1. Burnet John, Early Greek philosophy (London, 1930), 201, n.4.
2. Evidence of Egyptian medical practice may be found in the Edwin Smith surgical papyrus and the Ebers and Hearst papyri. However, it has been claimed that the former is in the true sense scientific (see, for example, Breasted J.H., The Edwin Smith surgical papyrus (Chicago, 1930), i, 14). Similarly, Henry Sigerist finds in the Ebers papyrus a rational attitude anticipating “without recourse to the gods” the “views and methods of the Presocratic philosophers of Greece” (A history of medicine, i: Primitive and archaic medicine (New York, 1951), 355). But as magic is elsewhere prevalent in the Ebers papyrus and Breasted's claim is a false impression deriving its plausibility from the fact that the afflictions dealt with in the Edwin Smith are the result of observable physical causes and thus had little or no connection with the malignant demons of disease, the standpoint of both these authors should be rejected.
3. There is a good discussion of this background in Lloyd G.E.R., Magic, reason and experience (Cambridge, 1979), 264–7.