[439] “Etiam Asclepiades plurimam et optimam tum aridorum tum liquidorum collyriorum conscripsit silvam.” See Kühn’s edit. of Galen, vol. xii. p. 226. Asclepiades, who enjoyed during his life high professional popularity at Rome, seems to have flourished in the century preceding the commencement of the Christian era; and the expression of Galen (sylva collyriorum) consequently shows us the great number and extent of the collyria known and used even at that early period. For notices of the time and character of Asclepiades, see Pliny’s Historia Naturalis, lib. xxv. cap. 7; Grumpert’s Asclepiades Bithyni Fragmenta, Vinar. 1794; Burdach’s Scriptorum de Asclepiade Index, Leipzig, 1800.
[440] In the following passage Galen tersely enumerates the very varied general ingredients, and general therapeutic effects, of the numerous collyria used by the Roman practitioners of his day:—“Nam et liquores, et succi, et semina, et fructus, et plantarum particulæ, ocularibus compositionibus induntur, veluti etiam non pauca ex iis, quæ metallica appellantur; aliqua quidem extreme austera, et acerba, atque aeria; aliqua vero his moderatiora et tamen fortia; quemadmodum item aliqua omnia mordacitatis expertia, ac lenissima per lotionem reddita.”—De Compositione Medicam. secundum Locos, cap. i.; Kühn’s edition, vol. xii. p. 699.
[441] Celsus, in the same way, enumerates and describes the collyria of Philon, of Dionysius, of Cleon, of Theodotius, of Euelpides (qui ætate nostra maximus fuit ocularius medicus), of Nileus, of Hermon, etc. See his Medicinæ Libri, lib. vi.
[442] Appellantur talia a medicis collyria libiana et cygni, ob colorem quidem album.—Galen, de Compos. Med. secundum Locos, cap. i. Kühn’s edition, vol. xii. p. 708.
[443] See Stuart’s Caledonia Romana, p. 154; New Statistical Account of Edinburghshire, p. 254, etc., for descriptions of the Roman remains at Inveresk.
[444] Medicæ Artis Principes: De Medicamentis Liber, p. 273.
[445] Medicæ Artis Principes: De Compositione Medicamentorum Liber Comp. xxvi. p. 198.
[446] Kühn’s Edit. of Galen, vol. xii. pp. 753 and 774.
[447] Cornarius’ Latin Translation in Medicæ Artis Principes, p. 432.
[448] Kühn’s Edit. of Galen, vol. xii. p. 699.