Athothis : a satire on modern medicine / by Thomas C. Minor.
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on the throng of merry revelers, who, seated at long tables, with clinking glasses of foaming nectar, keep time to the sweet strains of harmony, borne to us on the beer-haunted zephyrs." " Why allude to beer and music in the same breath ?" asked Paulus Androcydes, with evident signs of spiritual irritation. " Because in Utopia the two seem inseparable," an- swered Athothis, smilingly. " I suppose you will claim that the ancient Egyptians had better beer than these moderns," quoth Paulus An- drocydes, tauntingly. " Hast tasted the amber foam, distilled here ?" " No !" replied Athothis, firmly ;" nor do I care to touch this delightful compound of spoiled rice, old corn, glucose, and cocculus indicus, or perhaps stramonium and strych- nia. My spiritual palate rejects the potions of the age with disgust. Isis, who invented the process of extract- ing pure grape juice—the real unfermented wine—would never have handed a mug of your modern drink to her beloved Osiris." " You had no wine in Egypt of old," remarked Paulus Androcydes ; " for Herodotus claims that no grapes were grown in the Nile country, and that your liquors were made from barley." " I deny this statement!" said Athothis, indignantly. " Herodotus was mistaken ; for, gaze at our most ancient monuments and hieroglyphics at Memphis and Thebes, that present representations of the preparation of wine juice. The first fermented juice was invented long before my day and generation, by that evil spirit, Set, who, desiring to make whole races of people his slavish sub- jects, gave alcohol to the world, in order to create mad-