Part I. p. 10.) In 1593, “the Lepper House [of Glasgow] was charged to

receive none but townsfolks, and all Leppers were banished the town;” and in 1594 the Kirk-Session “beseeches the magistrates to put all Leppers out of toun, for fear of infection.”—(Wodrow’s _Biographical Collections_, vol. ii. part ii. pp. 40, 41.)

If there were really a new access of leprosy in Scotland about 1580-1590, the disease seems speedily to have abated, at least in Aberdeen. In 1604, when a female leper applied for admission, “the Keys of the Hospital” were given to her, showing that the place was then empty and locked up.—(_Selections from the Ecclesiastical Records of Aberdeen_, p. 34.) In May 1610 it was ordered that two merks should be given by the Kirk-Session “to the Lepper woman laitlie put in the Lepper Hous, becaus she will not gett any of the rent of the said Hous till Martenes next;” denoting, apparently, that there was but one leper in the hospital at this time.—(_Selections from the Ecclesiastical Records of Aberdeen_, pp. 73, 74.) In 1612, a female leper, “being expellit furth of this toun, as ane not meit to dwell within the same,” is allowed to take up her abode in the leper-house, although “sche be not borne and bred within this burght.”—(_Extracts from the Burgh Records of Aberdeen_, vol. ii. (1570-1625), p. 308.) I do not observe record of any later patient. Fifty years afterwards, in 1661, both the leper hospital and its chapel (erected in 1519) were ruined if not razed to the ground, “and scarcelie is the name knowne to many.”—(Gordon’s _Description of Bothe Touns of Aberdeene_, pp. 18, 19. Aberd. 1842, Spald. Club.)

Mr. Albert Way, in the _Promptorium Parvulorum_, p. 298, says—“Heutzner, who visited England during the reign of Elizabeth, speaks of the English as very subject to the disease of leprosy.” I have not Heutzner’s book at hand, but it might be looked at to see if he speaks of leprosy being prevalent in England so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

LEPER HOUSE OF RATHVEN.

The date of the first charter now extant of the leper-house at Rothfan (now Rathven) in the Enzie, was between the years 1224 and 1226, as can be shown from the list of witnesses who attest it. It may be remarked that the founder, John Bisset, is believed to have been a kinsman of that Manaser Bisset, sewer to King Henry II. of England, who founded the leper hospital of Mayden Bradley in Wilts, and whose wife Alice, an heiress, is said to have been herself a leper.—(_Monasticon Anglicanum_, vol. vi. part ii. p. 643, edit. ult.)

The hospital of Rathven still exists, but has long ceased to be occupied by lepers. Its tenants, in 1563, were simply “beidmen,” and their number had been reduced from seven to six. They had 42 marks for their ordinary charges, and £7 : 4s. for their habits. At the end of the last century every bedeman had half-an-acre of land for life, one boll of oatmeal yearly, and 9s. 6d. also yearly. At that time none of the bedemen lived in the hospital. But it was repaired not many years ago, and when the _New Statistical Account of Scotland_ was published, two of the six bedemen resided in the hospital. It stands in the village of Rathven, in the district of the Enzie, and the shire of Banff.—(_Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff_, vol. ii. pp. 142-145. Aberd. 1847, Spald. Club.)

THE KNIGHTS OF ST. LAZARUS IN SCOTLAND.

In 1296, Friar William Corbet, master of the house of St. Lazarus of Harop (Frater Willelmus Corbet, magister domus Sancti Lazari de Harop), had letters for the restitution of his lands, directed to the Sheriff of Edinburgh (a sheriffdom which then included both Haddingtonshire and Linlithgowshire), from King Edward I. of England, as overlord of Scotland.—(_Rotuli Scotiæ_, vol. i. p. 25. London, 1814.)

In 1376, King Robert II. granted a charter to his eldest son, John, Earl of Carrick, Steward of Scotland, of the lands of Prestisfelde, St. Giles’ Grange, and Spetelton, in the sheriffdom of Edinburgh, then in the King’s possession by reason of the forfeiture of the Friars of Harehope, abiding at the faith and peace of the King and kingdom of England, contrary to the faith and peace of the King and kingdom of the Scots, (racione forisfacture Fratrum de Harehope ad fidem et pacem Regis et regni Anglie, ac contra fidem et pacem nostras existencium). The grant was to lapse when the Friars of Harehope became reconciled to the faith and peace of the King and kingdom of the Scots.—(_Registrum Magni Sigilli Regum Scotorum_, p. 132. Edin. 1814.)

These notices do not enable us to fix the position of Harop or Harehope, showing only that it had lands near Edinburgh. The only other notice of the house which I have observed rather perplexes the question than otherwise. It occurs in the history of the deprivation of English priests of their Scotch benefices, given by Fordun (_Scotichronicon_, lib. xi. cap. xxi.), and, with some variations, in a memorial of a Scotch monk claiming the Priory of Coldingham, about 1422, printed in the _Priory of Coldingham_, pp. 246-258. Lond. 1841, Surtees Soc. It is here said that Harehope, or Holme, was founded by King David, the son of St. Margaret; that certain lands in Lothian were annexed to it, in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, namely Spitalton and St. Giles’ Grange; that the monks (_monachi_) and laymen of the house, being Englishmen, conspired against the realm of Scotland; that King David therefore declared their lands forfeited, and bestowed them on Walter of Wardlaw, Bishop of Glasgow, for his life; that after Bishop Wardlaw’s death the lands were given to his kinsman the Laird of Ricarton, by whose heirs they were possessed at the time this record was written. The memorial printed in the _Priory of Coldingham_ expressly quotes the Ricarton charters—“Ut patet in cartis dicti domini de Ricarton exinde confectis.” If these be still extant, they may remove the doubts which meanwhile may attach to the question whether the “Harehope or Holme” of Fordun and the Scotch Prior of Coldingham be certainly the same with the “Harehop” of the _Rotuli Scotiæ_ in 1296, and the charter of King Robert II. in 1376. The possessors of the latter are described as Friars (_fratres_), of the former as monks (_monachi_)—an all-important distinction in that age, and not at all likely to be overlooked. Then, again, Fordun and the Scotch Prior of Coldingham say nothing of the grant of the possessions of Harehope to the Earl of Carrick,—if, indeed, they do not relate grants of these possessions incompatible with the charter of King Robert II. in 1376. On the other hand, we have, both in that charter and the notices of Fordun and the Scotch Prior of Coldingham, mention of the same lands of Spitaltoun and St. Giles’ Grange as the possessions of Harehope.

The Spitaltoun here referred to may perhaps be identified with the “Spittle toun” of Upper Liberton, near Edinburgh. At the same time there is a Spitaltoun in the lands of Warristoun, near Ricarton.

In Spottiswood’s _Account of the Religious Houses in Scotland_, it is said that the hospital of St. Mary Magdalene, near Linlithgow, “was formerly governed by the Lazarites.”—(Bp. Keith’s _Catal. of Scotch Bishops_, p. 477, edit. 1824.) It is added that the hospital at Lanark “belonged likewise to this sect.” It does not necessarily follow from the words of the charter in the _Registrum de Neubotle_ (p. 149) that the Friars of St. Lazarus, there spoken of, had their Hospital in Linlithgow. The words are,—“Unam particam terre cum crofto de quarta parte illius tofti quod tenui de Fratribus de Sancto Lazaro in villa de Lynlitgu in burgagis scilicet illum particum terre que iacet ex orientali parte illius tofti.” The object here seems to be rather to indicate the position of the piece of land as being in Linlithgow than to describe the Friars of St. Lazarus as being located there.

ENDOWMENTS OF SCOTCH LEPER HOSPITALS, Part I. p. 31.

_Glasgow._—In 1593 the rental of the leper-house of Glasgow was £7 : 15s. in money, and 18 bolls of meal.—Wodrow’s _Biographical Collections_, vol. ii. part ii. p. 40; Glasg. 1848, Mait. Club.

_Rothfan or Rathven._—In 1563 the money rent of the hospital of Rathven seems to have been £35 : 4s. In 1798 the hospital had 3 acres of land, 6 bolls of oatmeal, and £3 : 15s. of money rent.—_Antiquities of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff_, vol. ii. pp. 143-145; Aberd. 1847, Spald. Club.

NUMBER OF INMATES IN LEPER HOSPITALS.

A passage in the will of “old John of Gaunt, time-honour’d Lancaster,” in 1398, seems to support the opinion expressed at p. 18, that the leper hospitals in general did not contain many patients.—“Item, jeo devise a chescun maison de lepres deinz v. lieues entour Londres charges de v. malades, v. nobles en l’onur des v. plaies principalx de Nostre Seigneur, et a ceux qi sont meyns charges, trois nobles en l’onur de la Benoit Trinite.”—(_Testamenta Eboracensia_, vol. i. p. 227; Lond. 1836. Surtees Soc.)

DATES OF THE APPEARANCE OF LEPROSY IN GREAT BRITAIN.

_Ireland._—Ireland is excluded from consideration, else proof of the existence of leprosy in that island in the end of the seventh century might be adduced. St. Finan, a native of Munster, who died between 675 and 695, “was surnamed Lobhar, or the Leper, from his having been afflicted for thirty years of his life with some cutaneous disorder.”—(Dr. Lanigan’s _Ecclesiastical History of Ireland_, vol. iii. pp. 83-88; Dublin, 1822.)

_England._—As to England, says Mr. Albert Way, “it has been affirmed that leprosy was brought into Europe by the Crusaders; in the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, however, which has been attributed to Aelfric, occurs the word ‘LEPROSUS = hreofliz, oððe, licðrowera,’ Jul. A, II. f. 123.”—(_Promptorium Parvulorum_, vol. i. p. 297; Lond. 1843. Camden Soc.)

To the instances given by Sir James Simpson, Part I., p. 39, of the occurrence of leprosy in England before the first Crusade, may be added the case of a noble Englishman of the south of England—_nobili viro sed leproso_—miraculously cured at the tomb of St. Cuthbert at Durham, as related by Reginald of Durham from the recital of a fellow-monk, Turold—“qui se hæc audisse a veteranis canonicis asseruit, in quorum presentia et aspectu hoc gestum fuit.” The canons here spoken of were ejected from Durham in 1083—thirteen years before the first Crusade. Reginald of Durham wrote before 1195. He speaks of the disease thus:—“Accidit ut lepræ morbum passim eam enutriendo incurreret, ita ut, modico interposito tempore, tota vultus illius superficies horribilis videntibus appareret. Suis etiam quandoque, sanie ulcerum difluente, factus est evitabilis; et in consortii communione nonnullis effectus intolerabilis.” Yet, when he journeyed from the south of England to the tomb of St. Cuthbert he was “nobilibus juvenum ministrantium, amicorum et parentum, constipatus agminibus.”—(_Reginaldi Dunelmensis Libbellus de Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus_, cap. xix. pp. 37-41; Lond. 1835. Surtees Soc.)

The disease was probably not unknown among the Anglo-Saxons, yet the silence of their laws (the word Leper is not to be found in the index to Thorpe’s Collection) with regard to it, contrasts strongly with the frequent enactments for its prevention in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries both in England and Scotland, and (if we allow the Welsh laws the antiquity which is claimed for them) in the tenth and eleventh centuries in Wales. May not the anomaly be explained by supposing that the disease broke out with new severity about the beginning of the twelfth century?

_Scotland._—No trace of leprosy is to be found in Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba, written in the seventh century. But of one of St. Columba’s contemporaries—St. Kentigern of Glasgow, who died about 600—it is related that in that city he cleansed lepers—“mundabat leprosos.” These are the words of his biographer, Joceline of Furnes, who wrote towards the end of the twelfth century.—(_Vit. S. Kentigerni_, cap. xxxiv.; Pinkert. _Vit. Antiq. Sanct. Scotiæ_, p. 270.) The same biographer relates that at St. Kentigern’s tomb in Glasgow lepers were cured—“leprosis cutis munditia restituitur.”—(_Vit. S. Kentigerni_, cap. xliv.; Pinkert. _Vit. Antiq. SS. Scot._, p. 295.)

So also it is related of St. Boniface of Rosemarky, who appears to have flourished in the beginning of the eighth century, that he cleansed lepers—“leprosos mundabat.” These are the words of the Breviary of Aberdeen (Proprium Sanctorum pro tempore hyemali, fol. lxx.), printed in 1510, but quoting and using older materials.

St. Aelred of Rievaux, who died in 1166, relates that lepers were cleansed at the tomb of St. Ninian at Whithern in Galloway—“ad ejus namque sacratissimum tumulum curantur infirmi, mundantur leprosi.”—(_Vit. S. Ninian_, cap. xi.) He mentions specially two cases:—

“Visi sunt præterea venire in civitatem viri duo leprosi. Qui præsumptuosum æstimantes cum lepræ contagio scabiem tangere, quasi delonge poscunt auxilium. Accedentes autem ad fontem, et sanctum arbitrantes quidquid sanctus contigerat Ninianus, lavacio illo se abluendos putarunt.... Mundantur leprosi tactu lavacio, sed meritis Niniani.”—(_Vit. S. Niniani_, cap. xi. § 4; Pinkert. _Vit. Antiq. SS. Scot._, pp. 22, 23.)

All these writers—St. Aelred of Rievaux, Joceline of Furnes, and the compiler of the Aberdeen Breviary—wrote so long after the Saints whose miracles they commemorate, that their testimony cannot avail as proof in itself of the existence of leprosy in Scotland in the seventh and eighth centuries. Besides, they speak only in general terms—“leprosos mundabat,”—which may be little or nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. But the passages which have been quoted are at least sufficient to demonstrate that in the twelfth century the existence of leprosy in Scotland from a remote age was a matter of unquestioned belief. Of the general prevalence of the disease on this side of the Tweed in that and the subsequent age, there is abundant evidence elsewhere in the Leges Burgorum and other ancient capitularies of Scotch law.

The canon of the Scotch Church, “De monitionem faciendo leprosis,” printed in the Registrum Episcopatus Aberdonensis, vol. ii. p. 32, and elsewhere, belongs to the thirteenth century, probably to the latter part of that century. If, as seems to be the case, it be merely a diocesan statute, and not a statute for the whole of Scotland, it will only show more forcibly the general prevalence of the disease. The diocese for which it was enacted was apparently Aberdeen, containing at that time about eighty parishes, and the number of lepers must have been great before it could be found necessary to guard against the injury done to the parochial clergy by the withdrawal of the dues and oblations of the inmates of the leper hospitals.

LEPROSY IN WALES.

The Venedotian Code (the Laws of the Women)—

“Should her husband be leprous, or have fetid breath, or be incapable of marital duties; if on account of one of these three things she leave her husband, she is to have the whole of her property.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 39. Lond. 1841.)

The Dimetian Code (of Women)—

“For three causes, if a woman desert her husband, she is not to lose her agweddi [dowry]; for leprosy, want of connection, and bad breath.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 255.)

The Laws of Howel Dda, according to the Gwentian Code (of Women)—

“For three causes a woman loses not her agweddi, although she may leave her husband; to wit, on account of leprosy, bad breath, and default of connection.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 365.)

These citations are from Aneurin Owen’s translation of the Welsh text of the Welsh laws, published in parallel columns with the Welsh text by the Record Commissioners. These laws are of uncertain date; they are commonly attributed to Howel Dda, but bear interpolations or alterations of much later date. The oldest MSS. of them are of the twelfth century.

I add the passages regarding lepers which occur in the Latin versions of the Welsh Laws, the oldest MSS. of which are of the thirteenth century:—

“Tribus de causis potest femina habere suum egwedy [suam dotem], licet ipsa uirum relinquat; scilicet, si sit leprosus uir; et si habeat fetidum anhelatum; et si cum ea concumbere non possit.”—(_Liber Legum Howel Da_, lib. ii. cap. xx., sec. xxxi. _Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 796; Lond. 1841.)

“Tribus de causis habebat femina suum aguedi [suam dotem], licet ipsa virum suum relinquat; id est, si leprosus sit vir; et si fetidum hanelitum habueret; et si cum ea coire non possit.”—(_Liber Legum Howel Da_, lib. ii. cap. xxiii. sec. xiii. _Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 827.)

“Leprosi cum seculum dimittunt ebedyw [_i.e._ heriot _seu_ caulp] dare debent dominis suis.”—(_Liber Legum Howel Da_, lib. ii. cap. xxii. sec. ix. _Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 797.)

The Dimetian Code (of Murder)—

“If there be a relative of the murderer, or of the murdered, who is an ecclesiastic in holy orders, or in an ecclesiastical community, or leprous, or dumb, or an idiot, such neither pays nor receives any part of galanas” [assythment, or fines for murder].—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 200.)

The Dimetian Code (Triads)—

“There are three persons, no one of whom, by law, can be a qualified judge; one of them is, a person having a defect, as one who is deaf, or blind, or leprous, or an insane person,” etc. etc.—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 200.)

The next class of passages is taken from what are called the “Anomalous Welsh Laws,” which, in the state they are now found in, are supposed to be of the sixteenth century:—

“If a person become a surety, and before the termination of the suit he should become leprous, or a monk, or blind, .... he must fulfil his promise while he lives.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 403.)

“There is to be no objection to a pleader, but for having violated his religious profession, and quitting the world, or his becoming a separated leper.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 516.)

“Three sons who are not to have patrimony—The son of a priest, the son of a leper, and the son of a man who had paid his patrimony as blood land. The son of a leper is not to have it, because God has separated him from worldly kin—that is, such son as a leper may have after being adjudged to a lazar-house; and a son a priest shall have after taking priestly orders; and the third has no patrimony, as his father, prior to him, had determined it by law.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 556. See also p. 603.)

“Three persons to whom saraad [fine for insult] is not due—A leper, a natural fool, and an alltud [an alien serf] who is not married to an innate Cymraes: And, nevertheless, there is worth in law attached to each of them, and whoever shall ill-use them and injure them in person and property is subject to a dirwy [fine or punishment].—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 656.)

“Three persons who are not to be invested with the judicial function—An inefficient person, as one that is deaf, or blind, or maimed, or leprous, or insane, or mute,” etc. etc.—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 671.)

“A leper cannot be a pleader.”—(_Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales_, p. 764.)

The Welsh term for leper is _Clafwr_, obviously an adaptation of the Latin word.

It should be kept in view that the license which the Welsh laws give to the wife to leave a leprous husband is in direct contradiction to the canon law as declared by Pope Alexander III. to the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1180:—“Mandamus quatenus si qui sunt in provincia tua viri vel mulieres qui lepræ morbum incurrunt, ut uxores viros et viri uxores sequantur, et eis conjugali affectione ministrent, sollicitis exhortationibus inducere non postponas. Si vero ad hoc induci non poterunt, eis arctius injungas ut uterque altero vivente continentiam servet. Quodsi mandatum tuum servare contempserint, vinculo excommunicationis adstringas.”—(_Corpus Juris Canonici_, vol. ii. col. 656. Edit. 1747.)

The same Pope, in the same year, decreed that lepers might marry:—“Leprosi autem si continere nolunt, et aliquam quæ sibi nubere velit invenerint, liberum est eis ad matrimonium convolare.” He settled another and more delicate point:—“Quodsi virum sive uxorem divino judicio leprosum fieri contigerit, et infirmus a sano carnale debitum exigat, generali præcepto Apostoli, quod exigitur est solvendum: cui præcepto nulla in hoc casu exceptio invenitur.”—(_Corpus Juris Canonici_, vol. ii. col. 656. Edit. 1747.)

Pope Urban III. found, in 1186, that subsequent leprosy was a sufficient reason why betrothed persons should not be compelled to marry.—(_Corpus Juris Canonici_, vol. ii. col. 657. Edit. 1747. See also col. 344.)

NOMENCLATURE OF THE DISEASE.—The terms “Leprosi” and “Elephantuosi.”

The “MS. History of the Durham Cathedral and Diocese,” referred to in Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part II. p. 77, was printed in Wharton’s _Anglia Sacra_ in 1691, and more perfectly in the _Historiæ Dunelmensis Scriptores Tres_, by the Surtees Society in 1839. The passage quoted stands thus (pp. 11, 12):—

“Præterea Hospitale de Schyreburne construxit, et elefantiosos in episcopatu suo circumquaque collectos, ibidem instituit, aptisque eorum usibus habitaculis ampliant; et ne quid sollicitudini caritatis deesset, ad eorum perpetuam sustentationem et nonnullorum susceptionem terras et ecclesias concessit et confirmavit. In geminum creditur esse bonum, quod et pauperum necessitatibus liberrime prospexit, et societatem immundorum a cohabitacione mundorum segregavit.”

“Elephantuosi” is here put as equivalent to “Leprosi.” In the Chronicle of Battle Abbey, written about 1180-1200, some slight distinction seems to be implied between the words. The writer is speaking of the Abbot Walter, who died in 1171:—

“Leprosorum maxime et elephantiosorum ab hominibus ejectioni compatiens, eos non solum non abhorrebat, verumetiam in persona propria eis frequenter ministrans, eorum manus pedesque abluendo fovebat, et intimo caritatis pietatisque affectu blanda oscula imprimebat.”—(_Chronicon Monasterii de Bello_, p. 135; Lond. 1846. Anglia Christiana.)

