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20 of health and nursing. In the light of present knowledge the nations of Africa and Asia show the greatest antiquity, but they do not give equal clues to medical progress in the sphere of nursing. China, for instance, with her strange and exceedingly antique medical lore, leaves us completely in the dark as to the work of men or women in the nursing care of the sick. But her neighbours, India and Ceylon, have venerable records showing a high state of development in those lines, even according to our modern ideas, while Egypt has proofs of a remarkable civilization dating back to 6000 B.C., and medical records nearly as old. Of all purely medical records so far discovered and deciphered the oldest are Egyptian. Six sacred books dealing wholly with medical subjects cover the period, it is believed, from 1552 back to the year 4688 B.C. One especially celebrated papyrus is described as an encyclopædia of medicine as practised by the Egyptians in the sixteenth century before the Christian era. Many diseases and surgical operations known today are carefully described and classified therein, while more than seven hundred drugs of the vegetable, mineral, and animal kingdoms are enumerated and classified. The description of the preparation of these