Medicine and Magic consequently became intimately associated, and
useful facts, superstitious practices, and conscious and unconscious
deceptions, became blended into a mosaic which formed a fixed and
reverenced System of Medicine. Again the supernatural powers were
called in and the credit of the revelation of this Art, that is its
total fabric, was attributed either to a divine being who had brought
it from above, or to some gifted and inspired creature, who in
consequence had been admitted into the family of the deities.
In Egypt Osiris and Isis, brother and sister, and at the same time
husband and wife, were worshipped as the revealers of medical knowledge
among most other sciences. Formulas credited to Isis were in existence
in the time of Galen, but even that not too critical authority rejected
these traditions without hesitation. In ancient Egypt, however, the
priests who held in their possession all the secrets of medicine
claimed Isis as the founder of their science. Some old legends
explained that she acquired her knowledge of medicine from an angel
named Amnael, one of the sons of God of whom we read in the book of
Genesis. The science thus imparted to her was the price she exacted
from him for the surrender of herself to him. The son of Isis, Horus,
was identified by the Greeks with their Apollo, and to him also the
discovery of medicine is attributed.
[Illustration: ISIS.