Museum of Antiquity

studied those precepts which had been laid down from the experience of their predecessors, they were permitted to practice; and, in order to prevent dangerous experiments being made upon patients, they might be punished if their treatment was contrary to the established system; and the death of a person entrusted to their care, under such circumstances, was adjudged to them as a capital offence.

If, however, every remedy had been administered according to the sanitary law, they were absolved from blame; and if the patient was not better, the physician was allowed to alter the treatment after the third day, or even before, if he took upon himself the responsibility.

Though paid by Government as a body, it was not illegal to receive fees for their advice and attendance; and demands could be made in every instance except on a foreign journey, and on military service; when patients were visited free of expense.

The principal mode adopted by the Egyptians for preventing illness was attention to regimen and diet; "being persuaded that the majority of diseases proceed from indigestion and excess of eating;" and they had frequent recourse to abstinence, emetics, slight doses of medicine, and other simple means of relieving the system, which some persons were in the habit of repeating every two or three days.

[Illustration: WREATH OF OAK. (Life Saving.)]

"Those who lived in the corn country," as Herodotus terms it, were particular for th