But, after all, the two terms may here be used merely rhetorically. There are other instances of such a tautology. Ducange (t. iii. coll. 49, 50), quotes _Elephantiæ lepra_ and “Leprosi enim vere atque Elephantia debent habere.” At the same time he cites from an old Latin-French Glossary, “ELEPHANCIA = une maniere de mesclerie.” In the same way some writers distinguish between _mesellerie_ and _cordrerie_. On the other hand, the _Catholicon Anglicum_, an Anglo-Latin Dictionary of the year 1483, has “A LEPYR = lepra, elefancia, missella.”—(_Promptorium Parvulorum_, vol. i. pp. 297, 298. Lond. 1843. Camden Soc.)

DESCRIPTION OF A LEPER.

Reginald of Durham (sometimes also called Reginald of Coldingham), a Benedictine monk, who wrote before 1195, gives the following description of a leper girl who had been for three years in the hospital at Budele, near Darlington, in the bishopric of Durham:—

“Nempe omnem facierum illius superficiem laceræ putredinis cicatrix nunquam sana totam obduxerat, et falliculis [_l._ folliculis] crudæ carnis sparsim patentibus et hiulco meatu saniem venenoso meatu rimantibus, horridam cunctis visu reddiderat. Labiorumque ipsius extrema circumquaque marcentia diriguerant, quia particulares quasdam ejus regiones usque ad profunda quædam dimensionum dispendia vis sæva diutini languoris consumendo exederat. His itaque aliisque illius aegritudinus modis corpus ejus dilaceratum periit,” etc.—(_Libellus de Vita et Miraculis S. Godrici_, p. 456. Lond. 1847. Surtees Soc.)

The leprosy is cured by a miracle at the tomb of S. Godric at Finchale, when the appearance of the face is thus described:—

“tota sana comparuit, omnisque lepræ prioris fœda scabies jam recesserat, labiaque illius sana ac tenua, facies vero tota incontacta ac clara, velut parvuli cujusdam triennis apparebat. Quæ una cum matre sospes domum rediit, quæ illo prius tota lepræ pustulis et sanie contracta pervenit.”

Among other witnesses to the miraculous cure, Ralph Haget, sheriff of Durham,

“dicebat quod facies ejus cutis licet sana, tenera sit et clara, tamen ubi cicatrices ulcerum quondam fuerant illa superficies videtur aliquantulum comparere subrufa; labiorum vero extrema quæ frustris carneis pinis fuerant valliculata, tota sunt plena atque rotunda, sed aliquanto altius prominentia.”

This was confirmed also by Norman the priest of Hailtune, who got the girl into the lepers’ hospital at Badele, near Darlington, and who subsequently showed her to his parishioners in his church.—(_Libellus de Vita et Miraculis S. Godrici_, pp. 457, 458.)

The same writer, in the same work, gives other descriptions of leprosy. A young shepherd of the north of England “lepra percussus cunctis horrori fuit.” He is miraculously cured—“tumorque omnis cum deformi rubore fugatus abscesserat, novaque coloris insoliti superficies in facie et toto corpore ipsius relucebat; et nulla omnino pustula vel cicatricis macula in ipso residendo comparuit.”—(_Lib. de Vit. et Mirac. S. Godrici_, p. 431.)

A woman—“diutino tempore toto corpore lepræ fuerat contagio maculisque cum pustulis horrende perfusa ... cunctis horrida et detestenda, nulli pene ad videndum tolerabilis fuerat.”—(_Lib. de Vit. et Mirac. S. Godrici_, p. 431.)

RANK OF THE PERSONS ATTACKED BY LEPROSY.

In 1203, a piece of land in Sudton in Kent was in dispute in the King’s court between two kinswomen—Mabel, the daughter of William Fitz Fulke, and Avicia, the widow of Warine Fitz Fulke. Among other pleas, it was urged by Avicia, that Mabel had a brother, and that his right to the land must exclude her claim. Mabel answered that her brother was a leper—“E contra dicit Mabilla quod leprosus est.” The judgment is not recorded; but the notice shows two things—(1) The doctrine of the civil death which followed leprosy; (2) The comparatively good condition of the person who in this instance was smitten with leprosy.

The case is recorded in the _Placitorum in Domo Capitulari Westmonesteriensi asservatorum Abbreviatio_, p. 39. Lond. 1811. Record Commission.

In 1280 it was certified to King Edward I. that Adam of Gangy, brother and heir of Ralph of Gangy, deceased, of the county of Northumberland, holding land of the king in chief, was struck with leprosy (_leperia percussus_), so that he could not conveniently repair to the king’s presence to pay his homage to the king (quod ad presenciam Regis ad homagium suum Regi faciendum commode accedere non potest). It was therefore ordered that Thomas of Normanville, the elder, should in lieu and turn of the king take the leper’s fealty for his lands.—(_Rotulorum Originalium in Curia Scaccarii Abbreviatio_, vol. i. p. 33. Lond. 1805.)

Here, again, we see leprosy attacking a person of comparatively high position. But here the disease neither inferred civil death nor excluded the leper from all intercourse with his fellows.

In 1313, Nicholas the Leper (Nicholaus le Lepere) and William the Leper (Willielmus le Lepere) are manucaptors or pledges that John de la Poile, knight of the shire returned for Surrey, will do his duty in Parliament.—(_Palgrave’s Parliamentary Writs_, vol. ii. pp. 89, 113.)

Here we have a family of note bearing the name of Leper, derived no doubt from the leprosy of an ancestor.

Before 1083 a miraculous cure of leprosy is said to have been effected at the shrine of St. Cuthbert at Durham, on the person of a noble of the south of England—“vir quidam in longinqua Australium Anglorum regione qui multæ nobilitatis gratia inter comprovintiales preditus erat. Hic tam corporis sani virtute gaudebat, quam omni prosperitatis affluentia; et divitiarum gloria cæteros excedebat,” etc. etc.—(_Reginaldi Dunelmensis Libellus de Beati Cuthberti Virtutibus_, pp. 37-41. Lond. 1835. Surtees Soc.)

The same writer, in another work, relates the cure of three lepers at the tomb of St. Godric of Finchale. One, a male, was a shepherd; the other two were women, apparently of the middle or lower ranks.—(_Reginaldi Dunelmensis Libellus de Vita et Miraculis S. Godrici_, pp. 430, 431, 455-458. Lond. 1845. Surtees Soc.) The shepherd was a youth (_juvenis_); one of the women was a girl (_puella_).

LEPERS AMONG THE CLERGY.

Another illustration of the prevalence of leprosy among the English clergy, alluded to at p. 106, Part III., is supplied by the will of Richard Basy, of Bylburgh, in Yorkshire, in 1393:—“Item lego presbiteris cæcis vel leprosis seu aliter languentibus, qui non valent celebrare circa divinum officium celebrandum, et aliis pauperibus eodem modo languentibus et jacentibus, xl. solidos.”—(_Testamenta Eboracensia_, vol. i. p. 192. Lond. 1836. Surtees Soc.)

Pope Lucius III. decreed in 1181 that rectors of churches who were struck with leprosy should serve their cures by coadjutors; and Pope Clement III., in 1190, ordained that leprous priests should be removed from their priestly office, but should be supported from the fruits of their benefices.—(_Corpus Juris Canonici_, vol. ii. coll. 447-448. Edit. 1747.)

CASE OF KING ROBERT BRUCE.

The silence of Wyntoun, Fordun, and our other early Scotch chroniclers, as to the disease of which King Robert Bruce died, may not improbably be explained by their reluctance to associate the heroic monarch with an odious and degrading malady. But the King’s metrical biographer names his disease, or at least its origin; and it would be interesting to know if that disease can be identified with leprosy.

“For a malice him tuk sa sar, That he on na wiss mycht be thar. This malice off enfundeying Begouth; for, through his cald lying, Quhen in his gret myscheiff wes he, Him fell that hard perplexite.”

—(Barbour’s _Bruce_, pp. 406-407. Dr. Jamieson’s edit. 1820.)

In Mr. Cosmo Innes’ later edition the passage stands thus—

“For ane male es tuk him sa sar That he on na wis mycht be thar. His male es of ane fundying Begouth, for throu his cald lying, Quhen in his gret mischef was he, Him fell that hard perplexite.”

—(Barbour’s _Bruce_, p. 469. Aberd. 1856. Spalding Club.)

What is “enfundeying,” as Dr. Jamieson calls it, or “ane fundying,” as Mr. Innes makes it? Dr. Jamieson glosses it as “perhaps asthma,” but on what ground I do not see. At the same time I am unable to suggest any interpretation of the term. Can medical nomenclature supply none?

CONTAGIOUSNESS OF LEPROSY.

To the list of persons (Part III. pp. 133, 134) who tended or even kissed lepers without being smitten with the disease, may be added Walter de Luci, Abbot of Battle, in Sussex, from 1139 to 1171, who often washed and kissed the feet and hands of lepers—_eorum manus pedesque abluendo fovebat, et intimo caritatis pietatisque affectu blanda oscula imprimebat_.—(_Chronicon Monasterii de Bello_, p. 135. Lond. 1846. Anglia Christiana.)

The story (Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part III. p. 134) quoted from Matthew Paris, about the good Queen Maud, is to be found in an earlier writer, St. Aelred of Rievaux, from whose _Genealogia Regum Anglorum_ Matthew Paris, or rather Roger of Wendover, borrowed it. It may be remarked, generally, that late editors have shown that all that part of Matthew Paris’ history which is previous to the year 1235 is really the work of Roger of Wendover. As such it has been reprinted by the English Historical Society.

LIST OF LEPER HOSPITALS.

_Oxford, St. Bartholomew._—The date of foundation of this hospital is left blank in the list of British Leper Hospitals, p. 160. It certainly existed before the 24th November 1200, when the lepers of St. Bartholomew of Oxford had letters of protection from King John.—(_Rot. Chart. in Turr. Lund._ vol. i. p. 99.)

_Berington._—On the 20th July 1199 King John confirms to the canons regular of Lantony, among their other possessions, the half of Berington, which had been given to them by the Earl Roger for the procuration of thirteen lepers—“_Ex dono Rogeri Comitis aliam dimidietatem de Berington ad procurationem tredecim leprosorum._”—(_Rot. Chart. in Turr. Lund._ vol. i. p. 7.) “Procuratio” seems to be used here in the sense of _necessaria ad victum et vestitum_.—(See Ducange, t. v. col. 885.)

_Carlisle._—The lepers of Carlisle had letters of protection from King John on 25th February 1201.—(_Rot. Chart. in Turr. Lund._ vol. i. p. 101.)

_Badele, near Darlington, in the county of Durham._—The reception of a leprous girl into the hospital of Badele, about three miles from Darlington, is related by Reginald of Durham in his _Libellus de Vita et Miraculis S. Godrici_, p. 456. Lond. 1845. (Surtees Soc.) The work was written before 1195.

_Canterbury._—The date of foundation of this hospital is left blank in the list of British Leper Hospitals, p. 158. It certainly existed before the death of Archbishop Lanfranc in 1089, for the contemporary historian of Canterbury expressly says it was built by him:—“Ligneas domos in devexo montis latere fabricans, eas ad opus Leprosorum delegavit, viris in istis a fœminarum societate sejunctis.”—(_Eadmeri Hist. Novorum_, p. 9. Lond. 1623.)

_York._—_One_ leper hospital at York is noted in the list of British Leper Hospitals, at p. 161. There were _four_. The will of Henry of Blythe, painter of York, in 1365, has this bequest:—“Item lego quatuor domibus Leprosorum civitatis Eboracencis equaliter ij solidos dividendos.”—(_Testamenta Eboracensia_, vol. i. p. 75. Lond. 1836. Surtees Soc.) The will of Master Adam Wigan, rector of St. Saviour’s, York, in 1433, has—“Item lego cuilibet domui quatuor domorum leprosorum iij s. iiij d.—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii. p. 26. Lond. 1855. Surtees Soc.) The will of Richard Russell, citizen and merchant of York, in 1435, shows that at York, as elsewhere, the leper hospitals were beyond the city walls:—“Et cuilibet leproso in quatuor domibus Leprosorum in suburbiis Ebor., v solidos.”—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii. p. 55.) Again, in the will of William Gyrlyngton, draper of York, in 1444:—“Item lego quatuor domibus Leprosorum in suburbiis Ebor., xx solidos per equales portiones.”—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii. p. 93.) The lepers of York have similar bequests in 1446, in 1454, and 1441.—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii. pp. 115, 182, 187.) I do not observe any legacies to them after 1454.

_Beverley._—The leper hospital here, as at York, Canterbury, Glasgow, Stirling, Aberdeen, etc., stood in the suburbs. The will of John Brompton, merchant of Beverley, in 1444, has this legacy—“Item leprosis extra barras boriales Beverlaci ij s. et dimidiam celdram carbonum.”—(_Test. Ebor._ vol. ii. p. 97.)

_Newcastle-upon-Tyne._—The will of Roger Thornton, merchant of Newcastle, in 1429, has this legacy—“Item to the Lepre men of Newcastell, xl s.”—(_Northern Wills and Inventories_, part i. p. 78. Lond. 1835. Surtees Soc.)

_Winchester._—The existence of a leper hospital at Winchester is shown by the will of Martin of Holy Rood, master of the hospital of Sherborn, in 1259 [referred to in Sir James Simpson’s Paper, Part I., p. 36]—“Fratribus Leprosis Wyntonie, ij solidos.”—(_Northern Wills and Inventories_, part i. p. 10.)

_Lynne, Norfolk._—_Five_ leper hospitals at Lynne, in Norfolk, are enumerated in the list of British Leper Hospitals, p. 160. There seem to have been _six_. Mr. Albert Way, in a note to the _Promptorium Parvulorum_, vol. i. p. 297, Lond. 1843 (Camden Soc.), cites, from Parkins’ _Account of Lynne, in Blomf. Norf._ iv. 608, the bequest of Stephen Guybor, in 1432, to every house of lepers about Lynn, “namely, at West Lynn, Cowgate, Herdwyk, Setchehithe, Mawdelyn, and Geywode.” Four of these may be identified with those in the list, p. 160. “West Lynn” and “Cowgate” are the same in both lists; “Mawdelyn” is “St. Mary Magdalene’s;” and “Setchehithe” is “Setch Hithe.”

ANCIENT GREEK MEDICINE VASES.]

NOTES ON SOME ANCIENT GREEK MEDICAL VASES FOR CONTAINING LYKION; AND ON THE MODERN USE OF THE SAME DRUG IN INDIA.

The physicians and surgeons who, in ancient times, pursued their medical profession at Rome, and in different parts of the Roman empire, have left us various palpable relics of their craft. Thus, in the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, numerous surgical instruments, pharmacy and drug-bottles, etc., have been found; and elaborate drawings and accounts of these have lately been published by Savenko, Vulpes, Renzi, and others. On the sites of the old Roman cities and colonies throughout Western Europe, various surgical and medical relics of the same kind have been at different times discovered; as lancets, probes, cupping-glasses, scalpels, oculist-stamps, phials, etc. But of medicine, as it was still earlier exercised in Greece and in the Grecian colonies, few such tangible vestiges remain. We have, it is true, had carefully transmitted down to us the imperishable professional writings of Hippocrates and others of the purely Greek school; but time has spared few, or indeed almost no, material remnants of the professional instruments or vessels used by the ancient Greek surgeons and physicians.

Perhaps the great rarity of such archæological remains may serve as some apology for the present notice of some specimens of ancient Greek medical vessels or vases. Besides, the vases which I wish to describe are interesting in other points of view. They are all of them intended to contain one and the same drug, as shown by the inscriptions on their exterior; this drug was derived by the ancient Greeks chiefly from Hindostan,—one of the many points of evidence of the former freedom and frequency of the traffic between the south of Europe and India; and at the present day the same drug is still employed extensively and successfully, by the native practitioners of the East, for the very purposes for which it was, in former times, used by the medical practitioners of Greece.

The drug to which I allude is the _Indian Lycium_ or _Lykion_, the ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΙΝΔΙΚΟΝ of Dioscorides. In modern collections and writings, I know of four ancient vases or drug-bottles intended to contain this valued eye-medicine. If our museums, however, were properly searched, perhaps various other Greek vases, for the same or for similar medicines, would be detected. The four specimens of bottles or vases for _Lycium_, to which I have adverted, are the following:—

1. In the collection of Greek antiquities contained in the British Museum is a small vase, made of lead, and of the exact form and size represented in Plate, Fig. 1. The vase is of a sub-ovoid form, and is somewhat above an inch in height, and about three quarters of an inch in breadth. An inscription, preceded by the ornament of a small tripod, encircles the middle of the vase. The inscription is in Greek letters, of which the following is a correct copy:—

This inscription may be read as ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΠΑΡΑΜΟΥΣΑΙΟΥ—the _Lycium of Paramusaeus_—as suggested to me by Mr. Birch, who first had the kindness to direct my attention to this vase, or, and perhaps more correctly, it may be rendered ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΠΑΡΑ ΜΟΥΣΑΙΟΥ—the _Lycium_ sold _by Musaeus_. Mr. Birch informs me that he thinks he met with the name of _Paramusaeus_ as a medical practitioner in Fabricius’ _Bibliotheca Græca_. I have not been fortunate enough to detect the name in question, notwithstanding some considerable search through that learned work. On the other hand, the name of _Museus_, or _Musaeus_, is well known in Athenian biography. (See Fabricius’ _Bibliotheca_, vol. i. pp. 120-133.) I should, perhaps, have already stated, that the vase in question was sent to the British Museum, among a collection of antiquities from Athens.

2. Through the kindness of M. Sichel of Paris, I am enabled to give, in Plate, Fig. 2, an engraving of a second _Lycium_ jar, not hitherto published, of nearly the same dimensions as the specimen contained in the British Museum. This second specimen is not made of lead, but of pottery-ware. It bears upon its side the inscription:—

HΡΑΚΛΕΙᵒΥ ΛΥΚᵒN

This inscription—“the _Lycium of Heracleus_”—has the word ΛΥΚΟΝ spelt without the I; errors of this kind being, as is well known, very common in old Greek and Roman letterings.

3. M. Millin of Paris published, nearly forty years ago, an account of a similar vase, found at Tarentum, a well-known Greek colony and settlement (_Description d’un Vase trouvé à Tarente._ Paris, 1814). This vase is slightly larger than either of the above, but somewhat mutilated. It is made of clay, and has on its front, in Greek letters, the inscription _Lycium of Jason_.

IAϹᵒNᵒϹ ΛΥΚΙᵒN

The form and size of this jar are represented in Plate, Fig. 3. M. Millin fancied that probably this small vase or jar was intended as a child’s toy; but two years after he wrote, M. Tochon d’Anneci gave an account of a similar jar, and first suggested that it must have been destined to contain a collyrium or an ointment—_destinè à contenir un collyre ou un onguent_. (See his _Dissertation sur l’Inscription Grecque, et sur les Pierres Antiques_, etc., Paris, 1816.)

4. The vase described by M. Tochon is delineated in Plate, Figs. 4, 5, and 6. It is of the same material, and nearly of the same size, but less mutilated than that previously delineated by M. Millin. It presents also in front the same inscription (see Fig. 5), namely—

ΙΑϹᵒΝᵒϹ ΛVΚΙᵒN

M. Tochon believes, further, that this vase was found, like that of Millin, at Tarentum. At least, it was originally given to M. Tochon by a person who had resided for a long time in that city, and who had himself acquired the specimen there. M. Sichel has reason to think it not improbable that his specimen (Fig. 2) also came from Tarentum. And it is perhaps not uninteresting to remark, that Galen, Celsus, and various other old medical authors, repeatedly mention a Greek physician of the name of Heracleus or Heraclides, who practised at Tarentum, and was the author of various treatises on the Materia Medica, etc. (See an enumeration of his writings, etc. in Kühn’s _Opuscula_, vol. ii., p. 156, etc.) Among his large collection of collyria and medicines for diseases of the eye, Galen gives formulæ for making different eye medicines bearing the name of Heracleus, as, for example, two “_agglutinatoria pilorum Heraclidæ Tarentini_ (Ἥρακλεῖδου Ταραντίνοῦ). See Kuhn’s edition of _Galen_, vol. xii. p. 741.

