TAKE MICE WHEN ILL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 17409, 6 November 1930, Page 11

TAKE MICE WHEN ILL

OLD BELIEF PERSISTS LONDON, October 20. “In a pro-ijyiiastic cemetery qf upper Egypt I discovered in the stomachs of small children who died nearly 00 centuries ago the remains of mice skinned and oaten just before the death of the children, ” writes Professor Elliott *Smith, in his introduction to a new book, “The Papyrus L tiers. The work contains t lie earliest treatise on medicine, translated by Mr Cyril Bryan. There is reason to believe, Professor Smith goes on to say, that faith in the mouse ns a life-giving substance was due to the fact that, after an inundation, mice emerged from the cracks in the dried mud. Egyptians then, as now, believed that the mice sprang from the mud and represented the quintessence of the life-giving Nile. The belief in the virtues of mice us a drug persisted throughout the ages, and is surreptitiously practised in England to-day by thousands, without tho least suspicion of its origin. Professor Ellipft (Smith says that evidences of .malignant disease are very rare in Ancient. Egypt. The earliest instance of tubercular curies is to be .found about 2000 B.G. Cancer traces are found only long after the Pyramids era. Decayed teeth, wero commonest among the wealthy! Despite statements to the contrary, tooth-stopping was nov<|r practised.