SECTION V.
STAMP NO. IV.—FOUND AT COLCHESTER.
The first Roman medicine-stamp discovered in Great Britain was described about a hundred and thirty years ago by Mr. Chishull in the learned “Dissertatio De Nummo ϹΚωΠΙ,” which he addressed to Haym, and which this last-mentioned author has published in the preface to his second volume of the Tesoro Brittanico.
The stamp had been found some years previously at Colchester, a well-known and extensive Roman colonial station. Mr. Chishull believed it to have belonged to some old Roman Iatraliptes, or curer by ointments.[467] The following is a copy of the inscription on this Colchester stamp, as given by Chishull:—
1. QIULMURRANIMELI
NUMADCLARITATEM.
2. QIULMURRANISTAGIU
MOPOBALSAMATADCAP.
And Mr. Chishull interpreted these inscriptions thus:—“Quinti Julii Murranii Melinum, sive ex malis cotoneis oleum, ad claritatem oculorum faciens. Iterumque, Quinti Julii Murranii stagium opobalsamatum, sive myrrhæ oleum opobalsamo permixtum, ad cap. i.e., ad caput medicandum utile.”
In this interpretation, Mr. Chishull seems to have fallen into more than one important error, as we shall endeavour to show by considering the two inscriptions in detail.
1. Q. JULII MURRANI MELINUM AD CLARITATEM.—The Melinum of Q. (Quintus?) Julius Murranus, for clearness of vision.
Two or three varieties of the collyrium Melinum are given by Galen.[468] Thus, in his list of collyria he gives formulæ for the Melinum of Lucius; for the Melinum atarachum (i.e. against the taraxis); and for a Melinum delicatum, fitted for those who could not bear the irritation of any powerful medicament.
Different opinions have been expressed in relation to the origin and signification of the term Melinum. Walch,[469] like Chishull, derives the term from “malum” (μῆλον), an apple, supposing it to be the principal ingredient in the collyrium. And certainly Pliny and Paulus Ægineta speak of an oil termed melinum,[470] being made from the quince (Malum Cydoneum); and the flower of the plant is described by Pliny as useful in inflammation of the eyes. But no “malum” enters into the composition of any of the three Melina collyria, which I have referred to in Galen.
The best variety of alum seems, in ancient times, to have come from the island of Melos; and, according to Pliny, this drug was consequently termed Melinum. It was believed to be useful in discussing granulations of the eyes (oculorum scabritias extenuat).[471] Hence Saxe (p. 29) and Tochon (p. 18) have conjectured that the alum or Melinum of Pliny was the Melinum which has been found inscribed on several oculist-stamps. But again, the same objection holds,—namely, that in none of the collyria Melina of Galen was alum a component ingredient.
In his observations, however, upon the different forms of emplastra (and many of which were named Melina), Galen gives a sufficient explanation of the origin of this term as it was applied to plasters; and the same holds, no doubt, also in reference to its application to collyria. According to his own explanation, it was a term significant merely of the colour of the resulting medicament, like the green, brown, etc., plasters and collyria, named chloron, cirrhon, etc. etc. Gesner, Cooper, and other philologists, lay down Melinum as an adjective, meaning yellow. And perhaps the term was originally derived from the yellow colour of the quince or μῆλον, in the same way as the citrine (Unguentum Citrinum), which is still common in modern pharmaceutical language, was a term originally derived from the yellow colour of the citron (κιτριον) or lemon, and was applied to designate ointments, etc., of that special tint. In further proof of this origin and signification of the term Melinum, I may add, that, in mixing together the ingredients contained in the collyrium melinum delicatum of Galen (vol. xii. p. 769), I find that a yellow or orange-coloured fluid is the result. The yellowish tint of the emplastra melina was, as Galen tells us, generally, but not always, derived from their containing verdigris, altered by a moderate boiling with the other component ingredients.[472] The collyria Melina of Galen contain ceruse and calamine in their composition.
The Melinum is professed, in Murranus’ stamp, to be efficacious for the clearing of the eyesight (ad claritatem). The Melina collyria of Galen are all alleged by him to have effects conducive to this object—viz. the removing of cicatrices and calli, and every weakness of vision (omnem hebetudinem visus).
2. Q. JULII MURRANI STAGIUM (STACTUM) OPOBALSAMATum AD CAP (CALigines).—Q. Julius Murranus’s Opobalsamic Stactum, or Opobalsamic Eye-drops, for dimness or blindness.
Mr. Chishull read Stagium instead of Stactum, the CT of the latter word having been mistaken by him for GI. Mr. Forster showed to the London Antiquarian Society,[473] in 1767, a plaster-cast of what was doubtlessly this same Colchester stamp, and gave the reading correctly in the second inscription as Stactum.
The Latin designation Stactum, analogous to the Greek terms Stacton, Enstacton, and derived from the verb σταζω (I drop), denoted any liquid collyrium, applied by drops into the eye—“collyria enstacta, hoc est, instillatitia, appellata.”[474]
A collyrium, with the appellation Stactum or Staticon, is described by Marcellus,[475] Myrepsus,[476] Paulus Ægineta,[477] etc.; and Aetius[478] gives a chapter of collyria under this designation. In this chapter Aetius describes five collyria Stactica; and, of these, four contain the Opobalsam[479] as an ingredient, showing the origin and propriety of the term Opobalsamatum in the inscription on the seal.
Chishull read the last three letters of the inscription CAP, and thought that the oil was serviceable for head diseases. But if the inscription is not really CAL, the P has in all probability been substituted by an error of the engraver for L (CAL), an abbreviation for Caligines. In confirmation of this opinion, I may remark that the same inscription occurs at greater length on an oculist-stamp found at Daspich in France; and in it the Stactum Opobalsamatum is professed to remove Caligines.[480] There is, indeed, little doubt but that Murranus of Colchester vended, of old, his Opobalsamic Eye-drops for the same alleged purpose. This quality of “visum acuens” is attributed to two out of the four forms of Opobalsamic Eye-drops mentioned by Aetius. And the Stactum is (according at least to the testimony of Myrepsus) “ad acumen visus mirabile admodum.”—P. 660.