The medicine mentioned in the preceding inscriptions, the LYCIUM or ΛΥΚΙΟΝ, was a drug which enjoyed much favour among the ancients; and it was supposed to be possessed of great medical value and virtues. It was used principally as an astringent remedy to restrain inflammatory and other discharges. Dioscorides, Galen, Oribasius, and Paulus Ægineta, dilate upon the medicinal properties of the Lycium. Dioscorides recommends it as an astringent for the cure of various complaints, as obscurities of the cornea, psoriasis, and pruritus of the eyelids, purulent ears and tonsils, ulcers of the gums, chapped lips, fissure of the anus; in cæliac and dysenteric affections, both in draughts and clysters; in hæmoptysis and coughs; in female fluxes, hydrophobia, and so forth. The Indian variety, he states, cures inflammation of the spleen and jaundice, prevents menstruation, purges water, and is a counter-agent to deadly poisons. (Dr. Adam’s Trans. of _Paulus Ægineta_, vol. iii. p. 234.) Two varieties of Lycium were in use—one obtained from Lycia and Cappadocia, etc., and the other from India. The latter was regarded as by far the most valuable. Thus, when treating of the two varieties of Lycium, Galen mentions the Indian as the most powerful for all purposes—τὸ Ἰνδικὸν ἰσχῦρότερόν ἐστιν εἰς ἅπαν. (_De Simp. Medicam._ lib. vii. 64.) Such late writers as Paulus Ægineta, Ætius, etc., allude also to the superior value of the Indian variety. For instance, in Roxarius’ edition of _Oribasius_ it is stated that the Indian Lykion “præstat ceteris et est efficacius.” (_Medicin. Collect._ lib. xi.) Avicenna, the celebrated Arabian physician, who gives a long account of the medical uses, etc., of Lykion, remarks, “Magis vincens, secundum existimationem, est quod Indicum est,” etc.; and he compares its properties with that from Mecca. (_Canon Medicinæ_, Lib. ii. cap. 398.)

Of all the uses to which the Lycium was applied in medicine, by far the most important was the employment of this drug, and particularly of the Indian variety, as a collyrium or local application to the eye, in the treatment of different varieties and forms of ophthalmic inflammation. Thus Scribonius Largus, the reputed body physician to the Emperor Claudius, and one of the most original among the ancient medical writers, declares that “he attributes to no collyrium whatever such great efficacy as to the genuine _Indian Lycium_ used by itself. For if,” says he, “near the commencement of ophthalmia, any one anoints himself with this collyrium, he will immediately—that is, on the same day—be freed from present pain and future swelling. It is unnecessary (he adds) to dilate on its virtues, for a person experienced only in other collyria would scarcely credit the effects of this simple drug.” (_De Composit. Medicamentorum_, cap. 3.) Marcellus lauds its power in nearly the same words. (_De Medicam. Lib._ cap. 8.)

The Lykion, or Lycium, is still used extensively by the native medical practitioners of India, under the Hindoo name of _Rusot_ or _Ruswut_. In a learned article on the nature of the λύκιον of Dioscorides, contained in the _Transactions of the Linnæan Society_, vol. xvii. p. 82, Professor Royle has shown that the Indian Lycium or Rusot is an inspissated extract, prepared from the wood or roots of several species of Berberis, as the _Berberis lycium_, _aristata_, etc., growing on the mountains and plains of Upper India, and principally procured from Nuggur-kote, near Lahore.[366] “On inquiring,” says Dr. Royle, “in the shops of the druggists in the bazaars of India, I everywhere learned that both the wood (_dar-huld_) and the extract Rusot were imported from the hills into the plains, and that large quantities continued to be brought from Nuggur-kote as well as other places.” And he adds,—“The _Rusot_ is at the present day procurable in every bazaar in India, and used by the native practitioners, who are fond of applying it both in incipient and chronic inflammation of the eye; and in the latter state both simply and in combination with opium and alum. It is sometimes prescribed by European practitioners; and I have heard that it was found very efficacious by Mr. M^cDowell in the ophthalmia of soldiers who had returned from the expedition to Egypt. I have myself occasionally prescribed it; and the native mode of application makes it particularly eligible in cases succeeding acute inflammation, where the eye remains much swollen. The extract is, by native practitioners, in such cases, rubbed to a proper consistence with a little water, sometimes with the addition of opium and alum, and applied in a thick layer over the swollen eyelids; the addition of a little oil I have found preferable, as preventing the too rapid desiccation. Patients generally express themselves as experiencing considerable relief from the application.”

My friend, Dr. Wise, the author of that learned work _Commentaries on the Hindoo System of Medicine_, some time ago brought to Scotland with him a small quantity of the Indian Lykion. I have seen one or two cases of recent conjunctival ophthalmia treated by the application of this Lykion, with speedy relief and cure. Dr. Wise has been so good as furnish me with the following interesting letter regarding his own extended experience with it.

“The use (says Dr. Wise) of the mixture of Lykion or Ruswut is very generally known over Hindostan, where diseases of the eye are common, and probably over Asia and Africa, if we are to believe that this was the black application employed with such success to the diseased eyes of our soldiers in Egypt. It is likewise probable that Dioscorides obtained it nearly two thousand years ago from the East, where the plant is indigenous, and introduced it into Europe. Having found great personal benefit from the application of the mixture of Lykion to my eyes when inflamed, I employed it extensively when superintendent of the Eye Infirmary, Calcutta; and so convinced was I of its efficacy, that I brought a supply with me to Europe, with the intention of bringing it to the notice of the profession. I found you investigating the subject; and at your suggestion, Dr. Walker was so kind as to try the medicine, and I am sure will inform you of the results he saw derived from its use. The Indian mixture consists of equal weights of Lykion and burnt alum, with half the weight of opium. These ingredients are mixed with lemon-juice, and reduced to the consistence of cream, and applied round the eyelids and over the eyebrow of the inflamed eyes. This mixture is washed off, and again applied twice in twenty-four hours; and it was only when accompanied with fever, that aperients and other parts of the antiphlogistic regimen were required. In less urgent cases the mixture was only applied at night, and produced no inconvenience, unless when it dried, and the lids felt stiff, when it was softened by applying a little moisture. I found the Lykion mixture most useful in all cases of inflammation of the external tunics of the eye. When both eyes were inflamed, it was interesting to mark the advantage this simple remedy had when applied to one eye, while the usual remedies of leeches, blisters, etc., were applied to the other eye. Another most important application of the Lykion is when the ophthalmia is accompanied with severe pain. On such occasions, after applying the mixture, a piece of live charcoal (_gool_) produced the most soothing effect when approached near the eye. With this intention, the charcoal was placed upon an earthen cup, and held on a wooden stand by the patient, and he approached or withdrew it from the eye according to his own feeling. The great relief in this case was in part from the anodyne effect of the opium.”

Mr. Walker has kindly given me the following note of his experience with the Lykion at the Edinburgh Eye Dispensary:—

“I have used (he writes me) the Indian Lykion in a considerable number of cases of eye-disease. The affections in which I found it most useful were those of the conjunctiva, such as the simple, catarrhal, and pustular forms of inflammation. In them its action was well marked and beneficial, the disease generally subsiding in a day or two; sooner perhaps than it would have done under the ordinary treatment. I have had no opportunity of trying it in purulent ophthalmia; but I believe that in it also it would prove of service. Cases of slight rheumatic and catarrho-rheumatic inflammations have been benefited, but not cured, by it alone. In some affections of the eyelids, as ophthalmia tarsi and chronic ophthalmia, it did good; but such cases often get well with very little treatment. I applied it to the eyelids in the form of a paste, with opium and burnt alum, as recommended by Dr. Wise. This was repeated two or three times a day. The patients generally complained of a burning and smarting of the lids after its application, similar to what is produced by a mustard blister.”

The four ancient Greek vases, mentioned in the preceding notice as inscribed with the name of the drug _Lykion_ or _Lycium_, are each of very small dimensions, the Plate representing all of them of their original sizes and forms. They are small, in consequence, in all probability, of the foreign drug which they contained being difficult to procure in large quantities, and being hence an article of high price in the markets of Greece and Italy. The value set upon the contained drug would seem to be indicated by another circumstance—namely, by the shape of the interior of the vases. In the specimens described by Millin and Tochon, the cavity of the jars is narrow and conical from above downwards, the mouth being wide, and the interior becoming more and more tapering and contracted as it descends downwards. The section of the interior of the vase of Tochon, given in Plate, Fig. 6, represents this peculiar and deceitful form of the cavity. In consequence of this peculiarity in their form, these jars contained, in fact, much less of the Lykion than their mere external appearance indicated. This remark, at least, holds true of the two vases from Tarentum bearing the name of _Jason_. The vase of _Museus_ from Athens, belonging to the British Museum, appears more honest at least in its construction. The high price of the pure Lykion probably led also to the fact mentioned specially by Dioscorides (lib. i. cap. 133), Pliny (lib. xxiv. cap. 14), and Serapion (lib. ii. cap. 398), of the frequent adulteration of the drug. And, perhaps, as in similar inscriptions on some modern medicine-nostrums and packets, the names of the preparer or vendor, _Jason_, _Heracleus_, and _Museus_, stamped on the vases, were added in attestation of the purity and unadulterated character of the drug which these vases contained.

WAS THE ROMAN ARMY PROVIDED WITH MEDICAL OFFICERS?

Little or nothing has hitherto been written by archæologists regarding the medical staff of the Roman army. Indeed, in none of our common works on Roman antiquities, as in those of Rosini, Kennet, Adam, Smith, Ramsay, etc., is there any allusion whatever made to the question, whether or not the Roman troops were furnished with medical officers. In one anonymous work on Roman antiquities, translated from the French, and published in London in 1750, the subject is referred to, the author stating that during the commonwealth there were no physicians in the Roman armies; and he adds that, even under the Emperors, “it does not appear there were any physicians in the armies, as there are surgeons in ours.”[367] Nor does there exist, as far as I am aware, in the Roman classics, any very distinct allusion to the matter. I have also, in vain, searched among Roman medical authors, and among the writings of the Greek physicians who practised at Rome, for any direct notices, relative to the medical or surgical care of the numerous and scattered armies employed by Rome in the different quarters of the world. In fact, the only passages, with which I am acquainted, relating at all to the subject, consist of a casual remark in one of the military epistles of Aurelian; two incidental legal observations contained in the law writings of Modestinus, and in the Codex of Justinian; an allusion by Vegetius to the medical care and expense of the sick in camp; and an expression by Galen as to the opportunities for anatomical observation presented to the physicians during the German wars.

The reference to the medical superintendence of the army by Aurelian occurs in Vopiscus’ Life of that Emperor (chap. vi.) In issuing some peremptory orders regarding the discipline of the army, after enumerating various rigid rules which the soldiers were to observe, Aurelian concludes with the following admonition and announcement:—“Let each soldier aid and serve his fellow; let them be cured gratuitously by the physicians (_a medicis gratis curentur_); let them give nothing to soothsayers; let them conduct themselves quietly in their hospitia; and he who would raise strife, let him be lashed.”[368] The date of this order is not earlier than A.D. 270, the year when Aurelian became Emperor.

When treating of those who, by absence from Rome, etc., were exempted from some burthens and taxes, the jurist Modestinus, who wrote in the earlier half of the third century, mentions, among others, the military physicians (_Medici Militum_), “because,” he adds, “the office which they fill is beneficial to the public, and ought not to be productive of any injury to themselves (quoniam officium, quod gerunt, et publice prodest, et fraudem eis adferre non debet”).[369]

In Justinian’s _Corpus Juris Civilis_, lib. x. tit. 52, drawn up in the sixth century, there is a series of laws, “De Professoribus et Medicis.” The first of these laws exempts the physician of a legion (_Medicum Legionis_) from civil duties when he is absent in the public service.[370]

In his work _De Re Militari_, Vegetius, who wrote towards the end of the fourth century, devotes a chapter (lib. iii. 2) to the regulation of the health of an army; and incidentally rather than directly alludes to the cure of sick soldiers by the skill of the physicians (_arte medicorum_).[371] Enumerating also elsewhere the duties of the Præfect of the Camp, he states that his authority extended over his sick fellow-soldiers, and the physicians who had the care of them, and he regulated the expenses relative thereto. (Lib. ii. cap. 10.)

The passage I have alluded to as in the works of Galen is of an earlier date than any of the preceding, and is to be found in liber iii. cap. 2, of his work, _De Compositione Medicamentorum per Genera_. In discoursing regarding the treatment of wounds, he talks of the necessity of a knowledge of human anatomy for their proper management. In order to know the anatomy of man, he recommends here, as elsewhere, the anatomy of the monkey to be studied, maintaining that without such knowledge you cannot take due advantage of the opportunities that you may accidentally have presented to you of becoming acquainted with the anatomical structure of human bodies. And he adds, that in consequence of a want of this knowledge the physicians (οἱ ἰατροι) employed in the German wars, and having the power of dissecting the bodies of the barbarians, did not learn more than the cooks understand.[372]

This paragraph, though indistinct as regards the status and office of these Ἰατροι, is still sufficiently explicit as to the fact that there were physicians in the Roman army during the German wars that Galen alludes to; and these wars were no doubt those that occurred from the year A.D. 167 to 175, immediately previous to the time when Galen wrote the work from which we have quoted.

The history of other more ancient governments than that of Rome is not without allusion to the office of army physicians. Homer,[373] Herodotus,[374] and Pliny,[375] each comment on the number and fame of the medical men with which the kingdom of Egypt abounded. Diogenes Laertius, in his life of Plato, tells us of Plato’s sickness when travelling in Egypt; and adds that he remarked, like Homer, that the Egyptians were all physicians (φαναι παντας ἀνθρώπους Αἴγυπτιους ἰατρους εἰναι).[376] They had, moreover, paid medical officers attendant upon their troops in war. For, in describing the status and character of the Egyptian physicians, Diodorus Siculus specially mentions that, when engaged in military expeditions, the soldiers were cured without fees, for the physicians of the army received a salary from the state.[377]

One instance is referred to in history, in which an Egyptian king, when thrown from his horse in battle, wounded and speechless from injury of the head, had his skull trepanned by his surgeons. I allude to Ptolemy Philometor, who defeated Alexander Balas, the pretender to the throne of Syria, in the year B.C. 146. According to Livy, the victor himself died after the battle during the attempts of his surgeons to relieve him. “Ptolemaeus, in caput graviter vulneratus, inter curationem, dum ossa medici _terebrare_ contendunt, exspiravit.”—(_Epit._ lib. lii.)

Nor is the old classical literature of Greece without reference to surgical services tendered to the soldier in war. Homer describes the double character of army surgeons and warriors as combined in the persons of Podalirius and Machaon.[378] And when the latter is wounded, he puts into the mouth of Idomeneus the well-known expression (Iliad, lib. xi. v. 514), that the medical man is to the army more valuable than many warriors; knowing as he does how to excise arrows, and to apply soothing medications:—

Ιητρος γαρ ανηρ πολλῶν ἀνταξιος ἀλλων, Ιους τ’ ἐκταμνειν, επι τ’ ηπια φαρμακα πασσειν.

In the course of the Iliad, the surgical treatment followed in individual cases among the disabled Greek warriors is sometimes minutely entered upon; and thus the different modes of operation by which the transfixing arrow, dart, and lance, were, in those early days of surgical science, removed from the bodies of the wounded, may be sometimes gathered from Homer’s lucid and minute descriptions. He mentions three different methods, at least, by which war-weapons were extracted—viz., first, by evulsion, or traction of the weapon backwards, as in the case of Menelaus (Iliad, lib. iv. 214); secondly, by protrusion, or pushing of the instrument forward, as in the case of Diomede (v. 112); and, thirdly, by enlarging the wound, and cutting out the weapon, as was the practice of Patroclus in the case of Eurypylus (xi. 843). I am not aware that Homer ever individualises any internal medical treatment except once (xi. 638), when he mentions a mixture of Pramnian wine, cheese, and flour, as having been administered by the nursing hand of Hecamede to the wounded Machaon,[379] ere she prepared the warm bath for him and washed away the clotted blood (xiv. 7).

The author of the ancient Greek treatise Περὶ Ἰητρου, an essay usually included in the works of Hippocrates, explicitly advises the young physician to attach himself for a time to some army, in order to learn the best methods of extracting war-weapons, and to acquire practical skill in the treatment of accidents.[380]

Xenophon alludes in various parts of his works to physicians or surgeons connected with the Greek armies. In describing the laws of the Lacedemonians, as instituted in the earliest ages of Greek history by Lycurgus, he incidentally mentions that physicians were attached to the Spartan army. For in the arrangements previously laid down for the troops before a battle, it was ordered that there should be placed behind the station occupied by the King several officials, and among others, the soothsayers or priests, the physicians, the minstrels, the leaders of the army, and any persons who were voluntarily present in the expedition (καὶ μάντεις, καὶ ἰατροὶ, καὶ αὐληταὶ, οἱ τοῦ στρατοῦ ἄρχοντες, καὶ ἐθελούσιοι ἠν τινες πατρῶσιν).

Again, in his celebrated account of the retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, Xenophon states that at the conclusion of the fifth day of their march, and after considerable skirmishing with the troops of Tissaphernes, “they appointed eight physicians, for there were many persons wounded.”[381]—(_Anabasis_, lib. iii. c. 4, § 30.)

Lastly, in his semi-historical or political romance—the _Cyropædia_ (lib. i. 6, § 15), Xenophon makes his young royal hero, Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy, speak, among other matters, of the importance of medical officers being attached to armies. “With respect to health” (says Cyrus), “having heard and observed that cities that wish health choose physicians, and that commanders, for the sake of their soldiers, take physicians; so, when I was placed in this command, I immediately attended to this point; and I believe that I have men with me that are very skilful in the art of physic.” In the same work Xenophon subsequently describes Cyrus as commending to the professional services and care of his medical officers the Chaldeans who had been wounded and captured in fight with him.—(_Instit. Cyri_, lib. iii. c. 2, § 12.)

Few individual instances are recorded in Greek history of surgical aid being afforded on the field of battle. One of the most interesting examples is that mentioned by Quintus Curtius in reference to Alexander the Great at the taking of the capital of the Oxydraceæ, or Mallians. The Macedonian King, who had leaped down, almost alone, within the walls of the fortress, was struck with a long arrow (duorum cubitorum sagitta), which entered the right side of the thorax (per thoracem paulum super latus dextrum infigeretur). The wound produced great hæmorrhage and faintness. Alexander was carried on his shield to his tent; and the shaft of the arrow being cut off and his cuirass removed, it was discovered that the head of the arrow was barbed, and could not, consequently, be removed without the artificial dilatation of the wound and imminent danger from increased bleeding; for the large weapon was fixed in its situation, and seemed to have penetrated into the internal viscera (quippe ingens telum adactum erat, et penetrasse in viscera videbatur). At Alexander’s request, the surgeon Critobulus undertook the extraction, enlarged the wound, and removed the arrow-head, which, according to Plutarch, was “three fingers broad and four long.” Great hæmorrhage (ingens vis sanguinis) attended the operation; death-like insensibility supervened; and, when the flow of blood continued in despite of the medicaments (medicamenta) applied, a cry and wail was set up by those around, that the king was dead. At last, however, the hæmorrhage stopped, under the state of syncope. That very syncope, observes Arrian, saved his life; and Alexander gradually recovered. But every modern surgeon must admire the boldness, not less than the expertness, of Critobulus, when he reflects for a moment on the fearful peril attendant on such an operation, performed on so august a patient—and at a time, too, when surgical science as yet possessed no certain means of restraining surgical hæmorrhage.[382]

In the earlier periods of Roman history and Roman warfare, the treatment of the military sick and wounded was, in all probability, trusted to the casual care of some fellow-soldiers whose tastes and inclinations had led them to pay more than usual care to the rude surgery which existed at the time.[383] As early, however, as the commencement of the Christian era, we find Celsus laying down distinct, and in many instances very excellent and practical precepts for the extraction of war-weapons from the bodies of the wounded[384]—as of arrows, spears, leaden bullets (_glandes plumbeæ_), etc.

Occasionally the weapons used in ancient war seem to have been forged for the special purpose of rendering their extraction by the surgeon a matter of difficulty and danger. At least we find Paulus Ægineta complaining that some of them have “their barbs diverging in opposite directions, like the forked lightning, in order that, whether pulled or pushed, they may fasten in the parts.”[385]

Still, let me repeat, neither in Celsus nor in Paulus Ægineta, nor, indeed, in any other ancient medical work, have we, as far as I know, any allusion to the circumstance of surgeons or physicians being regularly appointed as army medical officers in the Roman army, for the purpose of superintending the treatment of the wounded, or—what is of still greater importance—in order to take professional care of the soldiers disabled by sickness and disease, and whose number in warfare is generally very much greater than the number of those that are disabled in fight.

Modern military experience has, in many instances, proved the high importance of the services and superintendence of a medical military staff; and not so much in reference to the care of individual cases, and the cure of the wounded, as in reference to the general health and consequent general strength and success of whole armies. In fact, in war the devastations produced by sickness and disease have often been found greatly more formidable and fatal than any devastations produced by the sword; fevers, dysenteries, and other distempers of the camp, have carried off far more soldiers than the ball or bayonet; malarious and morbific agency has sometimes terminated a campaign as effectually as the highest military strategy; and armies have occasionally, in later times, been as completely destroyed by the indirect ravages of disease as by the direct effects of battle.

