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Monday y \^th December 1850. 

 Sir D. BREWSTER, K.H., Vice-President, in the Chair. 



The following Communications were read : — 



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

 near Tranent. By Professor Simpson. 



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 charac- 

 ters. 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 im- 

 pression, when stamped upon wax or any other similarly plastic ma- 

 terial, which reads from left to right. 



The inscriptions themselves generally contain, and have engraved 

 on each separate side, first the name of the medical practitioner to 

 whom the stamp pertained, then the name of some special medicine 

 or medical formula out of Galen, Scribonius Largus, or some of the 

 more popular medical authorities of those times ; and, lastly, the 

 name of the disease or diseases for which that medicine was pre- 

 scribed. 



In almost all, if not all, of the Roman medicine stamps hitherto 

 discovered, the medicines mentioned on them are drugs for affections 

 of the eye, and the diseases, when specified, are always ophthalmic 

 diseases. 



Above fifty such Roman medicine or oculist stamps have now 

 been discovered on the continent of Europe, at stations occupied of 

 old by the colonists and soldiers of Rome, and particularly in France, 

 Germany, and Holland. Only two have been detected in Italy. 

 About ten or twelve have been discovered among the old Roman sta- 



