SECTION I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE DISCOVERY, CHARACTERS, ETC., OF ROMAN MEDICINE STAMPS.
About two hundred years ago there were found at Nymegen, in Holland, two small, greenish, flat, square-shaped stones or tablets, each engraved on its four lateral surfaces or edges with inscriptions, the letters of which were cut incuse and retrograde. In his work on the Roman and other antiquities of Nymegen,[424] Schmidt, one of the greatest archæologists of his day, described these two stones; but he confessedly altogether failed in interpreting their nature and uses, or in reading the legends inscribed upon them.
A few years later, another distinguished Dutch antiquary, Spon of Leyden, published an account of a third tablet, similar in character to the two described by Schmidt;[425] and he suggested that they were engraved stones, which the ancient pharmacopolists used as lids for covering the jars or boxes in which their ointments, oils, or collyria were kept.[426]
Subsequently, during the currency of the last century, Chishull,[427] Caylus,[428] Walch,[429] Saxe,[430] and Gough,[431] published accounts of various other stones, analogous in their character to the two first discovered at Nymegen. And, through the labours and interpretations of these and other authors, it came at last to be generally admitted among antiquaries, that the nature of the legends upon the stones in question,—the incuse and retrograde form of their inscriptions,—and the localities in which they were found, all proved them to be medicine-stamps, employed for the purpose of marking their drugs, by the Roman doctors, who (some sixteen or seventeen centuries ago) practised at the various stations throughout Europe, that were in those olden times occupied by the colonists and soldiers of Rome. Latterly, since the beginning of the present century, various additional examples of similar Roman medicine-stamps have been discovered at different old Roman towns and stations in France, Germany, etc., and described by Tochon,[432] Sichel,[433] Duchalais,[434] Dufour,[435] and others.
These Roman medicine-stamps all agree in their general characters. They usually consist of small quadrilateral or oblong pieces, of a greenish schist and steatite, engraved on one or more of their edges or borders. The inscriptions are in small capital Roman letters, cut retrograde and intagliate (like the letters on modern seals and stamps), and consequently reading on the stone itself from right to left, but making an impression, when stamped upon wax or any other similar plastic material, which reads from left to right. The inscriptions themselves generally first contain (and that repeated on each side) the name of the medical practitioner to whom the stamp pertained; then the name of some special medicine, or medical formula; and, lastly, the disease or diseases for which that medicine was prescribed. In a few instances, the modes and frequency of using the medicine are added. In some instances, the designation of the medicine, and of the disease for which it is intended, are alone given. Perhaps still more frequently, when the number of items is limited, the name of the medical practitioner only appears, along with the name of some special medicinal preparation or remedy prepared or sold by him. And sometimes the stamps present merely the appellation of the medicine alone, without either the name of the practitioner who vended it, or the name of the disease against which it was supposed to be efficacious.
To this brief description one more curious fact remains to be added,—namely, that in almost all, if not in all, the Roman medicine-stamps hitherto discovered, the medicines inscribed upon them are drugs for affections of the eye and its appendages; and the diseases, when specified upon them, are always ophthalmic diseases. Hence it may, with great probability, be concluded, that either these stamps were used by oculists alone, or they were used by the general medical practitioner in marking his eye-medicines only. On this account some authors have not inaptly described them under the special designation of Roman Ophthalmic or Oculist stamps.
The number of the stamps that have already been discovered amply proves that ophthalmic diseases must have been extremely frequent in the sites of the old Roman colonies spread throughout western Europe; and although only three such oculist-stamps are as yet described as having been found within the confines of Italy itself,[436] yet the frequent references to individual oculists at Rome by Celsus, Galen, and others, and the elaborate descriptions of eye-diseases left us by the various Greek and Roman medical authors, who practised in the Eternal City during the time of the empire, alike testify to the fact, that these diseases were also sufficiently common in the Roman capital, and that many of the fellow-citizens of Horace could probably personally apply the well-known description which the poet gives of himself:—
Hic oculis ego nigra meis Collyria lippus
Illinere.
Galen, Celsus, Ætius, Paulus Ægineta, etc., all describe the different diseases of the eye with care and minuteness; and the Roman practitioners had evidently studied these affections, and their specific distinctions, with no small degree of attention. In modern times medical literature has been enriched with more complete and elaborate monographs upon the diseases of the eye, than upon the diseases of any other single organ of the body. But, perhaps, few of these monographs describe a larger number of ophthalmic diseases than was professed to be known and discriminated in those distant times when Galen wrote and practised. This author, in the 16th chapter of his book, entitled Introductio seu Medicus enumerates and defines nosologically not less than one hundred and twenty-four diseases to which the eye and its appendages are liable.[437]
In the management of these diseases of the eye, the Roman practitioners used, as we shall afterwards see, bleeding, antiphlogistics, scarification, and other appropriate constitutional and local treatment. But the practical part of their treatises, referring to ophthalmic affections, is specially loaded with collyria—professedly of use in almost every stage of every disease of the eye.[438] Galen speaks of Asclepiades describing in his works a plentiful forest of collyria (collyriorum silva).[439] In his book, De Compositione Medicamentorum secundum Locos, Galen has himself left us formulæ for upwards of two hundred of the ancient collyria. Ætius gives as great, if not a greater number. The “Opus de Compositione Medicamentorum” of Myrepsus contains recipes for eighty-seven ophthalmic collyria; and the works of Scribonius Largus, Celsus, Actuarius, Oribasius, Alexander Trallianus, Marcellus, Paulus Ægineta, etc., present us with abundance of formulæ for the same class of preparations.