Nor was the experience of the Roman armies in this respect different from our own. When the Emperor Septimius Severus determined to subdue the whole of Scotland, he about the year 208 led, according to Herodian and Dion Cassius,[386] an army of not less than 80,000 men across the Forth, marched them north, apparently as far as the Moray Firth, and thence returned to York. But though in this course the Roman Emperor nowhere met the enemy in open fight, he is stated to have lost, in this single campaign, not less than 50,000 of his troops. The marshes, fens, woods, etc., of Caledonia were far more destructive to the Roman invaders, than were the spears, long swords (ingentes gladii) and scythed chariots (corvini) of its painted, and almost naked, warriors.[387]

We know, from the oft-repeated anecdote regarding Arcagathus, as told by Pliny, that in the early days of republican Rome the practice of medicine was not encouraged among the inhabitants of the Eternal City. But, in the later periods of the empire, Rome abounded with native and foreign physicians; and, when we find the Roman people exalted in so many branches of art and knowledge, we could not but expect that common experience, and results like that of Severus, would have suggested to them the propriety of increasing the strength and success of their armies, by having medical men to watch over the health of the soldiers that were fighting in so many different regions around the Roman standards.

Some modern discoveries in Great Britain and elsewhere show that such a conjecture is not at variance with truth, and that the Roman armies were provided, at all events in the time of the Empire, with a medical staff.

Housesteads, in Northumberland (the ancient Borcovicus), formed one of the principal stations on the great defensive wall which the Emperor Hadrian reared, in the second century, from the Tyne to the Solway. Many Roman remains have been found at Housesteads.[388] Thirty years ago the embellished monumental tablet, represented in the accompanying plate, Fig. 1, was discovered among these remains. This tablet was, according to the inscription upon it, raised by the first Tungrian cohort to the memory of their MEDICUS ORDINARIUS.[389] The plate represents this interesting relic, which is preserved in the Newcastle Museum. The inscription upon the tablet reads as follows, in its contracted and in its extended forms:—

D M D[IIS] M[ANIBUS] ANICIO ANICIO INGENUO INGENUO MEDICO MEDICO ORD COH ORD[INARIO] COH[ORTIS] I TUNGR [PRIMÆ] TUNGR[ORUM] VIX AN XXV VIX[IT] AN[NIS] XXV

And I append Mr. Brace’s translation of it:—“Sacred to the gods of the shades below. To ANICIUS INGENUUS, Physician in Ordinary of Cohort the first of the Tungrians. He lived twenty-five years.”[390]

The first Tungrian Cohort, which erected this monument over the grave of their young physician, distinguished itself under Agricola at the battle of the Mons Grampius.[391] It was afterwards, as we learn from some legionary inscriptions, engaged at Castlecary in erecting there a portion of the more northern Roman wall of Antoninus, which ran from the Forth to the Clyde.[392] Subsequently it was stationed at Cramond, near Edinburgh, and there raised an altar to the _Matres Alatervæ et Campestres_.[393] Still later, this Cohort was stationed in Cumberland; and latterly at Housesteads, in Northumberland, where the monument we allude to, and several others, were erected by them.[394]

The youth of this military physician is remarkable. He died at twenty-five.

The elaborate nature of the carving of this monumental tablet affords the strongest evidence of the esteem and respect in which this young physician was held by his Cohort. In fact, it is more ornamented than many of the altars raised by this and other Cohorts to the worship of their gods.

It has been suggested by Mr. O’Callaghan[395] that the animal represented on the monument is a hare, and that it was selected as an emblem characteristic of the watchfulness of the profession to which ANICIUS INGENUUS belonged. In his admirable work on the Roman Wall, the Rev. Mr. Bruce describes, more correctly, the figure to be that of a rabbit; and he further conjectures that it had some reference to the worship of Priapus. The whole device is, in all probability, far more simple in its signification. The _cuniculus_, or rabbit, when found on ancient Roman monuments and coins, is generally held by archæologists and numismatists as the recognised emblem of Spain,[396] as, for example, on the coins of Sextus Pompey and Galba; and the circular bucklers or cetræ which are placed on this tablet, on either side of the animal, are equally strong characteristics of the same country. Indeed, there can be little or no doubt that these devices indicate merely that this young military physician was of Spanish birth and origin.

Several monumental and votive tablets have been discovered in other parts of the old Roman world, affording further evidence of the Roman troops being provided with a medical staff. In Gruter’s great work on Roman inscriptions there are copies of at least three inscriptions, in which physicians of Cohorts (_medici cohortum_) are mentioned.[397] One of these inscriptions (p. 219, 3) bears the name of a physician who had the same _nomen gentilicium_ as the medical officer of the Tungrian Cohort who died at Housesteads—viz., “M. JULIUS INGENUUS MEDIC. COH. II. VIG.” The tablet, which was found at Rome, contains a votive imperial inscription from twelve or thirteen persons, and among others, from the physician to the second “Cohors Vigilum.” Another of the inscriptions of Gruter is specially interesting in relation to its date, for it was cut at the commencement of the reign of Domitian,[398] and in the year of the consulship of F. Flavius Sabinus, which year chronologists know to have been the eighty-third of the Christian era. We are, consequently, afforded evidence by this inscription that before the end of the first century, at least—however much earlier—medical officers were appointed to the Cohorts of the Roman army. The inscription itself is upon an altar or votive tablet, dedicated by SEXTUS TITUS ALEXANDER, physician of the fifth Prætorian Cohort, to Æsculapius, and the safety of his fellow-soldiers. A copy of this altar and its inscription is given in the accompanying plate, Fig. 2. The stone seems to have been found at Rome.

Another altar, discovered also at Rome, and inscribed in the same terms to Æsculapius, is given by Gruter (p. 68, 2). In this instance, the dedicator is SEXTUS TITIUS, medical officer to the sixth Prætorian Cohort; and he erects it for the health of the fellow-soldiers of his Cohort, in conformity with a vow which he had undertaken. The whole inscription is as follows:—

ASCLEPIO ET. SALUTI COMMILITIONUM COH. VI. PR. VOTO. SUSCEPTO SEX. TITIUS. MEDIC. COH. VI. PR. D. D.

Long ago Reines published in his _Syntagma Inscriptionum_,[399] a tablet found at Rome and erected by TITUS CLAUDIUS JULIANUS, Clinical Physician to the fourth Prætorian Cohort, to himself, to his wife Tullia Epigone, to their freedmen, freedwomen, and descendants.

D. M. TI. CLAUDIUS. IULIANUS MEDICUS. CLINICUS. COH. IIII. PR. FECIT. VIVOS. SIBI. ET TULLIÆ EPIGONE. CONIUGI LIBERTIS. LIBERTATIBUS (Q) CLAUDIIS. POSTERISQUE EORUM H. M. H. N. S.

Muratori, in his Thesaurus,[400] cites a Roman sepulchral tablet discovered at Veterbi, and containing an inscription by a father to his deceased son, M. VLPIUS SPORUS, Physician to the Indian and Asturian Auxiliaries (Medico Alarum Indianae et tertiae Asturum).[401]

The tablets to which I have hitherto alluded all refer, with the doubtful exception of the first and last, to one rank of medical military men, namely the surgeons of cohorts (_Medici Cohortum_). It is generally believed that each cohort consisted of about 500 or 600 men; though this appears to have varied at different times. From the preceding tablets, each cohort seems to have been provided with at least one medical officer, if not more. For the distinctive terms “Ordinarius” and “Clinicus,” which occur in the first and last of the preceding inscriptions, when added to the usual term “Medicus Cohortis,” apparently tend to indicate a different grade or rank of medical officer from the latter.

Whether, however, or not there were different grades among the Roman _Medici Cohortum_, we have sufficient evidence for proving that there existed in the Roman army a higher rank of medical officer than these,—namely, _Medici Legionum_. The Roman legion consisted of ten cohorts.[402] We have seen that the individual cohorts of which the legion was composed were each provided with a medical officer or officers. I have already cited a law from Justinian’s Codex, showing further that there were military physicians to the Roman legions. The evidence of monumental tablets affords additional proof, that over the whole legion, another, and in all probability a superior medical officer, was placed. More than one monumental tablet has been discovered, dedicated not to the _Medicus Cohortis_, but to the _Medicus Legioni_. Thus Maffei, in his _Museum Veronense_, gives the inscription of a tablet raised by Scribonia Faustina to the manes of her very dear husband, L CÆLIUS ARRIANUS, physician to the Second Italian Legion, who died at the age of forty-nine years and seven months. The inscription in the original runs as follows:—

D M L. CAELI ARRIANI MEDICO LEGIONIS II. ITALIC. QUI. VIX. ANN XXXXVIIII. MENSIS VII SCRIBONIA FAUSTINA COIUGI KARISSIMO.[403]

In the _Collectio Inscriptionum_ (vol. i. No. 448) of Hugenbach and Orelli, there is published another Roman tablet found in Switzerland (at Gebistorf, near Windisch), bearing the name of a Legionary physician. The inscription states that Atticus Patronus erected this tablet to TITUS CLAUDIUS HYMNUS, physician to the twenty-first Legion, and to Claudia Quieta, his wife.[404]

TI CLAVDIO HYMNO MEDICO. LEG. XXI. CLAVDIÆ QUIETÆ EIUS ATTICUS. PATRONUS.

Orelli gives in the same work (vol. ii. No. 4996), another tablet found at Salon, in which a third physician to a legion is named; the tablet being erected by M. BESIUS TERTULLUS, physician of the eleventh Legion, to the memory of his “hospes,” Papiria Pyrallis.

I have already alluded to a passage in Vegetius, showing in relation to the government of the Roman medical staff, that the medical officers as well as their patients were both placed under the control of the Præfect of the Camp, to whose multifarious duties, these, among other matters, pertained. “Praeterea aegri contubernales, et medici a quibus curantur, expensae etiam ad ejus industriam pertinebant.”[405] Vegetius does not allude to the existence of any special sick quarters; but a writer of the second century, who lived under Trajan and Hadrian, Hyginus Gromaticus, in his essay “De Castrametatione,”[406] in laying down the proportions and measurements of the different parts of a Roman camp, describes the proper situation in it for the Hospital or “Valetudinarium.” This observation of Hyginus is interesting as far as regards the probable date of the first institution of camp hospitals; for we have no allusion to them in Polybius’ earlier account of the different points and parts of a Roman camp of his day; and even in the first century of our era, when Tacitus describes Germanicus as visiting and encouraging the wounded soldiers under his command, he uses such an expression, “circumire saucios” as to lead to the supposition, that the invalids in the Roman camp were still, like the old Homeric heroes, laid up in their own tents.[407] Indeed, Lampridius speaks of the Emperor Alexander Severus in the third century, still visiting his sick soldiers in their tents (aegrotantes ipse visitavit per tentoria milites).[408] Let me add, that medical stores appear, as we might expect, to have been carried with the imperial armies. At least in the war conducted by Germanicus against Arminius, we are told by Tacitus, that in one of their contests with the German army, the Roman troops lost their intrenching tools, tents, and remedies or dressings for the wounded (fomenta sauciis);[409] and subsequently we find Agrippina the wife of the Roman general, distributing gratuitously among the soldiers, clothes to the needy, and dressings to the wounded (militibusque, ut quis inops aut saucius, vestem et fomenta dilargita est).[410] We have the transport of the wounded sick sometimes spoken of; as, for example, when Tempanius leads back his victorious troops from the Volscian war;[411] but the only instance in which, as far as I remember, any special description of ambulance is mentioned, occurs in Hirtius’ _Commentaries_, where he tells us that, after the battle fought near Ruspina, Labienus ordered his wounded to be carried to Adrumentum, bound in waggons (saucios suos jubet in plostris deligatos Adrumentum deportari).[412] The passage should more probably read “plostris decubitos.”

The remarks which I have hitherto made refer only to the medical staff and organisation of the Roman army. If, however, as the preceding facts tend to show, the Roman troops were furnished with a medical staff, there is, _a priori_, every probability that the Roman fleet was similarly provided. The contingencies, however, of a naval, as compared with a military life, render the preservation of such monumental proofs as we have already adduced in relation to the existence of army medical officers much less likely in relation to the existence of medical officers in the fleet. Indeed I am only aware of the discovery of one ancient tablet referring to the naval medical service. In his late splendid work on the Latin inscriptions found in the kingdom of Naples, Mommsen has given a careful copy of the tablet in question.[413] The inscription upon it was first, I believe, published by Marini.[414] The tablet itself, which is now placed in the antiquarian collection at Dresden, was originally discovered in the Elysian fields, near Baiæ; and consequently in the vicinity of the famous _Pontus Julius_, and the station of the imperial Misenian fleet. The inscription on the stone bears that M. SATRIUS LONGINUS, physician to the three-banked ship or trirem, the CUPID,[415] and those or the heirs of those freed by Julia Venerias, his wife, erected the tablet to the manes of this deserving lady.

D. M IVLIÆ VENERIÆ. M. SATRIUS LONGIN MEDIC. DVPL. III. CVPID ET. IVLIA VENERIA LIBER HER. BEN. MER FECER

In the preceding inscription LONGINUS is designated _Medicus Duplicarius_; the term duplicarius in this as other inscriptions signifying that, by the length or superiority of his service, he was entitled to double pay and rewards. The “duplex stupendium” and “duplex frumentum” is repeatedly alluded to by Varro, Livy, Virgil, and other classical authors, as a military reward accorded to the more deserving soldiers and officers of the army; and the corresponding adjective “_duplicarius_” not unfrequently occurs in old Roman inscriptions.

In a previous page it has been stated that nowhere in the Roman classics does there exist any distinct allusion to physicians or surgeons as forming a regular part of the staff of the Roman army. There are several references, however, in ancient medical and classical authors to the fact of medical men being placed in professional attendance upon Roman Senators,[416] Consuls,[417] and Emperors during the course of their military campaigns. Thus Galen tells us that he himself was summoned in this last capacity to attend upon the Emperors M. Aurelius and L. Verus at Apuleia during their proposed campaign against some of the German tribes.[418]

Various fragmentary notices exist regarding the physicians who attended upon those Roman Emperors who visited Britain. A medical author (whom Galen often quotes), Scribonius Largus, has left a valued therapeutical work, _De Compositione Medicamentorum_. This work was written, as we are informed in the preface to it, when the author was absent from Rome, and deprived of the greater part of his library. In his _History of Medicine_, Sprengel states, but I know not on what precise authority, that the work in question was composed by Largus when he was absent with the Emperor Claudius during his short campaign into England.[419] Our countryman, Sir Thomas Browne, makes a similar statement. In his _Hydriotaphia_, when discoursing on the want of Roman notices regarding the state, habits, etc., of the ancient Britons, he observes, “We much deplore the loss of that letter which Cicero expected or received from his brother Quintus, as a resolution of British customs; or the accounts which might have been made by Scribonius Largus, the physician accompanying the Emperor Claudius, who might have discovered that frugal bit of the old Britons (mentioned by Dion) which, in the bigness of a bean, could satisfy their hunger.”[420]

We have already had occasion to allude to the disasters which attended the Scottish campaign of Severus, and to the imperfect health of the emperor himself during his invasion of Scotland. The evidence of Herodian further shows us that during it he was attended by his own physicians, and that their conduct after the emperor’s return from Scotland to York, whilst in the highest degree commendable as regards their faith and duty to the emperor, proved the cause of their own downfall and destruction. The anxiety of Caracalla for the death of his father Severus is well known. We have the testimony of Herodian to the fact, that while the father and son were living at York, Caracalla at one time attempted to destroy his father with his own hand. The same historian further informs us, that the unhappy son attempted to induce the medical attendants of Severus to adopt means to hasten the emperor’s death.[421] He adds further, that in consequence of the court physicians not complying with his unrighteous request, Caracalla, immediately after the demise of Severus, commenced his reign of bloodshed and terror by putting to death these recusant physicians of the late emperor.[422]

In the retrospect, it affords a strange subject of meditation for us in the nineteenth century, to consider that, some fifteen hundred years ago, it thus happened in England, that a number of physicians were themselves doomed to death for refusing to pervert their professional trust so far as to become the murderers of the royal invalid who had confided his health to their care. And the modern physician may look back with some degree of pride upon the fact, that in an age and at a court where cruelty and corruption held unrestrained sway, some members of the medical profession at least remained so uncorruptible as to endanger and sacrifice their own lives rather than tamper with the life of their patient.[423]

ANCIENT ROMAN MEDICINE-STAMPS.

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.

SECTION II.

STAMP NO. I.—FOUND AT TRANENT.

The Scottish specimen of Roman medicine-stamp, to which I have adverted in the preceding page, was discovered some years ago at Tranent in East Lothian, not far distant from the old, and doubtlessly in former times extensive, Roman settlement or _Municipium_ at Inveresk.[443] The stamp now belongs to the Museum of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries.

It was presented to the Museum by the late Mr. Drummond Hay, formerly one of the Secretaries of the Society. From Mr. Hay’s notes it appears that it was found amid a quantity of broken tiles, brick, and other debris of an old (and probably Roman) house, near the church of Tranent. For many years after being deposited in the Antiquarian Museum its character remained undiscovered, till the present excellent Secretary of the Society, my esteemed friend Mr. Daniel Wilson, was led, in reading the descriptions of other similar stamps, to ascertain its true character.

The stamp itself is, as usual, formed out of a greenish-coloured steatite. The stone is of the figure of a parallelogram, nearly two and a half inches in length, and with inscriptions cut upon two of its sides. There is a roundish projection at either extremity of the stone, as seen in the accompanying lithograph (Plate I., No. I., Figs. 1, 2, 3), where the stone and letters of the two inscriptions are, in every respect, faithfully copied from the original as to form and size. The letters are, as in all other similar medicine-stamps, cut incuse and reversed, so as to read from left to right when the inscription was stamped upon any impressible material. Fig. 2 shows one of the inscriptions as it appears cut intagliate upon the stone. Fig. 3 presents an accurate copy of this inscription as it is seen when stamped upon wax. Fig. 1 is an equally faithful copy of the second inscription placed on the opposite side of the stone. It will be observed that, as in the original, the size of the lettering varies on the two sides.

The lettering on the two sides (1 and 2) runs thus, as it stands inscribed upon the stone:—

1. LVALLATINIEVODESADCI CATRICESETASPRITUDIN

2. LVALLATINIAPALOCRO CODESADDIATHESIS

The two inscriptions read as follows, when we separate the individual words composing them from each other:—

1. L VALLATINI EVODES AD CI- CATRICES ET ASPRITUDIN

2. L VALLATINI APALOCRO- CODES AD DIATHESIS.

Let us endeavour to interpret each of these inscriptions in detail, supplying the elisions and contractions which exist in almost all Roman inscriptions; but which are less in this seal than in most others.

1. L(_ucii?_) VALLATINI EVODES AD CICATRICES ET ASP_e_RITUDIN_es_.—_Lucius Vallatinus’ Evodes for cicatrices and granulations._

Several of the collyria derived, as I have already observed, their designation from some special physical character. The present instance is an example in point, the appellation _Evodes_ (εὐώδες) being derived from the pleasant odour (εὐ, well, and ὄζω, I smell) of the composition. Marcellus, in his work _De Medicamentis_, specially praises the collyrium known under the name of _Evodes_; and that too in the class of eye-diseases mentioned on the Tranent seal. For, in his collection of remedies for removing ulcers, cicatrices, etc., of the eyes and eyelids, he recommends (to use his own words) “præcipue hoc quod quidam Diasmyrnon, nonnulli _Evodes_, quia boni odoris est, nominant.” And he directs the _Evodes_ to be dissolved and diluted in water, and introduced into the eyes with a probe, or after inverting the eyelid, when it was used with the view of extenuating recent cicatrices of the eyes, and removing granulations of the eyelids,—“ex aqua autem ad cicatrices recentes extenuendas, et palpebrarum asperitudinem tollendam teri debet, et subjecto specillo aut inversa palpebra, oculis inseri.”[444]

Scribonius Largus had previously described, in nearly the same words, the collyrium,—“quod quidam εὐώδες vocant,” and its uses in recent cicatrices and granulations, etc. Both these authors give the same recipe for the composition of the _Evodes_,—viz. pompholyx, burnt copper, saffron, myrrh, hematites, opium, and other ingredients, rubbed down in Chian wine. Its agreeable odour was probably owing to a considerable quantity of spikenard being used in its composition.[445] Galen gives two other collyria, of a different composition, and for other affections, as known at his time under the same name of _Evodes_,—the one termed the “_Evodes_ of Zosimus,” the other the “diasmyrnon _Evodes_ of Syneros.”[446]

2. L. VALLATINI APALOCROCODES AD DIATHESIS.—_L. Vallatinus’ mild Crocodes for affections of the eyes._

The term diathesis in this inscription is used in a different sense from that in which we now employ the same word in modern medicine. At the present day we apply the term diathesis to designate the tendency or predisposition to some special disease, or class of diseases. In the times of the Roman physicians, it was often used as synonymous with disease itself; and in the Latin translations of the Greek texts of Galen, Aetius, etc., it is hence rendered usually by the general word “affectus,” “affectio,” etc. The first sentence in Paulus Ægineta’s chapter on Ophthalmic Diseases, affords an instance in point: “Quum dolores vehementiores in oculis fiunt, considera ex quanam affectione (διαθεσει) oculum dolere contingit.”[447] Thus, also, the _Evodes_ of Zosimus (to which I have before alluded) is entered by Galen as a remedy simply against “dolores et recentes affectus,” according to the Latin translation of Kühn,—“προς περιωδυνιας και προσφατους διαθεσεις,” according to the original Greek text. He uses diathesis, in fact, as a general term for eye-diseases. Thus, when speaking of diseases of the eye in general, he observes,—“Scripsi omnia quæ necesse est Medicum de oculorum affectibus (διαθεσεων) nosse.”[448] In its last syllable in the inscription on the seal, diathesIS stands instead of the Roman accusative diathesES, or the Greek accusative diathesEIS. This usage, however, is not without classical authority.

