1919. No. I. GRECO-ROMAN AND ARABIC BRONZE INSTRUMENTS. 
9 7 
our University Library by his request has obtained some more detailed 
works about the weighing systems of Antiquity. 
According to the above statements, the steelyard may have been 
suitable for a physician in the purchase of the drugs he needed for the 
preparation of remedies. One of the Pompeian steelyards was found in 
»Casa del Chirurgo« together with surgical instruments. The physician 
of antiquity was his own apothecary. The paeouazorco at, remedy dealers, 
and dıforöuoı, »root cutters« 2: herb gatherers, were railed at by Aristo- 
phanes as simple quacks. 
The first real dispensary was established in 750 A. D. in Bagdad by 
the caliph El Mansur. 
I will now give a survey of the 21 surgical instruments of PI. II, III and 
IV (drawn in size X 1/,) with short characteristics of their appearance and 
kind, mention the probable place and time of the finds, and give a sketch 
of the use of the instruments, as well as examine somewhat more carefully 
a few of them which are of special interest. Finally, I believe it may be 
of interest from an historical point of view to show that some instruments 
cannot have been used with certain treatments, where their use would 
have been natural to a surgeon of our day. 
The eight first instruments given on PI. II are certainly Greco-Roman, 
1 This surmise is highly strengthened by seeing the hanging apparatus Pl. I, D for the 
goods belonging to the steelyard which after my lecture I was fortunate enough to 
find among some unsold bronzes from the Ustinov collection; it has exactly the same 
kind of patina as the steelyard. As is seen in Pl. I, D a hook is placed in the groove 
nearest the final knob of the short weight arm; this hook carries by a ring and 
by clasps three flat sticks, each of which is provided with a clasp and hook by 
the lower end. A flat bowl with three holes or rings could, of course, be easily fastened 
to these hooks, Against this hypothesis, however, there is the fact that a quite similar 
hanging apparatus in the steelyard, which belonged to Cajus Firmius Severus, a Gallo- 
Roman oculist in Rheims, had also a top hook but only two hanging sticks each with 
its hook; no weighing bowl could adequately be fastened to only two such hooks 
(unless it was boat-shaped). The most likely hypothesis is consequently that these hooks 
were fastened direct to the goods which probably consisted of bundles of plant drugs, 
which the physician in Rheims as well as Ascalon bought from herb gatherers, 
Since my lecture I have also acquired from the Ustinov collection thirty two diffe- 
rent weights; the study of these weights will perhaps contribute to the explanation 
of the three weight scales in the steelyard. Some of them are signed with Greek 
letters — here evidently belonging to the Ionic or the Milesian cipher-alphabets; other 
weights have different polyedric forms. One larger weight is of lead, weighs 186 gram 
and is marked with a Phenician cipher N N = 40); it has the shape of a four sided 
pyramid, it is pierced near the top and may have served for a sliding weight on a 
steelyard — or it may have been attached to the middle one of the three lower hooks 
in Pl. I D, by which the sliding weight can be made lighter and the weighing limits 
are lowered. This principle was used in the above mentioned small steelyard from 
Rheims (by a bullet just under the top hook). 
