Not only is there a magnificent material civilization, but in records so marvellously preserved in stone we may see, as in a glass, here clearly, there darkly, the picture of man's search after righteousness, the earliest impressions of his moral awakening, the beginnings of the strife in which he has always been engaged for social justice and for the recognition of the rights of the individual.

But above all, earlier and more strongly than in any other people, was developed the faith that looked through death, to which, to this day, the noblest of their monuments bear an enduring testimony.

With all this, it is not surprising to find a growth in the knowledge of practical medicine; but Egyptian civilization illustrates how crude and primitive may remain a knowledge of disease when conditioned by erroneous views of its nature.
At first, the priest and physician were identified, and medicine never became fully dissociated from religion.

Only in the later periods did a special group of physicians arise who were not members of priestly colleges.( 6) Maspero states that the Egyptians believed that disease and death were not natural and inevitable, but caused by some malign influence which could use any agency, natural or invisible, and very often belonged to the invisible world.

"Often, though, it belongs to the invisible world, and only reveals itself by the malignity of its attacks: it is a god, a spirit, the soul of a dead man, that has cunningly entered a living person, or that throws itself upon him with irresistible violence.