The collyrium mentioned in the prescription (the _Crocodes_) derives its designation from its containing the crocus, or saffron, as one of its principal ingredients.

In describing the therapeutic effects of the crocus, Dioscorides mentions, as its first special use, its efficacy in “fluxions of the eyes”—(oculorum fluxiones cohibet).[449]

Pliny, in enumerating the qualities of the crocus, begins by observing that it has a discutient effect upon all inflammations, but chiefly on those of the eyes (discutit inflammationes omnes quidem, sed oculorum maxime); and in speaking of its combinations he tells us that it has given a name to one collyrium (collyrio uno etiam nomen dedit).[450] But it entered into the composition of very many of the ancient eye-medicines, and more than one of these passed under the name of _Crocodes_, as in the inscription on the seal. Galen, in his list of eye-remedies, gives the recipe for the composition of a _Crocodes_ collyrium for epiphoræ, pains, and affections (διαθεσεις) from wounds of the eye.[451] He discusses the composition also of the aromatic _Crocodes_ of Heraclides, and the oxydercic _Crocodes_ of Asclepius, etc.[452] When describing, in another part, the remedies for ulcers of the eyes, he mentions a collyrium containing crocus, and adds, “habet autem hoc plurimum in se crocum, unde etiam _Croceum_ (κροκωδες) appellatur.”[453]

Celsus,[454] Alexander Trallianus,[455] and Paulus Ægineta[456] give recipes for eye collyria, under the name of diacrocus (δια κροκος).

I have not yet alluded to the expression APALO, standing before _Crocodes_. This expression presents the only difficulty in reading the inscription; and various suggestions might be offered in regard to its explanation. But it seems most probable that it was used as a qualifying term to the _Crocodes_. Several of the collyria have the Latin adjective “lene,” and “leve,” placed before them, in order to certify their mild nature. Scribonius Largus gives a whole division of collyria, headed “Collyria composita levia.” Aetius has a chapter, “De Lenibus Collyriis.” The expression _apalo_, as a part and prefix to _Crocodes_, would seem to indicate the same quality in the crocodes sold by Vallatinus, the term being in all likelihood derived from the Greek adjective απαλος, or the corresponding Latin adjective _apalus_ (mild, soft). Homer frequently uses the word as signifying soft, delicate, and especially as applied to different parts of the body (see _Iliad_, book iii. 371; xvii. 123, etc.); and, indeed, both Aetius and Paulus Ægineta employ the Greek adjective therapeutically in the sense of mild, and as applied to collyria. In the treatment of acute inflammatory ulcers of the eye, after inculcating the usual antiphlogistic treatment, Aetius adds, “collyria vero tenera (απαλα) ulcerate oculo infundantur.”[457]

When treating of carbuncles and carcinoma of the eye, Paulus Ægineta observes that the affection may be alleviated “by the injection of soothing (_tenera_, απαλα) collyria, such as the _Spodiacum_, _Severianum_, and the like.”[458] And again, when giving his formulæ for different collyria in another part of his works, he applies the term απαλον to the collyrium _Diathalium_, or collyrium made from olive leaves (Διαθαλιον απαλον), upon the same principle, and evidently with the same signification, as the word is used in the Tranent stamp, as applied to the collyrium _Crocodes_.[459]

I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Birch for the impressions of two unpublished oculist-stamps, contained in the British Museum. Their forms and inscriptions are represented in Plate I., Nos. II. and III.; and I shall describe them under these numbers. They are supposed to have formed part of the collection of Sir Hans Sloane; but no note exists as to the precise locality in which they were discovered.

SECTION III.

STAMP NO. II.—CONTAINED IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

This large stamp consists (Plate I., No. II.[460]) of a flat quadrilateral stone, about an inch and a half broad, and engraved upon three of its sides. A portion of one corner of the stone is broken off. The probable deficiency which is thus produced in one of the inscriptions is supplied in this, and in some other similar instances in the sequel, by Italic letters. The three inscriptions read as follow:—

1. SEX: JUL: SEDATI CROCOD PACCIAN

2. SEX: JUL: SEDATI CRO- CODES DIALEPIDOS

3. (_Sex_): JUL: SEDATI CRO- (_cod_)ES AD DIATHES

The name of the oculist—SEXTUS JULIUS SEDATUS—is imperfect on the third or broken side, the prænomen “SEX” being wanting on that side in the first line, and the middle syllable “COD” of the word Crocodes being also wanting, from the same cause, in the second line.

The restored reading of this third side—viz., SEXTI JULII SEDATI CROCODES AD DIATHES_es_—need not be dwelt upon, as it is so very similar to that on one side of the Tranent stone. The other two sides contain the names of two new varieties of crocodes.

One of these varieties—the CROCODES PACCIANUM—received its name from Paccius, a celebrated Roman medical practitioner, who either invented this special collyrium, or brought it into repute. Paccius, who lived about the commencement of the Christian era, is said to have amassed a fortune by the sale of a secret nostrum. At his death he bequeathed the prescription for it to the Emperor Tiberius, who placed a copy of it in the various public libraries.[461] In the list of his ophthalmic medicines, Galen gives formulæ for various collyria invented by Paccius, such as the “_Sphragis Paccii_,”[462] “_Asclepiadeum Paccii_,”[463] “_Collyrium_ ex terra Samia _Paccii Ophthalmici_ ad affectus intensos (επιτεταμενας διαθεσεις).”[464] Galen does not give any recipe for the _Crocodes_ of Paccius; but it was evidently a collyrium duly esteemed at the time in which he wrote; for, in his chapter on ulcers of the eyes, he specially names the “CROCODES PACCIANUM,”[465] and recommends its use in cases in which the accompanying inflammation has already ceased, and at the stage when a stimulating application becomes necessary.

The other variety of crocodes used by Sedatus is the CROCODES DIALEPIDOS. A formula for _Dialepidos_ is given by Marcellus,[466] with the crocus as the first ingredient mentioned in its composition. The _Dialepidos_ derived its name from its containing the scales—(λεπιδες) of burnt copper, or the black peroxide of that metal,—a preparation which Dioscorides (lib. v. cap. 89) describes as useful in eye-diseases; and which Galen declares to be a “medicamentum multo utilissimum,” vol. xii. p. 223.

SECTION IV.

STAMP NO. III.—CONTAINED IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

A second Roman medicine-stamp is (as I have already stated, p. 244) contained in the British Museum. The stone is small and broken, and only engraved on one side (see Plate I., No. III.) The inscription does not include, as usual, the name of the oculist who possessed and employed it.

The lettering on this stamp is very distinct, except in one particular. It is doubtful whether the third last letter is intended for an “L,” or stands, as suggested by Mr. Way, for an “I,” with a period-point after it, thus—“I.” An inspection of the stamp itself has impressed me with the belief, that the doubtful letter is truly an “L;” and if so, the inscription would run:—

COLLYR. P. CLOC.

Or, to read it in an extended form, COLLYR_ium_ P_ost_ C_a_L_iginem_ OC_ulorum_—_Collyrium for blindness of the eyes._ And I may observe that several of the prescriptions found on these medicine-stamps are collyria professing to be useful against and after (_ad_ and _post_) _caliginem_.

But if the doubtful letter is an “I,” and not an L, then the inscription, when extended, may be read as follows:—COLLYR_ium_ P_ost_ CI_catrices_ OC_ulorum_, or, “_Collyrium after cicatrices of the eyes._”

The P may stand for P_ro_, and not for P_ost_; but I am not aware of any instance of the former preposition (_Pro_) occurring in these inscriptions, while several examples of this use of the latter preposition (_Post_) are known. An instance of this use of the preposition _Post_ will be found in the sequel, in Stamp No. VI.

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) OPOBALSAMAT_um_ AD CAP (CAL_igines_).—_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.

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.

In 1788 Mr. Gough published, in the _Archæologia_, “Observations on certain Stamps or Seals used anciently by the Oculists.”[482] In this communication he has given, amongst others, copies of the inscriptions on the medicine-stamp found at Bath; but without making any attempt whatever to read and decypher these inscriptions. He appears to have seen the stone itself, as he describes it as “square, of a greenish cast, and perforated.” He presents the following as the legends or inscriptions on the four sides of the stamp:[483]—

1. T. IVNIANI THALASER AD CLARITATEM

2. T. IVNIANI CRSOMAEL IN M AD CLARITATEM

3. T. IVNIANI D[symbols]VM AD VETERES CICATRICES

4. T. IVNIANI HOFSVMAρDV EC VMODELICTA AMEDICIS

The two first of these inscriptions are given with sufficient distinctness and accuracy; and they do not offer any great difficulties in the way of explanation. But the two last have been copied so imperfectly,—and, perhaps, so inaccurately,—by Mr. Gough, as to surround their meaning with no small degree of uncertainty and doubt.

In all of the four inscriptions, the name of the proprietor or oculist, T(_itus_?) JUNIANUS, is perfectly distinct. The first side reads as follows:—

1. T. JUNIANI THALASSER AD CLARITATEM. _T. Junianus’ Thalasser (or Marine Collyrium) for clearness of vision._

The collyrium _Thalasseros_ (θαλασσερος) is mentioned by several of the old Greek and Roman authors, who have discussed the subject of diseases of the eye and collyria, as by Galen,[484] Myrepsus,[485] Aetius,[486] Alexander Trallianus,[487] and Paulus Ægineta.[488]

The name itself—_Thalasseros_—is evidently derived from θαλασση, the sea. Fuchs, the translator of Myrepsus, avows that he can form no conjecture as to why the collyrium was termed Thalasseros (quam autem ob causam nescio). In Cornarius’ translation of Aetius, it is entered as “Thalasserum, _hoc est marinum_.” And in all probability it originally received its high-sounding and attractive appellation from the marine colour of the preparation, the hue of the collyrium being, as we have already seen, sometimes the cause and source of its distinctive appellation, as in the collyria termed _Melinum_, _Cygnus_, _Cirrhon_, etc. It has been conjectured that the name was imposed upon it in consequence of one or other of its ingredients being of marine origin. But in none of the formulæ given for it by the authors already named, does any sea ingredient enter into its composition.[489]

The object of the _Thalasseros_ in our inscription was to produce clearness of vision (_ad claritatem_). It was used in vision impaired from cataract (_suffusio_) and other causes. Galen describes the _Thalasseros_ of Hermophilus as “accomodatum ad suffusiones et ad omnem hebetudinem visus; facit et ad incipientem suffusionem” (vol. xii. p. 781). Myrepsus assigns to it the powers of “lachrymas retinens, ad inchoantes suffusiones et nyctalopas, et ad recentem pupillæ dilatationem” (sect. xxiv. cap. 51). It is adapted, according to Trallianus, “ad hebetudinem, et incipientes suffusiones; et callos exterit” (lib. ii. cap. v. p. 175).

2. T. JUNIANI C_e_R_us_SOMAELINUM AD CLARITATEM.—_T. Junianus’ Leaden_ (?) _Melinum (or Golden Yellow Collyrium) for clearness of vision._

I have already had occasion to speak of the signification and qualities of the collyrium named _Melinum_. In the Colchester stamp the _Melinum_ is invested with the same supposed properties as the _Crsomelinum_ in the above legend on the Bath seal,—namely, “ad claritatem.”[490]

The prefix CRSO, in _Crsomelinum_, admits of more than one interpretation. Galen gives four different formulæ for “collyria _Melina_.” Three of these contain, as one of their ingredients, the _Cerussa_, or carbonate of lead; and the prefix CRSO may possibly stand as a contraction for _Cerussa_, implying the presence of this medicine in the collyrium. And, in relation to this view, it is to be recollected that this preparation of lead was, in these ancient times, held in some esteem as a local application in eye-diseases. Galen recommends it as an anodyne in pains of the eyes, and as a general astringent and sedative application.[491]

Another, and perhaps more probable meaning, has been suggested to me by my friend M. Sichel. He supposes the CRSO to be a contraction for CHRSO, _golden_ (from χρυσος, gold), the prefix marking the golden colour of this _melinum_, or yellow collyrium. In this way we would have Junianus retailing his “Golden Yellow Collyrium” to the colonists and natives of Bath some sixteen centuries ago. And we all know that “Golden Ointment” for the eyes is an application not by any means unknown to the medical practitioners and pharmacopolists of England in the nineteenth century.

3. T. JUNIANI DIEXUM AD VET_e_RES CICATRICES.

In the above line I give the reading of the third side of the Bath medicine-seal, such as it stands copied into the manuscript minute-books of the Antiquarian Society for 17th November 1757. By turning back to the inscription, as cited in a previous page from Gough, it will be seen that the three medial letters IEX are in a rude Brittano-Roman character, which allows us only to guess at their true signification. Unfortunately, the plaster cast of this side of the stamp does not happen to be preserved with the others, so as to enable us to ascertain the probability of either reading; and it is more than doubtful whether the inscription thus given by these opposed authorities is correctly copied, either by Gough, or in the Society’s minute-book. And I believe I state the general experience of all who have worked at the deciphering of Roman and other inscriptions, in observing that the perplexities connected with the reading of them have often been produced, much more by grave errors in the published copies of the inscriptions, than by actual difficulties in the interpretation of the original, after a true copy has been once obtained.

In the present instance, by reversing the usual mode of procedure in such investigations, we may perhaps arrive at the probable truth. In other words, if we consider the disease prescribed for, we may possibly arrive at a knowledge of the drug prescribed. Now the affection on this side of the Bath stamp is _old cicatrices_ (VETERES CICATRICES). This disease, or rather result of disease, is mentioned on various Roman medicine-stamps discovered on the continent of Europe, as on examples found at Verona, Lillebonne, Ingweiler, and Saint Cheron,[492] and in one which I shall notice in the sequel, lately detected in Ireland. In all the instances which I have just named, the collyrium indicated on the inscriptions as the remedy (VETERES CICATRICES), is the collyrium termed DIAMYSOS or DIAMYSUM, which contained, as its principal ingredient, the metallic preparation known under the name of Μισυ, or Mysy, among the ancient medical authors; and Marcellus Empiricus gives a formula for the formation of a collyrium DIAMYSOS from it. Looking to these facts, in relation to other analogous Roman medicine-seals, it seems not an improbable conjecture that the word on this third side of the Bath stamp is the same, perhaps more or less mis-spelt or contracted; and consequently, that the whole inscription is T. JUNIANI DIAMYSUM AD VETERES CICATRICES. The re-discovery of the stamp itself can alone settle this and other difficulties connected with it.

If we judged of the nature of the inscription by the characters of the letters, as given by Gough, the disputed word might perhaps be more correctly read DRYCUM or DRYXUM. And possibly, in this way, it may signify an astringent and detergent collyrium, made from the bark, acorn, or galls of the DRYS (δρυς) or oak—a tree that held a place in the materia medica of Hippocrates, Galen, and the other ancients, and which still maintains its place in our own modern Pharmacopœias. Dioscorides, and the other old pharmaceutical authorities, describe the _Drys_ or Quercus as possessing desiccant, astringent, and other properties; and they attribute especially these powers to the gall excrescences that so often grow upon it, and which they incorrectly deemed the fruit of this tree. According to Oribasius, the gall of the oak—“siccat, repercutit, contrahit, constringit, et particulas infirmas roborat.”[493]

Further, in favour of the present supposition, that the collyrium of the inscription may possibly be named from the DRYS, I may take the present opportunity of mentioning that the ancient Roman oculists seem to have pursued, in regard to old cicatrices of the eye, a treatment which is not followed by their successors in modern times. “All cicatrices on the transparent part of the eye,” says Aetius, “appear white (omnes cicatrices in nigro oculi _albæ_ apparent”);[494] and consequently give, by their presence, a disagreeable and disfiguring effect to the eye.[495] Some of the Roman oculists seem to have used various collyria, for the purpose of dyeing or changing the colour of these white specks or pearly cicatrices, and of thus imparting to them some kind of tint that rendered the appearance of the eye, and the distinction between the transparent cornea and its white opacities, less marked and striking. For this purpose the gall-nuts of the oak or DRYS appear to have been greatly used. Aetius does not approve of the practice of tinting cicatrices; but, in a chapter bearing the heading of “Albuginum Tincturæ,” he describes half-a-dozen applications and collyria that might be employed for the purpose of staining and correcting the colour of old cicatrices of the eyes, lest, he adds, his readers should be ignorant of the means which might effect this (ut ne ignorentur ea quæ hoc facere possunt). In three or four of these collyria the gall-nut forms a leading ingredient,[496] and it seems to have been generally used previously to, or in combination with, blue vitriol (_atramentum sutorium_). Myrepsus gives a “collyrium tingens crassas albugines et cicatrices,” containing galls with chalcanthus (or copperas), roasted lead, etc.; and a second formed of burnt and washed lead, etc., combined with unripe galls.[497] Paulus Ægineta mentions two dyes for cicatrices, both of them containing galls along with chalcanthus.[498] Alexander Trallianus gives a collyrium for staining cicatrices, which he pronounces “valde generosum.” It consists principally of chalcanthus and galls.[499]

Lastly, let me offer one more conjecture. If the debateable word in this legend be correctly copied as DIEXUM into the Antiquarian Society minute-book, it may probably signify the collyrium DIOXUS or DIOXUM given by Marcellus, and which he recommends for the removal of granulations of the eyelids. This collyrium was composed of cadmia, burnt copper, hæmatites, myrrh, and gum.[500]

4. T. JUNIANI HOBSUM AD ρUECUMO DELICTA A MEDICIS.

This fourth legend on the Bath stone offers the most puzzling of all the inscriptions hitherto found upon the Roman medicine-stamps discovered in Great Britain. As Mr. Gough gives it, the last words of the inscription DELICTA, or more probably DELECTA[501] A⃨ MEDICIS (esteemed by physicians), are alone intelligible. The plaster cast of this side of the seal, contained in the Museum of the Antiquarian Society of London, contains an extremely imperfect copy of the second line, and not an over perfect one of the first; but we see enough in it to be quite aware of the great carelessness with which Mr. Gough had originally copied the whole inscription. The second last letter in the line is not the Greek ρ, as Gough prints it, but the Latin Q; and the name of the collyrium is not HOBSUM, as he gives it, but apparently PHOEBUM. At all events there is a P, which he has omitted, before the H; and the two medial letters, which he read F S, are seemingly E B. Such is the conclusion to which a careful examination of the lettering of the cast itself forces me; and what is much more important,—because affording far stronger evidence than mine,—Mr. Akerman reads this inscription in the same way. I may add, that (as I am informed by the same gentleman) the word is always copied and written as PHOEBUM, in the several notices of the stamp contained in the minute-books of the Antiquarian Society, and to which I have already referred; and Gough’s Greek ρ is always given as the Roman Q.

Still, with all these emendations, I confess myself quite at a loss to decipher, satisfactorily, the inscription. The spelling of all the inscriptions on this stamp is executed very carelessly,—as in _crsomaelinum_ for _crysomelinum_; _thalaser_ for _thalasser_; and possibly the term QUECVMO may be a mis-spelling by the engraver for LEUCOMA. If so, the inscription would stand as

T JUNIANI PHOEBUM AD LU ECOMA DELECTA A MEDICIS.

Or, as we may then translate it, “_The Phoebum of T. Junianus for Leucoma, esteemed by physicians._”

I am not aware that any of the old authors have described a collyrium under the name of PHOEBUM. But it looks like one of those specious titles which the oculists were so fond of selecting and assuming; and we find described in their works collyria with analogous semi-astronomical and mythological appellations, such as _Sol_, _Aster_, _Lumen_, _Phos_, _Uranium_, etc.[502]

I shall venture only one more remark, viz. the possibility of the term being PHORBIUM and not PHOEBUM. “The PHORBIUM,” observes Galen, “possesses attenuating, attractive, and discutient powers. They apply its seeds, mixed with honey, to LEUCOMA; and it is believed to have the power of extracting spicula of wood.”[503]

SECTION VII.

