8 S. HOLTH. M.-N.-Kl. 
9 is a modern model in steel of 7 and 8; ro is a needle which certainly 
dates from Antiquity and is probably Greco-Roman. 
It is characteristic of most of the medical instruments of Antiquity 
that they are made »double« that is both ends of the instrument are made 
for use. The advantage of this arrangement is a quick change of instru- 
ment; the principle has come down to our day, but from aseptic reasons 
it has been abandoned by the surgeon of the present day. 
Pl. II, r—4 and I, 25—29 are the Greek oxaïÿourAn, spatula sound; 
the spatula is either flat (4 and 25— 28), spoonshaped (2), gougeshaped 
(3 — not broken), willow leaf shaped, folded in an obtuse angle in its 
length and curved backwards (1); the sound ends have also different 
forms. In 5 the shaft has a broad and deep sharp spoon in one end and 
a conic pointed sound in the other end; on one side the instrument has a 
»millimeter« measure scale which I will mention below. Nr. 6 is a double 
sound whose lower end is stiletto shaped while the upper end has an 
»olive« knob; it ought to be noticed that the thicker ornamented part 
which indicates that there are two instruments joined in one, has an 
excentric position. I will discuss below Pl. II, 7 and 8. Pl. II ro, is 
a suture needle, biconvex in section with 2 /a/era/ edges. 
I believe it very probable that the statement of the sale catalogue is 
true, giving Ascalon as the finding place of these instruments; but it cannot 
be ascertained whether they are from the Hellenistic period of Ascalon 
or from the era of the Roman Empire in which — according to Th. 
Mommsen — the zinc bronzes came up; the shape of the instruments 
being of the same type for more than a thousand years — from Hippo- 
crates down to the Byzantine era. Medical men of the Romans were 
as a rule Greeks or Egyptians with a Greek education. 
As for the Pompeian instruments the age is given. Roman surgeons 
in Gaul in the second and third centuries A. D. had their instruments 
with them in their tombs as well as contemporary Roman Emperor coins. 
In the Ustinov collection of coins there are samples even from the Ptolemei 
down to Justinian, but they are in a special collection and there is no 
information that any of them have been found together with the surgical 
instruments. 
Out of the fourteen instruments on Pl. III, number 15 is a modern 
spatula sound of glass which is used — sterilized — to put ointments into 
the palpebral fissure. Both Celsus and the Greek and the Arabic medical 
writers many times mention this use of their spatula sounds (Pl I, 25 and 
26, Pl. II, I to 4, Pl. II, x1 to 14). PI. III, 22 is a modern double glass 
rod equally used for application of eye ointments and corresponds com- 
