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.
SECTION VI.
STAMP NO. V.—FOUND AT BATH.
This stamp was found, in the year 1731, at Bath, a well-known Roman station. It was discovered in a cellar in the Abbey-yard. Shortly afterwards the stamp was exhibited to the Antiquarian Society of London by Mr. Cutler. Mr. Mitchell of Bristol, who possessed the stone about the middle of the last century, submitted it also for examination to the Royal Society of London. I have, through Mr. Norman of Bath, and other friends in England, attempted to trace out the present proprietor of the stamp, with a view of ascertaining more correctly the exact nature of the inscriptions upon it; but these efforts have been quite unsuccessful.
Mr. Lethieullier presented to the London Antiquarian Society plaster casts of the inscriptions on the stamp; and three of these plaster impressions of it are still preserved in the London Antiquarian Museum. These plaster casts, however, are very imperfect; and the lettering upon them is now unfortunately defective at some of those very points that are otherwise the most difficult to decypher.
Manuscript notices of this Bath medicine-stamp exist in the Minute-books of the Antiquarian Society for 1744 (vol. iv. p. 210), and for 1757 (vol. viii. p. 29); the last is with an impression taken with ink from the inscriptions. For copies of these I am deeply indebted to the polite kindness of Mr. Akerman, the distinguished secretary to the Society. The outline in Pl. II., No. V., presents a copy of a rude drawing of the Bath stamp given in the Minute-book of the Antiquarian Society for April 27, 1732.[481] Mr. Akerman has also obligingly furnished me with this sketch, which is interesting as giving us the form of the stone. On the exposed sides of this sketch there is given retrograde, as on the original stone, one of the inscriptions. This inscription the engraver has entered in the plate, as corrected from the pertaining plaster-cast in the museum; and below it, in the plate, is a reversed impression of this inscription.
ROMAN MEDICINE STAMPS.