STAMP NO. VI.—FIRST DESCRIBED BY MR. DOUCE.

Mr. Douce published in 1778[504] a notice of a square flattened Roman medicine-stamp, a quarter of an inch thick, and each side or edge measuring about two inches.

Mr. Gough published in the _Archæologia_ a sketch of this stamp, which is copied into Pl. II., No. VI. Some wax impressions were taken of the stone, but the stone itself was (it is stated in the same volume of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, 1778, p. 510) “lost out of a pocket that had a hole in it, and probably, instead of gracing a museum, has contributed its mite towards mending the roads.”

The four sides of the stone contained the following series of inscriptions, the terminal and initial letters of three of the lines being wanting, and supplied in our copy below by italic letters:—

1. MJULSATYRIDIA LEPIDOSADASPR

2. MJULSATYRIDIASMI(_r_) (_n_)ESPOSTMPETLIPPIT

3. MJULSATYRIDIALI BANUADSUPPURAT

4. (_m_)JULSATYRIPENI CILLENEEXOVO

The name of the oculist, M. JUL. SATYRUS—_M(arcus?) Jul(ius) Satyrus_—is sufficiently distinct, and occurs with each of the four legends of the stamp. When we analyse further the inscriptions on the four sides of the seal, they severally read as follows:—

1. M(_arci_) JUL_ii_ SATYRI DIALEPIDOS AD ASP_e_R_itudines_.—_Marcus Julius Satyrus’ Dialepidos or Copper collyrium for granulations of the eyelids._

The three first sides of this stamp have the special collyria inscribed upon them, beginning each with the letters DIA, from the Greek preposition δια, “with,” and here signifying “made with.”[505] The three principal ingredients in the three first inscriptions are all given, combined with this initial preposition δια, and under their Greek appellatives,—λεπιδος, σμυρνα and λιβανος—forming instances, among many others, of the anxiety of the ancient Roman oculists to invest their drugs with all the mysterious attraction and formality of a Greek name; just as some modern English physicians foolishly enough consider it still proper to write always the names of the medicines which they now prescribe in the language of the ancient Romans, thus, like their predecessors, attempting, in the exercise of their profession, to act upon that principle in the weakness of human nature which holds “omne ignotum pro mirifico.”

I have already described (see Stamp No. II., p. 245) the composition of the collyrium termed _Dialepidos_, and the origin of the name of the inscription from the λεπιδες, or scales of the oxide of copper.

2. M. JUL. SATYRI DIASMI_rn_ES POST IMPETUM LIPPIT_udinis_.—_The Diasmyrnes or Myrrh collyrium of M. Jul. Satyrus, after the commencement of ophthalmy._

The principal ingredients in the collyrium _Diasmyrnes_, namely, myrrh (μῤῥυα or σμυρνα), was a drug to which important therapeutical virtues were formerly ascribed. It was applied in the treatment of various diseases. In reference to affections of the eye, it had the power, according to Dioscorides, of filling up ulcers of the organ, removing cicatrices and scales obstructing the pupil; and besides, it cured eruptions and granulations of the eyelids (oculorum ulcera complet, exteritque albugines, et ea quae pupillis tenebras offundunt; quin et scabritias seu asperitudines expolit).[506]

Various collyria were used by the ancients, bearing the name of _Diasmyrnes_ or _Diasmyrnon_, from myrrh constituting their leading ingredient. Aetius has one of his long chapters on collyria headed “Collyria Diasmyrna et Chiaca appellata.”[507] Actuarius, in his section “De affectionibus Oculorum,” speaks of the collyria _Diasmyrna_ (quæ ex myrrha constant) in the plural number, and as well known in his time.[508] Paulus Ægineta, in discussing the treatment of hypopion or suppuration in the cornea, speaks of sometimes making the abscess burst; and, if so, then, he adds, “cleanse the ulcer by means of the more potent remedies, such as those called _Diasmyrna_,”[509] etc. Among his formulæ for individual collyria in his several books, he gives a receipt for the collyria _Diasmyrnes_. (Aldine edition, p. 118.)

Galen gives several collyria _Diasmyrna_, as the _Diasmyrnum_ Odorum Synerotis,[510] the _Diasmyrnum_ Glaucidanum, and the _Diasmyrnum_ ex hæmatite.[511] And in his work _De Simplicium Medicamentorum Temperamentis ac Facultatibus_, he states, “Sed et collyria sunt plurima quæ medeantur suffusionibus, et maxime quod plurimam recipit myrrham, quale est quod a Democrate compositum est, quod vocant _Diasmyrnon_.”[512]

The term _Lippitudo_ in this legend, and which we will find recurring in the sequel, was, according to Galen, anciently applied to that form of ophthalmy which consists of inflammation of the conjunctival covering of the cornea (lippitudo inflammatio est membranæ, quæ corneæ adnata est.)[513] But the term was also used to designate other forms or varieties of ophthalmic inflammation. The disease described by Celsus under the name of _Lippitudo_ appears (says a high modern authority on eye-diseases) to have been “catarrhal conjunctivitis.”[514] The same oculist speaks of Lippitudo as “an excoriation of the edges of the lids, or bleared eyes;” and he describes obliteration of the Meibomian follicles as the cause of incurable Lippitudo.

3. M. JULII. SATYRI DIALIBANU_m_ AD SUPPURAT_ionem_.—_M. Jul. Satyrus’ Dialibanum, or Incense collyrium, for Suppurative discharge from the eyes._

Frankincense (_thus_, λιβανος, λιβανωτος)[515] was frequently used by the ancient oculists in their collyria. According to Galen[516] and Paulus Ægineta,[517] in consequence of its detergent powers, it apparently cleanses and fills up ulcers in the eyes (expurgare et implere quæ in oculis consistunt ulcera videtur). It has the power, according to Oribasius, “astringendi, calefaciendi, _caliginem oculorum_ discutiendi, cava ulcera implendi, ad cicatricem perducendi,”[518] etc.

Alexander Trallianus gives a formula for the collyrium _Dialibanum ad chemosim efficax_; and he describes the _Dialibanum_ as, like the Libanum, of much use in eye-diseases, and particularly for inflammations which are accompanied with ulceration (multi est usus, maxime ad inflammationes quae cum ulcere infestant).[519] Celsus recommends it in ulcers of the eye following pustules (fit quoque proprie ad hæc quod δια λιβανου vocatur).[520] Paulus Ægineta gives a formula for the _Dialibanum_, in his chapter on collyria.[521] Marcellus Empiricus, who offers two recipes for its composition, ascribes to it the power of being efficacious in the disease noted on our inscription, namely, “ad suppurationes oculorum.”[522]

When speaking of the treatment of suppuration of the eye, Galen lays down the following indications for the use of the _Diasmyrnes_, and _Dialibanum_:—“At quando pus, quod in oculis est, digerere placet, collyriis quæ myrrham habent, maxime utemur; quæ utique et _Diasmyrna_ Græci proprie vocant; his certe minus, sed reliquis melius faciunt quæ _Dialibanum_ vocant.”[523]

4. (M): JUL: SATYRI PENIC_illum_ LENE EX OVO.—_M. Jul. Satyrus’ mild Penicillum; to be used with an egg._

The term _Penicillum_ has been found inscribed on several different Roman medical stamps, as upon specimens discovered at Vieux and Paris, each marked with _lene penicillum_; upon one discovered at Nais (_penicillum ad omnem lippitudinem_); and upon another at Famars. Its signification has given rise to several opinions somewhat differing from each other.

M. Grivaud considers the _Penicillum_ indicated on the Roman medicine-stamps, to be merely a small brush or hair-pencil, such as is still used at the present day to wipe away the more viscid discharges that may be found adhering to the palpebræ and eyelashes.[524] According to M. Sichel, the _Penicillum_ consisted of a pledget or folds of charpie, which the ancient oculists used both for the purpose of cleansing the eyes, and of introducing into them soothing washes and collyria.[525] M. Eloi Johanneau,[526] and M. Duchalais,[527] describe the _Penicillum_ as a soft and fine sponge, employed in applying collyria to the diseased eye. Blancardi, in his _Lexicon Medicum_, defines the word _Penicillum_ as “lint reduced to charpie, and besmeared with ointment to be applied to ulcers.”

The word _Penicillum_ occurs in the writings of Pliny and Celsus, and is used by these ancient authorities in such a manner as to give countenance to each of the preceding opinions. Thus Pliny, in his chapter on sponges (_De Spongiarum Natura_), speaks of a variety of very fine sponge under the name of _Penicillum_; and this, when soaked in a preparation of honeyed wine (mulso), was, he says, applied to tumours of the eyes.[528] These _Penicilli_ were also (he adds) useful, when very soft and fine, in cleansing the eye in ophthalmy.[529] Celsus, in his observations on the diseases of the eye, three or four times, and in different senses, uses the term. In inflammation of the eye, he recommends the eyes to be fomented with a _Penicillum_ or pledget, squeezed out of a warm watery decoction of myrtle or rose leaves, before local medicines and collyria are applied to them.[530] Elsewhere, he recommends a pledget or _Penicillum_ to be laid, or, if necessary, bound over the eyes, squeezed out of water; or, if the attack is more severe, out of vinegar and water (_Penicillo_ uti expresso ex aqua; si major, ex posca).[531] In another passage, he states that in intense ophthalmia the white of an egg or the milk of woman, dropped into the eye with a _Penicillum_, relieves the inflammation, and that this may be used by the patient when neither a physician nor other medicines are at hand.[532] And again, he recommends the patient to take a bath, and foment his head and eyes freely with the warm water, then to wipe both with a _Penicillum_, and anoint his head with iris ointment.[533] Here we have the _Penicillum_ used by the same author as a mechanical means both of cleansing the eye and of making local applications to it. Further, in his chapter on the surgery of the eyes, Celsus uses the word _Penicillum_ in the signification of tents. Thus, in describing the operation for ancyloblepharon, or agglutination of the eyelids, he directs the eyelids, after being separated by a probe, to be kept asunder by small _penicilla_ laid between them, till the ulceration of the part is cured.[534]

The preceding quotations show that, besides other significations, there is no doubt that the term _Penicillum_ was used to designate a soft sponge, and perhaps also a brush or pledget of charpie that was occasionally employed in ophthalmic practice, for the double purpose of fomenting or cleansing the eye, and of dropping local applications into it. But it seems very unlikely that a stamp should be used by the oculist to mark the material of these _Penicilli_ with. It would be both difficult and unnecessary to stamp in any way either a piece of sponge or of charpie with such an inscription as that found upon this and the other Roman seals. And I would venture to suggest, that it appears much more probable that the collyrium, ointment, or lotion, that was to be used with the sponge or charpie, was sometimes designated _Penicillum_, from the special mode in which it was to be applied; in the same way as we have found various eye-drops passing under the general designation of _Stactum_, from the special mode in which they were applied to the diseased organ. In this way the LENE PENICILLUM in the legend of our present oculist-stamp would not signify the material which was used in the application of the medicine, but the name of the medicine or collyrium as indicative of the mode in which it was to be used.

The employment of the collyrium PENICILLUM mixed with an egg (EX OVO) is often indicated upon the oculist-stamps; and in the ancient Roman authors it is a mode in which many of the collyria were directed to be prepared before they were applied to the diseased eye.

SECTION VIII.

STAMP NO. VII.—CONTAINED IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

In his paper in the _Archæologia_ (vol. ix.), Mr. Gough published a sketch and account of a medicine-stamp, inscribed on three of its sides, and remarkable in one or two respects. The sketch which he has given of it is copied into Plate II., No. VII. The stamp itself is preserved in the British Museum. It is thicker, and more rounded at the edges, than the generality of these flat medicine-stones.

After quoting the three inscriptions on its sides, Mr. Gough gives the following very brief and unsatisfactory account of the reading of this stamp. “From the inscriptions,” he observes, “we learn that the owner’s name was FL., or FLAVIUS SECUNDUS, and that his composition was made of Opobalsamum and Myrrh, and the white of eggs.”[535]

Mr. Gough pointed out that the third side of the stamp was engraved in letters of a rude and negligent form, and different in character from the inscriptions on the two other sides. But he failed in seeing that the remaining sides are both imperfect; and that the latter half of one of the inscriptions, and the first half of the other, are deficient, in consequence of the stone, which was at first much larger, having been broken or reduced in size, and subsequently again rubbed down and smoothed on two of its sides before one of these sides was cut with the rude lettering above alluded to. When these circumstances are attended to, the inscriptions on the three sides appear to stand as follows:—

1. LJULIVENISD . . . . . OPOBALSAMTU . . . . .

2. . . . . . . ASMVRNESBIS . . . . . . MPETUEXOVO

3. FSEKUNDI ATALBAS.

The name of the proprietor is evidently L. JUL. IVENIS [L(_ucius?_) _Jul(ius) Ivenis_]; and I may remark in passing, that the cognomen of IVENIS is one which has been found recurring among the Roman pottery-stamps found in England.

It is impossible to fill in, with anything like precision and certainty, the defective words in the two first inscriptions. But judging from the analogy of other similar and more perfect stamps, these two inscriptions probably read somewhat as follows when the seal was entire.

1. L. JUL. IVENIS D_iapsoricum_ OPOBALSAM_a_TU_m_ _ad Claritatem_.—_L. Jul. Ivenis’ Opobalsamic Diapsoricum for clearing of the sight._

The adjective, OPOBALSAMATUM, has hitherto been generally found united upon medicine-stamps with one of two collyria—viz. with _Stacticum_ (as in seal No. IV.); or with _Diapsoricum_, as in seals found at Jena and Lyons. The D preserved in the first line is, in all probability, the initial letter of the latter collyrium.

The _Psoricum_ was a mixture of cadmia and chalcitis, according to Dioscorides, Pliny, and Celsus;[536] or of litharge and chalcitis, according to Galen, Aetius, and Paulus Ægineta.[537] This metallic compound derived its name of _Psoricum_ from its supposed utility in the treatment of parts affected with the eruption of scabies or _psora_. The eyelids, according to the ancient oculists, were the occasional seat of eruptive or pruriginous inflammation (_psorophthalmia_, _scabrities_, _prurigo_, etc.) In enumerating the diseases of the lining membrane of the palpebræ, Galen mentions, among others, _sycosis_, _chalazosis_, and _psoriasis_.[538] Various collyria employed for the removal of these affections were termed _Psorica_, and most of them, though not all, contained the metallic compound alluded to. “Quae scabros in palpebris affectus persanant, atque ob id _Psorica_ appellantur.”[539] When speaking of the specific affections of the eyes and their appropriate local applications, Actuarius, in the same way, remarks, “Quae scabiosis palpebrarum affectionibus medentur, id circo _Psorica_ appellantur.”[540] He gives (p. 307) formulæ for various forms of the _Collyrium Psoricum_; as the _Psoricum aridum_, the _Psoricum Aelii_, etc. Aetius recommends the collyrium _Psoricum_ against “scabros ac corrosos angulos, et intensos pruritus, milphoses et prurigines.”[541] Scribonius Largus describes the composition of a collyrium _Psoricum_ made from the metallic compound of the same name (facit hoc collyrium bene quod _psoricum_ dicitur), and fitted to remove blindness, granulations, and xero-ophthalmia.[542] Marcellus Empiricus credulously invests the collyrium _Psoricum_ with signal powers for various eye-diseases, but particularly for old-standing blindness (antiquam coecitatem). For if (says he) we may credit the experience of the author of the remedy, it has, at the end of twenty days, restored sight to a person who had been blind for twelve years (nam ut auctori hujus remedii de experimento credamus, duodecim annorum coeco intra dies viginti visum restituisse se dicit).[543]

On the Jena medicine-stamp the _Diapsoricum Opobalsamatum_ is entered as efficacious for the clearing of the sight (ad claritatem);[544] and in the proposed restoration of the reading of the present English stamp, I have added to it the same therapeutic indication, as one not unlikely to have originally filled up the part that is now deficient in this line of the stamp.

2. _L. Jul. Ivenis Di_ASMYRNES BIS _Lippitudinis i_MPETU EX OVO.—_The myrrh collyrium of L. J. Ivenis, to be used twice a day, mixed with an egg, at the commencement of Ophthalmy._

Already we have considered the composition, etc., of the Collyrium _Diasmyrnes_ (see pp. 267, 268.) It is entered, as efficacious in attacks of Lippitudo, on the medicine-stamps of Jena, Nais, etc. In the Jena stamp it is, as in the present instance, ordered to be used mixed with an egg.[545]

The word BIS denotes, in all probability, the frequency with which it was to be used daily. Occasionally the ancient authors state in the same way in their works the frequency with which a special collyrium was to be used. Thus, for example, Paulus Ægineta, after describing the composition of the brown collyrium (collyrium fuscum), adds that it is to be applied thrice a day (illinitur _ter_ in die ... ex ovo aut lacte, etc.)[546] Indeed when speaking of the variety of collyrium mentioned in the legend on this stamp,—namely, of the “collyria quæ quod ex myrrha constant διασμυρνα vocantur,” Actuarius expressly states that the affected eye is to be annointed with the _Diasmyrnes_ “twice a day (_bis_ in die).”[547]

3. The third side of this medicine-stamp is engraved, as already observed, by a different and far more inexperienced hand than the other two sides. The letters are very roughly and rudely formed. The inscription indicates the name of another oculist,—of one who probably became the possessor of the stamp after IVENIS. The new proprietor’s name is F., or probably FL., SECUNDUS, and the inscription reads, F. SEKUNDI AT ALBAS, _the collyrium_ or _preparation_ of _F. Secundus against Albugines_.

In reading it, I suppose the AT to be a mis-spelling for AD,—a mistake of which there are not wanting other examples in the illiterate and careless engravings sometimes found upon these medicine-stamps.[548] And I have interpreted the ALBAS as signifying _albas cicatrices_ (white cicatrices), or, in other words, _albugines_ of the cornea,—a suggestion for which I am indebted to M. Sichel. Already I have quoted the expression of Aetius to the effect that all cicatrices of the cornea are “_Albæ_;” and the nouns by which such eye-cicatrices are designated, both by the Greek and Roman physicians, namely, λευκωμα and _albugo_, are words derived from, and intended to signify, the white colour (λευκος, _albus_) of these lesions.

SECTION IX.

STAMP NO. VIII.—FOUND AT SOUTHWELL.

An anonymous correspondent, C. D., sent to the _Gentleman’s Magazine_, in 1772, a sketch and notice of what, no doubt, is a Roman medicine-stamp, but both the sketch given of it and the description are excessively meagre. The correspondent dates his letter from Southwell, in Nottinghamshire. He says, “The inscribed stone was found lately by casting up the ground, in the neighbourhood of Littleborough in this county. The stone is oblong, about two inches long, and one broad. It contains inscriptions on the edges or rim of the two ends, and on one of its oblong sides, but not on the other.”

“It is,” says the correspondent, “supposed to be a Tessera or kind of tally, such being, as we are told, a little flat square piece of stone, and having a particular inscription, and was used in the Roman armies, by being on certain occasions delivered to each of the soldiers, to distinguish them from the enemy, and also in setting their nightly guard, by being given from one centurion to another, quite through the army, till it returned to the tribune who first delivered it. Upon the receipt of this, the guard was set immediately. But,” he continues, “as the inscription on the above drawing cannot be made out to satisfaction, many of you will be glad to know whether it has been such a Tessera as is above supposed; or what else it may have been, or also an explanation of its legend, by some of your antiquarian correspondents.”

The inscription on one of the long sides of the stone appears to be the name of the proprietor of the stamp; but the published copy of it presents such irregular lettering, as to defy any certain deciphering of what the name is. (See Plate III., No. VIII.) On the other two sides the inscriptions are as follow:—

1. B. DIASORICV. 2. STATVS.

These two words evidently are misspellings, either on the original stamp, or (what is equally probable) in its published copy, for the Collyria termed _Diapsoricum_ and _Stactum_. But I have already, in reference to previous inscriptions, discussed the signification of these two terms at such length as not to require to revert to them. (See under Stamps No. IV. and No. VIII.)

The initial B, as it stands in the first line, seems to defy all kinds of conjecture in regard to its signification. In this, as in one or two other instances, the only hope of obtaining a true reading of the legend is in the re-discovery of the stamp itself.

SECTION X.

STAMP NO. IX.—FOUND AT WROXETER.

