C. the operation for the removal of cataract
from the eye was performed among them; one of the most delicate and
difficult feats of surgery, only attempted by us in the most recent
times. "The papyrus of Berlin" states that it was discovered, rolled up
in a case, under the feet of an Anubis in the town of Sekhem, in the
days of Tet (or Thoth), after whose death it was transmitted to King
Sent, and was then restored to the feet of the statue. King Sent
belonged to the second dynasty, which flourished 4751 B.C., and the
papyrus was old in his day. This papyrus is a medical treatise; there
are in it no incantations or charms; but it deals in reasonable
remedies, draughts, unguents and injections. The later medical papyri
contain a great deal of magic and incantations.
"Great and splendid as are the things which we know about oldest Egypt,
she is made a thousand times more sublime by our uncertainty as to the
limits of her accomplishments. She presents not a great, definite idea,
which, though hard to receive, is, when once acquired, comprehensible
and clear. Under the soil of the modern country are hid away thousands
and thousands of relics which may astonish the world for ages to come,
and change continually its conception of what Egypt was.
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