Palla Ákos szerk.: Az Országos Orvostörténeti Könyvtár közleményei 10-11. (Budapest, 1958)

while our therapeutic relics are far more ancient, and therapeutic strives may be found even among animals. It was in the concept of animism that illness became a property of demons, and with the division between the notions of good and evil getting more and more marked, the correlation betwean nines and the principle of evil is intensified to attain finally its fultnes in the classical dualism of the Zoroastrian religion. Therapeutic inability further contributed to the development of supernatural intei~pretation of sicknesses. In times past man got acquainted with medicaments by experience, but their effect of altering the functions of the organism was again attributed to supernatural factors. Thus, what actually happened, was that an incorrect interpretation of natural phenomena led to magic. With the development of morality illness as considered as a punishment of God. This is particularly manifest in Babilónia. In Egypt illness is rarely considered as a punishment. Our knowledge of Egyptian medicine is hindered by many obstacles. It is to Grapow and his collaborators, as well as to Lefebvre that we owe the credit for an adequate picture of ancient Egyptian medical science gained by their analysis of medical texts. But by no means could we admit such audacious conclusions, as are drawn by Ebbeli, who substitutes Old Egyptian definitions of diseases by Bilharzia, herpes tonsurans, pterygium, scurvy, asthma, gonorrhoea, and the like. Were this the case, Old Egyptians would transcend by far the science not only of Hippocrates and Galen, but even that of Paracelsus and Vesalius. It is quite natural that such diseases might have occurred in ancient Egypt, and surely certain symptoms were recognized, but no pathognomic evaluations have been recorded before Galen. These symptoms figure in the medical science of ancient Egypt and also of other archaic peoples e. g. Babylonians, as collective terms, and indeed, fever, among others, is called by different attributes in Babylonia, But on what authority could we speak, even in the figurative sense, of asthma in ancient Egypt. where"cough" was alleged to be „in the belly" (srj. t m h. t.) and related to the stomach (the analysis of the words is Grapow's). Archaic adaptation of modern medical terminology requires much circumspection, lest it lead to grave errors. Thus, no more can we consider as well-founded Ebbel's assertion of „aaa" being synonymous with hematuria (which, according to Grapow, is moreover a philological error), and the hwrt worm with Bilharzia, even if such eggs