This seal is remarkable both from its inscription, and from its round form. In this last respect it is, I believe, as yet unique,—no other specimen of a medicine-stamp of the same circular figure having, as far as I know, been hitherto described. The stone is about seven-eighths of an inch in diameter, and a quarter of an inch thick. Its form and inscription are seen in Plate III. No. IX., where the upper figure shows the stamp presenting the usual incuse and reversed inscription; and the second or lower figure shows the impression left by the stamp upon wax.[549]

This curious medicine-stamp was found, in 1808, by a person ploughing in a field near the Roman wall at Wroxeter (the ancient Uriconium), Shropshire. It was first figured and very briefly noticed by Mr. Parkes in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1810, p. 617. “Several (observes Mr. Parkes) have attempted to decipher the legend, but no one has as yet been able to give a satisfactory reading.” Mr. Nightingale (1813), in his account of Shropshire in the _Beauties of England and Wales_[550] mentions the stamp; and Mr. Hartshorne in his _Salopia Antiqua_[551] (1841), has given an embellished and consequently less accurate copy of the inscription than that originally published by Mr. Parkes. Mr. Hartshorne describes it as “an amuletal seal,” and adds, “it has hitherto baffled the endeavours of those who have attempted to explain it.” Lastly, Mr. Albert Way has lately correctly published it as a specimen of a Roman medicine-stamp, and has interpreted the second and fifth lines, leaving the others still undetermined. But the whole appears capable of being deciphered. The inscription runs thus:—

IBCLM DIA LBA AD OM NE Δ VN O EX O

J (_ulii?_) B (_assi?_) CL_e_M_entis_ DIAL_i_BA_num_ AD OMNEM Διαθεσιν (Diathesin) VNO EX O_vo_.—_The Dialibanum or Incense collyrium of Julius Bassus Clemens, for every eye-disease; to be used mixed with an egg._

The name of the practitioner or proprietor, given in the first line of the seal, offers the principal difficulty in reading the inscription. But the CLM is in all probability a contraction, as I have ventured to interpret it, for CLEMENS,—a common cognomen or family name among the Romans. The B as an initial could stand for any of the various gens names which begin with this letter, as Balbus, Betutius, etc. I have conjecturally given it as _Bassus_, principally because on an old monumental tablet, discovered at Leyden,[552] the cognomen of CLEMENS is preceded by the nomen gentilicium of BASSUS,—showing the combination in question not to have been unknown among the Roman colonists formerly scattered over Western Europe. Besides, _Bassus_ was a name by no means unknown in ancient Roman medical literature and practice. When mentioning, in the preface to his first Book, the more distinguished disciples and followers of Asclepiades, Dioscorides places, as the foremost in his enumeration, _Julius Bassus_. Galen (_De Simpl. Medicam. Facult._ lib. i. cap. 7) and Cælius Aurelianus (_Contra Hereses_—Preface to lib. i.) both cite the practice and authority of _Bassus_; and Pliny, in his _Index Auctorum_, mentions that this physician wrote in Greek, although he was by birth a Roman.[553]

The nature and composition of the Collyrium _Dialibanum_ we have already had occasion to consider under a former head. (See Stamp No. VI., p. 253.)

I have also formerly shown that the Greek term Διαθεσις was used as a general term for eye-disease (see p. 241); and no doubt its initial letter Δ stands in the present inscription under this signification.

Many of the ancient collyria were, like the _Dialibanum_, preserved and sold in a firm or solid form, and were directed to be dissolved or mixed with the white of one or more eggs at the time when they were required for application to the eye.[554] Hence the expression, UNO “EX OVO,” in this and other stamp legends.

This stamp, like some others, has a rude figure of a plant engraved along with the inscription. The trunk of the plant is given at the commencement of the third line by Mr. Hartshorne as an I—thus unnecessarily confusing the reading of the legend.

SECTION XI.

STAMP NO. X.—FOUND AT KENCHESTER.

In the Journal of the British Archæological Association for 1849, Mr. Roach Smith has described a medicine-stamp found at Kenchester, in Herefordshire, and communicated to him by Mr. Johnson. I myself am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Johnson for both a model and drawings of this medicine-stamp, which is quadrilateral, and engraved on its four sides. It has, besides, the word SENIOR inscribed on one of its flat surfaces; and the four first letters of the same word are repeated on the opposite surface. I shall afterwards have occasion to re-advert to this curious point.

Mr. Smith has published a sketch of the stamp; but the more correct drawings of it in Plate III., No. X., have been kindly furnished to me by Mr. Johnson. The six lowest figures in this plate represent, first, the two flat surfaces of the stone, with the retrograde inscriptions upon its four sides; and, secondly, these four inscriptions as they appear when impressed upon wax.

The inscriptions on the four sides of this stamp read as follows:—

1. F.VINDAC.ARIO VISTIANICET

2. T.VINDACIAR (_i_)OVISTINARD

3. (T) VINDAC. ARI OVISTI CHLORON

4. T. VINDAC . ARIO VISTI ... RINM

The name of the oculist or proprietor, T. VINDAC ARIOVISTUS, _Titus (?) Vindacius_ or _Vindex Ariovistus_, is singular; the name ARIOVISTUS being the same as that of the celebrated German king and general that plays so interesting and important a part in the Commentaries of Cæsar, and the reputed valour and prowess of whose troops daunted for a time, and almost created a mutiny in, Cæsar’s army.

On this stamp there are no names of any specific eye-diseases given; but the four sides contain the designation of four collyria that we have not met with on any of the previous medicine-stamps which we have had occasion to describe. These are the collyria _Anicetum_, _Nardinum_, _Chloron_, and _Thurinum_.

1. T. VINDAC_ii_ ARIOVISTI ANICETUM.—_The Anicetum_ or _infallible Collyrium of T. Vindacius Ariovistus_.

The collyrium _Anicetum_, or Ανικητον, is, as far as I know, described by Oribasius alone. It was composed of red copper, combined with henbane, hemlock, spikenard, frankincense, etc. Oribasius enters it as a collyrium “ad carbunculos aptum.”[555]

Mr. Roach Smith supposes that the collyrium _Anicetum_ of this stamp derives its name from being a preparation containing aniseed. But the formula given by Oribasius does not present this ingredient; and the origin of the term is, we believe, very different. Galen presents us with a clue to its true meaning, when discussing the subject of plasters, in the sixth book of his work, _De Compositione Medicamentorum_. One, bearing the name of ANICETUM, is (he observes) called so in consequence of its many and wonderful effects (vocatum est insuperabilis (ΑΝΙΚΗΤΟΝ) propter miranda et multa ipsius opera).[556] The term itself is, no doubt, derived from the Greek participle νικητος “conquered,” with the prefix of the privative α. Among his own list of collyria, Galen enters the one known in his time under the name of Collyrium Aster,[557] as unsurpassed (Αστερ Ανικητον[558]).

2. T. VINDAC.—ARIOVISTI NARDINUM.—_T. Vindacius Ariovistus’ Nardinum_ or _Spikenard Collyrium_.

The ancient authorities on the Materia Medica describe several kinds of spikenard, according to the localities in which it is procured, as the Indian, Syrian, Celtic, etc. It was used by the Romans in many of their ointments and perfumes,[559] and sometimes added to their wines.[560]

The nard, or spikenard, was used principally to perfume various medicines, etc. But high medicinal properties were also attributed to it in various diseases, and, amongst others, in diseases of the eye. (See Dioscorides, lib. i. cap. vi.) It entered into the composition of many of the ancient collyria, and several were named from it in consequence of its forming their leading ingredient. Aetius has a long chapter on formulæ for “Collyria Nardina et Theodotia,”[561] and bestows the most extravagant praises upon some varieties of the spikenard eye-applications. Speaking of one of them, he observes, “It is not easy to relate the powers and efficiency of this medicine; indeed my readers would scarcely credit it, for under the most desperate affections it recalls the eye to its natural state.”[562]

3. T. VINDAC. ARIOVISTI CHLORON.—_The Chloron_ or _green Collyrium of T. Vindax Ariovistus_.

Already I have had occasion to allude to the collyrium _Chloron_, as one of those which derive their particular appellation from the tint or colour of the preparation. The green collyrium, or _Chloron_, is mentioned in many of the old treatises upon affections of the eye. For example, Galen gives several such collyria in succession, as, vol. xii. pp. 763 and 768, the “_Chloron_ ad diatheses;” and again, two forms of _Chloron_ used by Zoilus the oculist.

4. T. VINDAC. ARIOVISTI _Tu_RINUM. _The Frankincense Collyrium of T. Vindacius Ariovistus._

The designation of the collyrium on this fourth side of the Kenchester stone is so very much destroyed as to render the deciphering of it extremely difficult and problematical.

Mr. Roach Smith has not attempted to read it; but has contented himself by giving N as the last letter of the collyrium, and the only one capable of being deciphered, printing the whole legend on this side thus:—

T VINDAC. ARIO VISTI ... N.[563]

But certainly the terminal letter is not N. Mr. Johnson has kindly supplied me with two wax impressions of the legend on this side. One of these is faithfully copied in Plate III., No. X., lowest figure. The examination of it will show that the terminal letter is not an N; for the supposed middle or oblique line of the letter descends downwards from left to right, and not, as it should do, provided the letter were N, from right to left. The two first letters of the name of the collyrium are entirely obliterated. In the position of the third letter there is the head of a letter which may stand for R, B, or P. The following letter is apparently an I; and the next an N. In reading it, I have supposed these three consecutive letters to be RIN, and the terminal letter to be an M, or rather a V and M braced together. An instance of a similar bracing or conjunction of two letters is seen in the legend of the second side of this stone, where the terminal two letters TI of “_Ariovisti_” are conjoined into one. Further, I have ventured to suggest the two initial letters as TU, and the whole name as consequently TURINUM.

The collyrium _Thurinum_, or _Turinum_, is inscribed on three Roman medicine-stamps that have been discovered in France,—the first in Paris, the second at Cessi-sur-Tille, and the third at Solangei. The two last are both described by M. Fevret de Saint-Mesmin.[564] The collyrium evidently derived its specific name from its principal ingredient frankincense, or _thus_, this latter Roman noun being sometimes spelt with, and sometimes without, the _h_. In the Solangei stamp the collyrium is written THURINUM; but in the stamps of Paris and Cessi-sur-Tille it appears without the H, or as TURINUM.

The collyrium _Turinum_ is, it is scarcely necessary to add, merely a latinised form for the Greek collyrium _Dialibanum_, the composition and virtues of which we have considered in the previous pages (see pp. 269 and 283). The Latin translators of Oribasius and Paulus Ægineta render the collyrium Dialibanum as written by these Greek authors by the term “_Collyrium ex thure_.”[565] In the same way the κολλουριον το δια λιβανου γινομενον of Galen is rendered by Kühn, and his other translators, as “Collyrium quod fit ex THURE.”[566]

SECTION XII.

STAMP NO. XI.—FOUND AT CIRENCESTER.

In the beautiful work on the Roman remains of Cirencester, published last year by Professor Buckman and Mr. Newmarch, a Roman medicine-stamp is described.[567] It was found, in 1818, in the Leauses garden at Cirencester, deposited in a fictile urn.

This stamp is of the form of a parallelogram, and is inscribed on two of its sides. Plate III., No. XI., shows the lettering of these two inscriptions, as well as the size of the sides, and the rude cross-markings that appear on the two ends of the stone. The inscriptions are as follow:—

1. MINERVALIS DIALEB ANUM AD IMPT LIPP EX OVO

2. MINERVALIS MELINU AD OMNEM DOLOREM

Messrs. Buckman and Newmarch read MINERVALIS as signifying “pertaining to Minerva;” but it is no doubt the name, as in other specimens, of the oculist who was the proprietor of the stamp. And from the inscriptions left us upon Roman tombs, we know that _Minervalis_ was a Roman cognomen.[568]

The two inscriptions are easily read; they are as follow:—

1. MINERVALIS DIALEBANUM AD IMPET_um_ LIPP_itudinis_ EX OVO.—_Minervalis’ frankincense Collyrium for attacks of Ophthalmy; to be used with an egg._

We have already had occasion to discuss the nature of the Collyrium Dialibanum (p. 269), and it is unnecessary to recur to it. On a previous occasion, also (p. 284), the signification of the common expression, _ex ovo_, was adverted to.

2. MINERVALIS MELINU_m_ AD OMNEM DOLOREM.—_Minervalis’ yellow Collyrium for every pain or disease of the eye._

More than once we have had occasion to allude to the Collyrium _Melinum_ (pp. 250, 257). The only singularity in the present instance is, that we have here the _Melinum_ offered as a panacea for every painful affection to which the eyes of the colonists and natives of Cirencester might be subject, at the time that MINERVALIS practised amongst them. One of the forms of the Collyrium _Melinum_ given by Galen is professed by him to be efficacious “ad omnem oculorum hebetudinem.”—(Kühn’s edit. vol. xii. p. 786.)

SECTION XIII.

STAMP NO. XII.—FOUND IN IRELAND.

A Roman medicine-stamp has lately turned up in these islands, in a locality in which its presence could be little expected—viz., in the county of Tipperary, in Ireland. It has been described by Mr. Albert Way in an interesting paper, published after the first part of the present essay appeared in the _Monthly Journal of Medical Science_.[569] Dr. Dowsley, of Clonmel, who now possesses this stone, has kindly furnished me with a wax impression of its inscription, and with the following note relative to the locality in which it was discovered:—“It was found (he says) near the village of Golden, parish of Relig-Murry, in the county of Tipperary, in a field near the ruins of an old hospital, or at least what was supposed to be such; but it was built at so remote a period, that there is now no record of what the building was for, nor of the founder of it, and so little of the walls are at present standing, that even the style of architecture cannot be known. The seal was discovered by a labourer when digging. There was no pottery nor coin found; but near it was a human skeleton much decayed, the position of which in the ground was not noticed. The soil in this field is peculiarly rich and very deep; it is frequently carted away for manure; most likely it was an ancient burial-ground. The village of Golden is about a mile from the old Abbey of Athassel.”

It is unnecessary to discuss here how such a Roman relic reached this part of Ireland,[570] and whether it was conveyed there or not when the Romans were colonising Britain; or, what is probable, at a later period. But I may merely remark, there can be no doubt that Roman civilisation and Roman practices spread in the earlier centuries of the Christian era to parts beyond the precise line of Roman conquest. Other Roman relics have been found in Ireland,[571] though Ireland was never subject to the Roman arms; and Roman vases, ornaments, and coins, have been discovered even in those more distant and northern Scandinavian settlements, to which the Roman power never penetrated.[572]

Plate III., No. XII., shows the figure of this Irish medicine-stamp. It is engraved only on one side, and the inscription runs as follows:—

M IUVEN TUTIANI DIAMYSUS AD VET CIC

M(_arci?_) JUVEN_tii_ TUTIANI DIAMYSUS AD VET_eres_ CIC_atrices_.—_The Diamysus of Marcus Juventius Tutianus, for old cicatrices._

At the end of the first line there is a small cut in the inscription (see Plate), which, in all probability, is not a letter, but a mark or ornament intended to fill up that space. If a letter, it is most likely C, standing perhaps for collyrium.

In speaking of the Bath stone, I have already taken occasion to state that this same inscription of _Diamysus ad veteres cicatrices_ has now been found on various Roman medicine-stamps discovered in different parts of France.

The collyrium DIAMISYOS or DIAMYSOS derived its designation from containing as its principal ingredient the _Misy_, a metallic vitriolic preparation, used to a considerable extent as a stimulant and escharotic among the ancients; and it was retained even to a comparatively late period in the London Pharmacopœia.[573] It appears to be still used medicinally in the East.[574]

The chemical nature, however, of _Misy_ has given rise to some considerable doubt and discussion. It was usually found, and generally described, along with two other cognate fossils, _Sori_ and _Chalcitis_. And Galen, who enters into an elaborate description of them, visited the copper mines of Cyprus, with a view of determining the precise nature of these three mineral substances.[575]

Dr. Adams,[576] who has examined this question with all his well-known great learning and care, believes that these three minerals were merely varieties of _chalcanthum_ or copperas. In his opinion the _Chalcitis_ was probably a kind of pure sulphate of copper which had contracted an efflorescence from age; the _Sori_ was sulphate of copper combined with zinc or other impurities; and the _Misy_ was a combination of sulphate of copper with sulphate of iron, the predominance of the chalybeate salt giving to the fossil its peculiar colour. For the Misy, says Dioscorides, is “of a golden appearance, hard, shining like gold when broken, and glancing like stars.”

In his remarks on the _Misy_, Dioscorides speaks of the analogy of its caustic power with those of Chalcitis; but the only diseases that he referred to as having the _Misy_ used in their treatment, are the diseases of the eye. And he does so in telling us that the Egyptian kind of _Misy_ is quite inferior to the Cyprian in forming eye-medicines (ocularia medicamenta).[577]

In speaking of its medical powers, Galen,[578] Oribasius,[579] and Paulus Ægineta,[580] describe the _Misy_ as escharotic, and astringent. In giving his list of eye-medicines, Galen places the _Misy_, _Sori_, etc., amongst those local applications which have a detergent effect.[581] Paulus Ægineta enters the _Misy_ in his list of “detergents of foul ulcers” of the eye (vol. iii. p. 548). Pliny, in describing the properties of Misy, states that “extenuat scabrities oculorum.”[582] Celsus in his work repeatedly alludes to the _Misy_ and its effects.[583] One of the collyria which he describes when treating of granular ophthalmia, contains the _Misy_ (see page 294). And he adds, that with the exception of those affections which require mild applications, this special collyrium is adapted to every kind of disorder of the eye (adversus omne genus oculorum valetudinis idoneum est). Galen (vol. xii. p. 736), Oribasius (lib. iv. p. 51), and Paulus Ægineta (vol. iii. 556), all give formulæ for the collyrium PANCHRESTOS of Erasistratus, which contained _Misy_ as its leading ingredient. “It has,” says Paulus, “wonderful efficacy in diseases of the eyes.” Oribasius enters it as a “compositio admirabilis.” The _Misy_, as a reputed “valedissimum medicamentum,” enters as an ingredient into several of the collyria described by Actuarius.[584]

In a previous page I have already taken occasion to state that Marcellus Empiricus gives a formula for a collyrium under the name inscribed upon the stone of the collyrium DIAMISYOS; and he describes it as calculated “ad aspritudines oculorum tollendas et ad lachrymas substringendas.”

The collyrium _Diamisyos_ of Marcellus Empiricus consists of _Misy_ burnt till it becomes red, and then combined with spikenard, saffron, cadmia, calcined copper, opium, myrrh, Cyprian scales, and gum, with all which it was to be rubbed down in the best wine, shaken and filtered. But he gives also the alternative of adding to the _Diamysos_ another ingredient, which was long an article in the materia medica—viz. vipers. For some (he observes) add to the collyrium _Diamisyos_ “a viper, dried and baked well in the sun, as if it were salted” (quidam adjiciunt huic collyrio viperam siccam et arefactam bene in sole tanquam si sit salita). He goes on, however, still further to explain that prayers and incantations must be used in making this addition to the _Diamisyos_. For (he observes) if you thus wish to add the dried viper, you must first extract its bones, roll it up in linen, and then pour over it the wine of the collyrium, previously charming the viper (sed prius eam praecantabis) as follows, lest it cause tears and produce harm, saying, “As thou dost not see, even so may thy juice, when tasted, hurt no one, but I pray that with the purpose for which thou hast been added, thou mayest[585] further the cure (quomodo tu non vides, sic et tuus succus gustatus nulli noceat, sed ob rem propter quam adjecta es proficias bene curationi, precor).”[586]

ANTIQUARIAN NOTICES OF SYPHILIS IN SCOTLAND.

Medical men are, for the most part, agreed upon two points in relation to the history of syphilis—viz. that it is a species of disease which was unknown to the Greek, Roman, and Arabian physicians; and that it first began to prevail in Europe in the later years of the fifteenth century.

The non-existence of syphilis in ancient times, and the circumstance of its original appearance in Europe about the date alluded to, are opinions strongly borne out by two sets of facts. For, first, no definite account of this marked and extraordinary species of disease is to be found in the writings of any one of the ancient Greek or Roman physicians, historians, or poets; and, secondly, of the numerous authors whose works exist in the learned collections of Luisinus,[587] Astruc,[588] and Girtanner,[589] and who saw and described the malady in the later years of the fifteenth or commencement of the sixteenth century, almost all comment upon it as (to use their own general expressions) _morbus novus, morbus ignotus, ægritudo inaudita, ægritudo nova, malum novum, novus et nostro orbe incognitus morbus_, etc. etc.[590]

It would not, however, affect our present object were we to consider the disease, as it appeared about the period in question, not to have been a new malady previously totally unknown, but merely, as some have thought, an aggravated form of a disease formerly existing in so mild a form as not to have attracted general observation.

