, Paulus,) and also made use of by Jachen the Egyptian physician, who lived in the days of Senies, King of Egypt, as is delivered by Suidas, and may be gathered from the practice afterwards of the Egyptian priests, to kindle their fire at the tomb of Jachen, and so to diffuse it through the city; and from what is delivered by Plutarch, concerning the Egyptian priests;-de nocte soliti consurgere et inquinatum aerem odoratis incendiis purgare; to emit their purifying fumes of the great and lesser cyphi, or odorate composition, containing twenty-eight and thirty-six ingredients, which they used in their daily sacrifices unto the sun and moon.

work.] Hist. lib. 5, cap. 6. 6 fol.] Folium indicum or malabathri.

-Gr.

7 and may.] Sic. in MS. you is doubtless the word left out by a Latinism.-Gr. 8 Plutarch.] De Iside et Osir.