Athothis : a satire on modern medicine / by Thomas C. Minor.
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was painted deep blue, ornamented by a single silver star, or Isis in heaven. The walls were covered by a paper of unique design, the frieze representing a mass of writh- ing green serpents with ruby eyes; the dado, brown monkeys stretching long hairy arms, and climbing the branches of a banyan tree; the open space between frieze and dado was filled with a floral design composed of fig leaves, Balanites iEgyptica—the sacred heart of Horus, and the trefoil—emblem of the three in one mys- tery, or Egyptian trinity. In one corner of the room rested a large sarcophagus, with its hideous lid removed and leaning against the wall, while within this ancient burial casket reclined a swaddled mummy from the necropolis of Memphis. A low table, covered with retorts, test tubes, chemicals in bottles, hu- man bones, a grinning white skull, morbid anatomical specimens in alcohol, and a microscope, stood in the center of the apartment. A few leather-covered chairs, studded with huge brass nails, were scattered around; and the only remaining nooks were filled by large walnut book-cases, containing musty-looking tomes bound in parchment, the titles of which were delicately marked on the back in the blackest of India ink. The works of Hippocrates, Galen, Rhazes, and Avicenna were particu- larly noticeable in this collection. The oddest of all the oddities visible, however, was Doctor Paulus Androcydes, physician, chemist, Egypt- ologist, delver in the occult sciences, investigator of all eastern mysteries. Seated at one end of the study table, with his huge blue goggles protruding from each side of a very prominent nose, his head, even at a short distance, resembled that of a gigantic Arctic owl—this effect being heightened by an abundant suit of bushy hair of snowy