These collyria were composed of very various,[440] and in some instances of very numerous, ingredients. But most of them which had attained any great degree of reputation, seem (like the compound formulæ, or prescriptions in our modern pharmacopœias), to have each passed under a short specific name, by which they were no doubt readily and generally recognised by the profession, and perhaps also by the public, in those ancient times. The specific appellations of the individual collyria were derived from different sources.
Some of them were known under the names of the oculists who invented or employed them. Thus Galen gives recipes for the collyria of Asclepiades, of Philoxenis, of Capiton, of Zoilus, of Cassius, of Sosandrus, of Phaedrus, of Syneros, of Hermeius, of Erasistratus, of Marcus, of Antonius Musa; the collyrium of Sergius, the Babylonian oculist; the collyrium of Philip of Cæsarea; and many others.[441] Occasionally the appellation under which the collyria were known was derived from some of their more marked physical properties, as the “collyrium Chloron appellatum,” from the green colour of the preparation; the Cirrhon, from its yellowish tint; Euchron, from its agreeable hue (a colore bono dictum); the collyrium Cygnus, from its white or swan-like hue;[442] the Aromaticum, from its pleasant odour; and so forth. One or other of the principal ingredients entering into its composition seems to have given the name under which other collyria were known, as the Nardinum, from its containing spikenard; the collyrium Diasmyrnes (δια, with, and σμυρνα, myrrh), from its containing myrrh; the Diarrhodon, from its containing roses, etc. Occasionally the collyrium seems to have derived its name and fame from some great person whom it had been fortunate enough to benefit or to cure. Thus, for example, Galen gives a recipe for the collyrium which Phlorus used in the case of Antonia, the mother of Drusus; for the “collyrium Harmatium,” which King Ptolemy used, etc. One was termed Achariston, from its cheapness; and this collyrium repeatedly occurs on the oculist-seals. Another was termed Atimeton, from its supposed great value. But perhaps the most common mode of appellation was the use of some recommendatory name, advertising the supposed high qualities of the drug. Thus the old Greek and Roman authors give various species of the collyrium Monohemeron,—so named from its being alleged to effect a cure in a single day; others are designated the Miraculum, the Mysterium, the Nectar collyrium (Nectarium); the Royal (Collyrium Basilicon); the Royal Indian (Collyrium Indicum Regale); the gold-like (Isochryson); the divine (Isotheon), etc. etc. And lastly, a collyrium was often known under some high-sounding but unmeaning name, such as the collyrium Olympus, Proteus, Phœnix, Phyon, Sphærion, Philadelphium, etc. etc.
Under such designations the principal collyria of the Roman oculists were known and used (like the one invented and boasted of by Galen) “per omnes gentes quibus imperant Romani;” and it is under such special appellations that we find these different collyria mentioned in the inscriptions engraved upon the old oculist-stamps, which have been turned up among the ruins of their ancient colonial stations.
Above sixty Roman oculist-stamps have now been discovered in different parts of Western Europe, but particularly in Germany, France, and Holland. Some time ago one was found about ten miles east of Edinburgh; and it is principally with the view of describing this, and along with it the other specimens that have been detected in the British Islands, that I have ventured to draw up the present imperfect essay. I have been the more induced to do so because this Scottish stamp is remarkable, both as being found on almost the very frontier of the ancient Roman empire, and as being one of the most perfect yet discovered. Besides, I entertain a strong hope that such a publication as the present may perhaps be fortunate enough to lead, through the zeal of some members of the profession, to the detection in this country of additional examples of these curious remains of our Roman medical predecessors.
In treating, in the following sections, of the individual Roman medicine-stamps that have been found in Great Britain, I shall begin with some account, first, of the specimen found at Tranent, and of two other undescribed specimens contained in the British Museum. Afterwards I shall notice the other similar stones or tablets that have been hitherto brought to light in these islands, in an order chronologically in reference to the dates at which they severally happened to be rediscovered in those localities in which they had lain concealed and buried for many a long century. And lastly, I shall attempt to offer some general remarks upon the probable uses of the medicine-stamps; the nature of the drugs and the character of the diseases mentioned upon them; the names, status, and residences of their proprietors; and various other correlative points.