ASTER SAMIUS 85 
who considered many or all of these earths as equivalents were 
likely to use the term Aster for the others also ; as Aretaeus may 
have intended. By time of Pliny it became fixed as name of the 
Samian only. 3d, after use of the word Aster for some time as 
name of the stamped Samian tablet used as an application to 
ulcers, etc., the word came to be used by physicians as name of 
compound preparations of their own with similar purpose, the 
Aster-medicaments which have great vogue in the writings and 
practice of Galen and Aétios, and of which perhaps the first indi- 
cation is in Celsus’: mention of his remedy aséeriace (see p. 80). 
The progression of use of terms in this sense seems to have been: 
Asteriace, the aster-like medicament, 7. ¢., the poultice compounded 
to do the work of Aster Samius ; Ce/sus, about 30 B.C. By the 
time of Nero, Andromachus and Asclepiades, physicians of his 
court, seem to have used Aster out-and-out and unmodified, in 
this sense of a compound medicament, with or without the actual 
presence of Aster Samius init. By the time of Galen, a century 
later, various such Aster-medicaments were becoming distinguished 
from each other by specific names. By the time of Aétios, 540 A.D., 
‘the reaction upon Aster Samius of the use of Aster as a medica- 
ment-name had caused Samos to be frequently forgotten, and the 
Aster Samius was called perhaps half of the time Terra Asteris, 7. ¢., 
the earth that is used as a base forthe medicament called Aster. 4th, 
after use of the term Aster for medicaments of properties similar to 
Aster Atticus, as indicated in 3, the name Aster probably became 
applied to miscellaneous medicaments by ambitious physicians in 
the general sense of Star-remedy or First-class remedy, through 
the reflex influence of Aster in the primary meaning of “star in 
the sky.” 
Citation of the principal descriptions of Aster Samius follows : 
Aster, in Theophrastus’ Lapides, 64, circa 320 B. C., explained 
as a “Samian clay used as sealing-wax”’ ¢. ¢., stamped, being 
doubtless the white Terra Samia or Aster Samius exported in 
