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1. Notice of a Roman Practitioner's Medicine Stamp, found near Tranent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 March 2015

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Extract

At several of the stations throughout Western Europe that were formerly occupied by the colonists and soldiers of Rome, small engraved stones have been found, the inscriptions upon which shew them to have been used as medicine stamps by the Roman doctors who, many centuries ago, practised in these localities.

These medicine stones or stamps all agree in their general characters. They commonly consist of small quadrilateral or oblong pieces of a greenish-coloured steatite, engraved with a legend on one or more of their edges or borders. The inscriptions or legends are in small capital Roman letters, cut intagliate and retrograde, and consequently reading on the stone itself from right to left, but making an impression, when stamped upon wax or any other similarly plastic material, which reads from left to right.

Type
Proceedings 1850-51
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Society of Edinburgh 1857

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References

page 11 note * Medicæ Artis Principes, p. 273.

page 11 note † Medicæ Artis Principes: Scribonii Largi de Compositione Medicamentorum Liber. Comp. xxvi.; p. 198.

page 11 note ‡ Galeni Opera Omnia. (Kuehn's Edit.) Vol. xii., p. 753 and 774.

page 11 note § Cornarius' Latin Translation in Principes Med. Artis, p. 432.

page 12 note * Kuehn's Edit, of Galen, xii., p. 699.

page 12 note † P. Dioscoridis Opera quæ extant Omnia. (Edit. Saraceni., 1698.) P. 21, lib. i., cap. xxv.

page 12 note ‡ Naturalis Historia. Leyden edit. of 1635. Vol. ii., p. 473.

page 12 note § Opera a Kuehn. Tom. xii., p. 770.

page 12 note ‖ Opera a Kuehn. Tom. Pp. 785 and 773.

page 12 note ¶ Opera a Kuehn. Tom. P. 713.

page 12 note ** See Milligen's Celsus, p. 295; Principes Artis Medicæ, p. 170 of Part II and p. 432 of Part III. Our own Pharmacopœias long retained similar terms. The London Pharmacopœia, for example, for 1662, contains an electuary termed Diacrocuma, an emplastrum Oxycrocum, & c.

page 13 note * Cornarius' Latin edit, of Aetius, 1549, p. 371; and Venice Greek edit., p.126.

page 13 note † Dr Adams' Sydenham Society edition, Vol. i., p. 419; and the Basle Greek edition, p. 76.