Dear Sir, LETTER CXLVIII. From the same. Cockspur-street, Dec. 29, 1785. I came to Town yesterday, as I purposed; but I had a slight cold; and the weather was otherwise too unfavourable for me to venture out in the evening which prevented my calling upon you. I send you with this letter my Treatise, which has been entirely altered in respect to arrangement; and many things are added. You will probably have it copied by your amanuensis, and then send me his copy; or let me rather have my own, that I may be able to correct the press by it. It was not my design to appear again in print; though I have a variety of things by me, which may one day see the light, if those, who come after me, shall think them of sufficient consequence. As this Treatise is only a part of a larger work, I have been obliged to prefix a short Introduction, together with a prefatory Epistle to yourself. All this is by way of explaining my purpose, and to afford some short intelligence of those arguments which have preceded. I fear that I shall not be able to see you while I am in Town; which indeed will be only for one day beyond the present: for on Saturday I must return. I had forgot to mention, that most of the Greek quotations are translated. If there should be found one or two in the notes otherwise, the reason is, because the meaning has been previously given; and no new light could have been afforded by a translation. I am with great truth, Dear Sir, Your affectionate Friend and Servant, JACOB BRYANT. Dear Sir, LETTER CXLIX. From the same. Cypenham, Sept. 28, 1786. I am greatly obliged to you for your very kind present; which is a very elegant work, and worthy of the person whose history it contains. The engravings are well done, and the impressions very delicate. As to the propriety of prefixing Isis of Saïs, the accounts given of the Goddess warrants the application. Saïs was a city towards the upper part of Delta; in which this Deity was particularly worshiped. She was supposed to be the revealer of the Mysteries of Nature, and to have been an universal benefactress; but more especially to have presided over medicine. This science she was said to have invented; and to have first discovered the salutary use of drugs and minerals; and the essence of all beneficial plants. By these she wrought wonders; and they did not scruple to aver, that she could by her skill bestow immortality. The Professors of Medicine gave out that they were often admonished in dreams both by her and Esculapius, and forwarded in their process; so that many cures were effected by the interposition of those Deities. These things are mentioned by various authors, but especially by Diodorus Siculus, L. 1. p. 22. and Plutarch, Isis et Osiris. The Summer is past, and I have not been able to see you: for I am now never long resident in Town. I hope, however, an opportunity will happen. I am, my Dear Friend, Your ever affectionate, JACOB BRYANT. LETTER CL. Rev. G. COSTARD to Dr. LETTSOM. Dear Sir, Twickenham, Nov. 29, 1779. It is now a twelvemonth ago since I received the obliging present of your book, for which I immediately returned you my best thanks. What I said to you then, relating to Esculapius, I forget, but I know it would be but little to the purpose. I have not lost sight of him at times ever since, and pursued him through all the coins and inscriptions I could come at, but found they all came too So that I began to late to be of any service. despair of ever finding him. now found him, but think I am nearer to him than I was twelve months ago. For, meeting with a quotation from Damascius in Photius, I began to think it might serve as a clue to conduct me through this labyrinth. I will not trespass so much on your time as to transcribe all that I have collected on this subject. I shall only begin with what Damascius says, and observe, that when I formerly had minuted it down, I did not attend to it enough, till lately meeting with the passage in Reinesius, which is this: Ο εν Βηρύλῳ Ασκλη πιος εκ εςιν Ελλην, εδε Αιγυπτιος, αλλα τις επιχώριος Pov. Upon which in his note on Inscript. CXIV. he judiciously observes, "E Syrorum igitur, Phoenicumve lingua, etymon Asclepis petemus, rectius quam Græcorum." So that, with regard to the Greeks, Asclepius was a foreigner and in that supposition I am farther confirmed from two passages in Pausanias. The remains of the Phenician language are so very small that nothing can be expected from thence. But we may very well suppose it had a near affinity with the Hebrew and while I was thinking so, I accidentally opened my Hebrew Bible at Ezekiel v. 1, where the prophet is or תער הגלבים,dered to take a sharp instrument LXX, Ρομφαιαν οξειαν ὑπερ ξυρον Κύρεως. The word galab, or in the plural galabim, is read no where in the Bible but in this place. Our translators render it Barbers, as it really seems to signify, from the circumstances of the place, and all the other concurrent versions. But I suspected that originally it might have had a more extensive signification, and comprehended Surgeons. For in those early times, you know, Surgery made the principal part of Physic. And with this agrees Macrobius, and long before him Celsus, as I had formerly minuted down from him. As no hopes could be entertained from the Hebrew, my next concern was to have recourse to the Arabic; a language much more copious than the other, and of which there are larger remains. In this language, the verb i. e. a, in its primary sense signifies to draw; and from thence come many derivative senses, as may be seen in the Anthologia Veterum, published by Schultens, and likewise in the 4th Consessus of Hariri, pub. lished by the same author. From this primitive sense of drawing, I suspected might come another of drawing a skin, and so closing, and healing a wound. And upon turning to Golius' and Castell's Lexicons, to my great surprise, I found my conjecture right. In this same language, the word As*, signifies Medicus Chirurgus: and thence, by combining these two words, we have ul Asgleb, or, as B and P are easily changed in the pronunciation, the Arabs having no P in their language, l * This seems to be a mistake for Asy. J. M. G. |