Nor need I stop here to inquire into the much more difficult questions of the probable source of syphilis, and the exact date at which syphilis first burst forth in Europe. In relation to the object which I have at present in view, it matters not whether the malady sprang up spontaneously and endemically in Spain, Italy, or France, at the era in question; or was imported from Africa, as Grüner,[591] Infessura,[592] and others allege; or from Hispaniola, as Astruc,[593] Girtanner,[594] Weatherhead,[595] and various other authorities, have stoutly and not unsuccessfully maintained. Nor is it necessary for me to discuss whether it first showed itself in 1493, as Sanchez[596] and Hensler[597] consider that they have proved; or in 1492, as Fulgosi[598] asserts; or as early even as the month of October 1483, as Peter Pinctor,[599] in 1500, demonstrated astrologically, to his own complete satisfaction at least, that it ought to have done, inasmuch as that was—as he sagaciously convinced himself—the precise and exact date of the conjunction of Venus with Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury; and the conjunction of these or other stars in the heavens above, was—so he and many of the astrological physicians of his day believed—the undoubted origin of this new scourge on the earth below.

In such a notice as the present, we may most safely, I believe, and that too without entertaining the question of the exact source or geographical origin of syphilis, start from the general proposition that the disease was in 1494 and 1495 first distinctly recognised in Italy, during the invasion of that country by the victorious army of Charles VIII. of France. The malady is usually allowed to have first broken out in a very marked degree at Naples, about the time that Charles took possession of that city, in the spring of 1495; or nearly two years after Columbus’ return from his first voyage to Hispaniola. Charles set out again for France in May 1495; and the malady seems to have been both diffused by his infected troops along the line of their northward march, and afterwards carried to their respective homes by his own French soldiers, as well as by his various Swiss, German, and Flemish auxiliaries.

But it is as little my intention at present to trace the progress as to ascertain the first origin of syphilis in Europe. The chief object of the present communication is to adduce some data which show that the new malady was not long in reaching the shores of Scotland, and in spreading to different towns in that kingdom. In proof of this, I have principally to appeal to one or two old edicts and ordinances relative to the disease, and to other collateral but slighter evidence bearing upon the subject. The edicts or statutes in question were issued by the Town-Council of Aberdeen, in relation to the existence of the malady in Aberdeen; and by the Privy Council of Scotland, in relation to the prevalence of the disease in Edinburgh. The two first edicts in both places were issued in 1497. That of Aberdeen is the earlier. It is dated the 21st of April 1497. Its words, as they stand in the old and carefully preserved Council Records of that city,[600] are the following:—

“The said day, it was statut and ordanit be the Alderman and Consale for the eschevin _of the infirmitey cumm out of Franche and strang partis_, that all licht weman be chargit and ordanit to decist fra thar vices and syne of venerie, and all thair buthis and houssis skalit, and thai to pas and wirk for thar sustentacioun vndir the payne of ane key of het yrne one thair chekis, and banysene of the toune.” (Vol. i. p. 425.)

A few years later—or on the 8th October 1507—a long list of statutes was passed by the “Prouest, bailyes, and counsale” of Aberdeen, for the “common proffitt, weil, and gud reull of the burgh.” Two of these statutes refer again to the introduction and spread of syphilis. By the first of these statutes it was enacted “That diligent inquisitioun be takin of ale infect personis with this strange _seiknes of Nappillis_, for the sauetie of the town; and the personis beand infectit therwith be chargit to keip thaime in their howssis and vther places fra the haill folkis.” (Vol. i. p. 437.)

Two or three enactments follow in the “statut buk” on minor subjects, one ordering the hygienic measure “that thar salbe certane personis to cleng the toun and dicht the causaies;” and then succeeds another sanitary ordinance relative to the avoidance of syphilis—viz. “That nayne infeccht folkis with the _seiknes of Napillis_ be haldin at the common fleschouss, or with the fleschouris, baxteris, brousteris, ladinaris, for sauete of the toun, and the personis infectit sale keip thame quyat in thar houssis, zhardis, or vther comat placis, quhill thai be haill, for the infectioun of their nichtbouris.” (P. 437.)

The Edinburgh edict regarding syphilis was six months later in date than the first of those issued by the magistrates of Aberdeen, and is more lengthy in its details and provisions. It was drawn up, as I have already said, by the King’s Privy Council, and apparently sent to the magistrates for due execution. It is preserved in the first volume of the _Town Records of Edinburgh_, fol. 33, 34, and is entitled in the rubric “Ane Grangore Act;”—Grandgore being an early term often applied to syphilis in Scotland. This edict has been repeatedly printed, but usually in a very incorrect form. The exact date and words of it are as follows:—

“xxii Septembris anno i^ai iiii^c lxxxxvii zeiris. It is our Souerane Lordis will and the command of the Lordis of his Counsale send to the Provest and baillies within this burch, that this proclamatioune follow and be put till executioune for the eschewing of the greit apperand danger of the infectioune of his liegis fra this contagius seiknes callit the Grandgor, and the greit vther skayth that may occure to his legeis and inhabitouris within this burch—that is to say—We charge straitlie and commandis be the authoritie abone written, that all maner of personis being within the fredome of this burch quhilkis ar infectit or hes bene infectit vncurit with this said contagious plage callit the Grandgor, devoyd red and pas furth of this toun and compeir vpoun the sandis of Leith at x houris befoir none, and thair sall thai haue and fynd botis reddie in the havin ordanit to thame be the officiaris of this burch reddely furneist with victuallis to haue thame to the Inche, and thair to remane quhill God prouyde for thair health, and that all vther personis the quhilkis takis vpoune thame to hale the said contagious infirmitie and takis[601] the cure thairof, that they devoyd and pas with thame, sua that nane of thir personis quhilkis takis sic cure vpoune thame vse the samyn cure within this burch in presens nor peirt ony maner of way—and quha sa beis fundin infectit and nocht passand to the Inche as said is be Monounday at the sone ganging to, and in lykwayis the saidis personis that takis the said cure of sanitie vpoun thame gif thai will vse the samyn thai and ilk of thame sal be brynt on the cheik with the marking irne that thai may be kennit in tyme to cum—and thairefter gif ony thame remanis that thai sall be banisht but fauouris.”

It is almost unnecessary to add that the measures adopted by the public authorities in Aberdeen and Edinburgh were utterly inadequate to arrest the further dissemination of syphilis after it was inoculated upon the country. It seems indeed to have been spread to the more populous towns of Scotland within a year or two after its first introduction into the kingdom. There are some references in official documents of the period which incidentally but amply prove this rapidity in its diffusion.

The notices to which I here specially refer exist in the Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland. The Register House, Edinburgh, contains a curious and valuable series of these Accounts, detailing the daily expenses of the kings of Scotland from the reign of James III. down to the ascension of the English throne by James VI. At the time of the first appearance of syphilis in our northern realm, the throne of Scotland was occupied by James IV., a prince who was a great patron of the arts and sciences of his time. He was a practitioner in them also, as well as a patron of them. At different times we find him busily experimenting in chemistry, in physiology, and in medicine. His daily expense-books contain many entries of purchases for instruments and materials to make the unmakeable “quinta essentia,” or philosopher’s stone; and he had laboratories for these investigations both at Edinburgh and Stirling. His alchemical assistant—John the Leeche—whom he had imported from the Continent and made Abbot of Tungland, experimented for the king in physiology as well as in chemistry. John, Dædalus-like, undertook to prove the improvability of human progression by flying to France with wings. “To that effect he causet (states Bishop Lesley[602]) mak ane pair of wingis of fedderis, quhilkis beand fessinit apoun him, he flew off the castell wall of Striveling, but shortly he fell to the ground and brak his thee bane.” But the doctrine of sympathies was in vogue in these days, and by that doctrine the afflicted Abbot easily, of course, and clearly explained all. For the cause of his fall, or “the wyt thairof he asscryvit to that thair was sum hen fedderis in the wingis, quhilk yarnit and covet the mydding and not the skyis.” Like the Egyptian king mentioned by Herodotus, King James made also a physiological or rather philological experiment to ascertain the primeval language of mankind; and for this purpose his Majesty sent a deaf and dumb woman to live with and bring up two young children upon the island of Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth—the same island to which we have found the first victims of syphilis previously banished, and itself the old “Urbs Guidi” of the venerable Bede. When the two children, the companions of the “dumb voman cam to the aige of perfyte speach, some sayes” (to quote the account of Lindsay of Pitscottie) “they spak guid Hebrew;”[603] but the cautious old Scottish chronicler sagely doubts the truth of this tradition. King James personally practised the art of leechcraft, as well as experimented in alchemy and physiology. “He was,” says Pitscottie, “weill learned in the airt of medicine, and was ane singular guid chirurgiane; and thair was none of that professioune, if they had any dangerous cure in hand, bot would have craved his adwyse” (p. 249). So states the ancient Scottish historian. The High Treasurer’s Account shows that the king had in one important respect a right royal way of gaining patients,—a way by the adoption of which he probably might have secured a considerable consultation and private practice even in these modern days of high-pressure rivalry, and keen competition. For he paid his patients, instead of being paid by them. Thus, for example, in his daily expense-book, under the date of April 14th and 15th, 1491, are the two following entries:—

“Item to Domenico to gif the king leve to lat him blud, xviii shillings.” “Item til a man yat come to Lythgow to lat the king blud and did it nocht, xviii shillings.”

Some time afterwards he buys from a travelling pedlar “thre compases, ane hammer, and a turcase to tak out teeth;” and forthwith, we find the Scottish king becoming—like the more modern Peter the Great of Russia—not a dentist to royalty, but himself a royal dentist, as the two following entries may suffice to show (the first of them—provided there be any truth whatever in dental orthography—surely indicating a tooth of rather a tough and tusky character):—

“Item, to ane fallow, because the king pullit furtht his twtht, xviii shillings.”

“Item, to Kynnard, ye barbour, for tua teith drawin furtht of his hed be the king, xviii shillings.”

He seems to have tried his royal hand also at ocular surgery. But the terms of the following entry would seem rather ominously to hint that he was not a very successful operator for cataract:—

“Item, giffin to ye blind wif yat hed her eyne schorne, xiii shillings.”

A prince imbued with such medical and surgical propensities would naturally feel deeply interested in the first appearance within his realm of such a malady as syphilis; and in his Treasurer’s accounts there are several entries indicating that the king had bestowed monies upon various persons affected with this disease. Perhaps these monies were given less in the way of alms than in the way of a reward for the king’s medication of the patients; less for the behoof of royal charity than of royal chirurgery. The entries I advert to all occur during the currency of the years 1497 and 1498.[604] They are as follows:—the first sum given away being to a person at Dalry, when the king was on one of his many pilgrimages to the ancient and holy shrine of St. Ninian at Whitehorn, in Wigtownshire.

September 1497.

“Item, to ane woman with the grantgore thair [Dalrye, in Ayrshire], be the kingis command iijs. vjd.”

2 October 1497.

“Item to thaim that hed the grantgor at Linlithquho viijd.”

21 February 1497-8.

“Item, that samyn day at the tounne end of Strivelin to the seke folk in the grantgore ijs.”

22 February 1497-8.

“Item, the xxij day of Februar giffin to the seke folk in the grangore at the tounn end of Glasgo. ijs.”

April 1498.

“... seke folk in grangor in Lithgw as the King com in the tounne ijs. viijd.”

In the course of the preceding remarks I have had occasion to adduce seven or eight different notices with regard to the appearance of syphilis in various cities and districts of Scotland during the years 1497-8, as at Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Linlithgow, etc. A diversity of allusions to the same disease, of a less direct and official character, and somewhat later in date, may be traced in various olden Scottish works and writings. The malady is occasionally alluded to, for example, in the reports left us of some of the old criminal and other trials of Scotland. Thus a minute in the Records of the Privy Seal of Scotland records the punishment of a medical man in whose hands a dignitary of the church had died while under treatment for syphilis. The entry is as follows:—

January 18th, 1509.—“Respitt made to Thomas Lyn, burges of Edinburgh, for ye slauchtir of umquihile Schir Lancelote Patonsoun, chapellain, quhilk happinit be negligent cure and medicine yat ye said Thomas tuk one him to cure and hele ye said umquhile Schir Lancelote of ye infirmitie of ye Grantgor yat he was infekkit with. To endure for xix yeeris. (Subscripsit per dominum Regem apud Edinburghe.)”[605]

Some, perhaps, of my professional brethren may think that this nineteen years’ banishment from the town was a proper punishment for an unprofessional charlatan undertaking the cure of syphilis in the sixteenth century; and some, possibly, may even hold, that it would not be an improper proceeding in this—the nineteenth century.

The disease is alluded to in some of the old Scotch witch trials of the sixteenth century.

One of the most remarkable of these trials was that of a lady of station and wealth—Euphame Macalzane, daughter of Lord Cliftonhall, a judge of the Court of Session. Among other matters, she was “indyted and accusit” of using, during the birth of her two sons, anæsthetics in the form of charms, and a fairy stone “layit under the bowster,” whereby, in the words of the dittay, “your seiknes was cassin of you unnaturallie, in the birth of your fyrst sone upon ane dog, quhilk ranne away and wes newir sene agane. And in the birth of your last sone, the same prakteis foirsaid wes usit, and your naturall and kindlie payne, unnaturallie cassin of you uponn the wantonne cat in the house, quhilk lyke wyis wes newer sene thair efter.” In the fourteenth item of her indictment she is accused of trying to break off a marriage by “certane witchcraft,” and by alleging that the intended bridegroom had the “glengore.” For these and other analogous crimes this unfortunate lady was “takin to the Castel-Hill of Edinburghe, and thair bund to ane staik, and brunt in assis, quick to the death.”[606]

There are also various sarcastic allusions to syphilis by the Scottish poets of these early days, amply testifying to the fact of its rapid diffusion both among the followers of the court—who were then the most common objects of poetical satire—and among the community at large.

William Dunbar, the flower of the old Scottish poets, was, at the period of the first introduction of syphilis in 1497, in the prime of manhood; and in two or three years afterwards, viz. in 1500, he was attached to James IV. and his court by an annual state pension. In a number of verses addressed to his patroness, Margaret, the Queen of James IV. and the sister of Henry VIII.—verses which appear to us at the present day, and with our existing standards of taste, as utterly degraded and indecent—Dunbar commemorates the communication of the new disease under the name of the “pockis” and the “Spanyie pokis,” to the Queen’s men (as he terms them) during the jollities of Fastern’s e’en, and the reign of the Abbot of Unreason; and he closes his stanzas with an earnest advice to all youths, to

“Be ware with that perrelous play That men callis libbing of the Pockis.”[607]

The after effects and consequences of the disease he describes as follows:—

“Sum that war ryatouss as rammis, Ar now maid tame lyk ony lammis, And settin doun lyk scarye crockis, And hes forsaikin all sic gammis That men call libbing of the Pockis.”

“Sum thocht thame selffis stark lyk gyandis, Ar now maid weak lyk willow wandis, With schinnis scharp, and small lyk rockis, And gottin thair bak in bayth thair handis, For ower oft libbing of the Pockis.”

Another and later poet of that age, Sir David Lyndsay of the Mount, alludes to the occurrence of syphilis at the Christmas feasts in an inferior officer of the court—viz. in John Mackrery, the king’s “fule,” or royal jester, who, according to the poet—like many a poor fool since John’s time—did

“In his maist triumphand gloir For his reward get the Grandgoir.”[608]

The same author includes this disease elsewhere (p. 147) among the maladies

“Quhilk humane nature dois abhor, As in the Gut, Gravel, and Gor.”

A metrical translation of Hector Boece’s _History of Scotland_ was made in the earlier half of the sixteenth century, apparently by command of James V. It has been published for the first time, within the last two years, under the authority and direction of the Master of the Rolls. The author of this rhyming _Buik of the Chronicles of Scotland_, William Stewart, when translating Boece’s account of the fatal disease produced in the old mythical Scotch king, Ferquhard, by the bite of a wolf, tells us (vol. ii. p. 313) that the resulting gangrenous wound defied the skill of the leiches, and the fœtor of it, and its discharges were

“Moir horribill als that time for till abhor, No canker, fester, gut, or yit Grandgor.”

In the celebrated old poem of the _General Satire of Scotland_, attributed by most authorities to Dunbar, and which, from some circumstances adverted to in the course of it, is supposed by Sibbald and Chalmers to have been written in 1504 (seven years after the first introduction of syphilis), the author deplores the extent to which the disease had by that time already spread in Scotland, observing—

“Sic losing sarkis, so mony Glengoir markis, Within this land was nevir hard nor sene.”[609]

In several of the notices which I have just quoted, the new disease, syphilis, is alluded to under the names of “Gor,” “Gore,” “Grandgore,” etc. Few maladies have been loaded with a more varied and more extensive nomenclature. The terms in question, “Gore” and “Grandgore,” are of French origin, and are old names corresponding to pox and great pox—“verole” and “grand verole.” In the earlier periods of the history of syphilis they were terms commonly employed by the French themselves to designate the affection. To quote one confirmatory sentence from Astruc (p. 1166), the disease “Gore et Grandgore a Gallis initio vocata erat.” John le Maire, in his celebrated poem on syphilis, published in 1520, gives this as one of the designations of the disease used at that time by the commonalty:—

“La nommoit Gorre ou la verole grosse, Qui n’espargnoit ne couronne ne crosse.”[610]

Old Rabelais, whose _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ are perfect repositories of the low and licentious French words of the era at which syphilis first appeared, uses the term Grandgore as a synonym for syphilis; and in his wild allegorical style he makes the poor and widowed poet, Rammagrobis, take this grandgore to bed for his second wife. The term Grandgore seems to have been applied to the disease in Scotland for a long time after its introduction. For example, the author of the _Historie of the Kennedys_ quotes a letter written in the latter part of the sixteenth century by the Laird of Colzean to the Laird of Bargany, whose “neise was laich,” maliciously suggesting to him that yet he might lose “sum uther joynt of the Glengoir, as ye did the brig of your neise.”[611] Still later, or in 1600, the Kirk-Session of Glasgow requested the magistrates “to consult the chirurgeons how the infectious distemper of Glengore could be removed from the city.”[612]

In Scotland, as elsewhere, the disease also passed under other designations. When syphilis first broke out it was frequently, as is well known, designated from the country or people from whom it was supposed to have been transmitted. Thus, the Italians and Germans at first generally spoke of it as the French disease; while the French talked of it as the disease of Naples; and the Dutch, Flemings, Portuguese, and Moors, applied to it the name of the Spanish pocks or Castilian malady. Dunbar, in the Scottish poem already alluded to as addressed to Queen Margaret, speaks of it, in most of the stanzas, under the simple title of “pockis,” but in one he gives it, as I have already hinted, the distinctive and significant appellation of the Spanish pocks:—

“I saw cow-clinkis me besyd; The young men to thair howssis gyd, Had better liggit in the stockis; Sum fra the bordell wald nocht byd, Quhill that thai gatt the Spanyie Pockis.”

In two of the Aberdeen Town-Council entries we have already seen the malady spoken of as “the sickness of Naples.” This name was at first often applied to the malady. The disease was, however, much more generally known in Scotland and in the other kingdoms of Europe under the name of the French pox. The first Aberdeen edict speaks of it in 1497 as the “infirmity come out of France.” In the manuscript Session Records of the parish of Ormiston for 1662, there is an entry regarding the malady under the appellation of the French pox, one of the minutes being—

“The minister, Mr. Sinclair, hath given out to James Ogilvy, apothecary-chirurgeon, for curing William Whitly, his wife and daughter, of the French pockis, 35 lbs. Scots.”

Grunbeck and Brandt, who wrote on syphilis in 1496, when speaking of the diffusion of the disease at that early date over Europe, both allude in very vague and general terms to its having invaded France, Germany, etc., and reached as far as Britain.[613] But the earliest specific notice of syphilis in England which I remember to have met with is in 1502; and in this notice the malady is spoken of under the same name that I have been adverting to, of “French pox.” The notice in question is contained in the interesting Privy Purse Expense Book of Elizabeth of York, the queen of Henry VII., edited by Sir Harris Nicolas. This charitable lady seems from these records to have had several protégés under her immediate care and keeping. Among these protégés is entered John Pertriche, one “of the sonnes of mad Beale.” There are various articles of expenditure noted in the Queen’s private expense book as lavished upon this John Pertriche during the currency of 1503; as monies for his “dyetts,” for buying “shirtes,” “shoyn,” and “hosyn,” “cloth for a gown,” and “fustyan for a cote” to him. There are twenty pence expended “for his lernyng;” and the last two items in the account record attempts of two different and rather opposite kinds to amend the mental and moral deficiencies of this hopeful youth. These two ultimate items are—

“For a prymer and saulter (book to John), 20 pence.” “And payed to a Surgeon whiche heled him of the Frenche pox, 20 shillings.”

To finish this very rough and meagre sketch, let me here add that by the end of the sixteenth century—and perhaps long before that date—the malady was abundant enough in England. Writing in 1596, or in the time of Queen Elizabeth, William Clowes, “one of her Majesties chirurgians,” observes to his “friendly reader,” “If I be not deceived in mine opinion, I suppose the disease itselfe was never more rife in Naples, Italie, France, or Spain, than it is in this day in the Realme of England.”[614]