[568] See, for example, Gruter’s Inscriptiones Romanæ, vol. ii. p. DCCLXXXIII. 2; CML. 3; MXXVII. 4.
[569] Notice of a stamp used by a Roman oculist or empiric, discovered in Ireland. Archæological Journal, p. 354.
[570] Much stranger relics than Roman coins or medicine-stamps have been found in Ireland. Above fifty Chinese porcelain seals, with legends, etc., inscribed upon them in ancient Chinese characters, have now been discovered in different parts of Ireland, and generally in localities indicating that they had lain entombed for many long ages. See Smith in London and Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for March 1840; and Getty’s Notices of Chinese Seals found in Ireland, Belfast, 1850.
[571] See Ledwich’s Antiquities of Ireland, p. 45—Roman coins found at New Grange. A celebrated passage in Tacitus proves that, even as early as the first century of the Christian era, the Irish seaports were better known to the merchants of these times than those of Britain were—(“Melius aditus, portusque per commercia, et negotiatores cogniti”). See Agricolæ Vita.
[572] Hildebrand states, that in the northern or Scandinavian districts of Europe there have been found “Roman silver coins from about the middle of the first to the commencement of the third century (Vespasianus to Severus Alexander); but especially those of Hadrianus, Antoninus Pius, Aurelius, and Commodus. Along with them,” he continues, “are sometimes found various bronze articles, as statuettes, vases, and ornaments of various kinds of Roman workmanship, and apparently of the same age. These coins, etc., are usually found about the islands of Gothland and Oland, and in Scanïa. The coins are worn and clipped, so that often the legends and reverses are defaced, and the portrait alone tells by whom they were struck. The reason of this is (he suggests), that the coins came to the north after long voyages. As the Roman eagles were never planted on Swedish soil, these coins, etc., must either have been brought by the northern pirates from Roman possessions, or by merchants trading with Roman subjects. Only one gold coin (of Titus), and one ? (of Faustina the elder), are as yet known to have been found in the North.” See Hildebrand’s Monnaies Anglo-Saxonnes du Cabinet Royal de Stockholm. Introduction, pp. vi. vii. note.
[573] See the Pharmacopœia Londonensis for 1662, p. 48.
[574] See Ainslie’s Materia Indica, vol. i. p. 513; and Royle’s Antiquities of Hindoo Medicine, p. 102.
[575] I shall quote Galen’s own graphic account of his personal visit and observations:—“At the mine in Cyprus, in the mountains of the Soli, there was a great cave dug in the mountain, at the right side of which, that is to say, on our left hand as we entered, there was a passage into the mine, in which I saw certain specimens of the three substances stretched upon one another like zones, the lowest being that of sori, upon it chalcitis, and then that of misy. In process of time the chalcitis changes into misy by degrees, and the sori can change into chalcitis, but requires a much longer space of time. So that it is no wonder that these three substances should be possessed of homogeneous (similar) powers, as differing from one another in tenuity and density of their parts—the grossest being the sori, and the finest the misy, whereas chalcitis possesses an intermediate power. When burnt, they become more attenuant, but less styptic.”—Adams’ Paulus Ægineta, vol. iii. note, p. 400. (Kühn’s Galen, vol. xii. p. 226.)
[576] See his Edition of Paulus Ægineta, vol. iii. notes in pp. 253, 400, and 402.
[577] Opera, lib. v. cap. 117, p. 370.