_Andrew Gryphius_ teaches us, that a good mummy ought to be reddish, light, greasy, and with some odour, but as the embalming materials vary much, as well as their quality, the bodies being more or less well preserved, and it is even possible they may be poisonous, it has appeared expedient to compose a mummy methodically digested. Among the numerous formulæ for officinal _mummies_, we shall content ourselves with citing here that of _Crollius_.
_Mummy of Crollius._ “Choose the body of a hanged person, preferring one with red hair, because in this sort of temperament the blood is thinner; the flesh impregnated with aromatics is better, being filled with sulphur and balsamic salt; it ought to be about twenty-four years of age, healthy, whole, and of good constitution; you will take pieces of the flesh of this corpse, _they would be still better if taken from the body of a living man_; notably, from the thighs, buttocks, &c.; strip them of their arteries, nerves, veins, and fat, and then wash them well with spirits of wine; then expose them to the sun and moon for two days, during mild and dry weather, to the end that the action of the rays of light of these two planets, particularly of the sun, may exalt and liberate the principles concentered in the flesh; powder it with myrrh, styrax, aloes, saffron, which constitute the basis of the elixir proprietatis of Paracelsus; having previously rubbed the flesh with true balm, macerate it for twelve or fifteen days in a well corked vessel with first quality spirits of wine and salt, which form of themselves a species of balm: at the end of this time withdraw the flesh, let it drain, and dry in the sun; let them again, for the same space of time, and in the same manner, macerate in a similar fluid, and expose it afterwards to the sun and fire, in the same manner they do hams; flesh thus prepared will be found to be an excellent mummy.”
Conceding that the use of the mummy in medicine is one of the strangest and most extravagant abuses of empyricism, the officinal mummy of _Crollius_ must be considered as an improvement, inasmuch as it is divested of the dangers attached to other mummies; it was even a benefit, for this remedy divested of the marvellous, reduced to the level of a common drug, was justly appreciated and soon forgotten. The art of embalming among the Egyptians and Guanches, was carried to a degree of perfection attained by no other nation who followed their example. And, nevertheless, what are the mummies of these countries? They are, according to the definition of R. P. Kircher, bodies stuffed and filled with odoriferant, aromatic, and balsamic drugs, capable of arresting the progress of putrid decomposition. Numerous incisions enabled the preservative matter to enter the cavities and deep tissues: agreeably to the relations of Herodotus, of Diodorus Sicculus, and of Porphyrus, the cranium was emptied either through the nostrils, or by an opening made in one of the orbits: the contents of the thorax and abdomen were withdrawn and placed in a trunk. “The Egyptians,” says Plutarch, “drew the intestines from the dead bodies, and, after having exposed them to the sun, cast them away as the cause of all the sins committed by man.”