Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 7.djvu/490

 356 NOTICE OF A STAMP Avriteis as stamps or seals used anciently by oculists [medici ocidarii) or empirics. They served either to impress upon the colly r'lum and other medicaments, or upon the wrapper in which these nostrums were vended, the description of their virtues with the name of the compounder. The drugs were doubtless moulded in the form of a paste, with white of egg {ex ovo) or some adhesive compound, and the tablets being engraved in intaglio, with the letters inverted, as shown in the woodcut, an impression was readily produced. Usually the stone was incised with an inscription on each of the four sides, and it served to stamp as many nostrums distinct in their virtues. On the example now published there is only one inscription, indicating the name of the empiric, with the quahty of the remedy, — maeci juyentii tutiani diamysus AD veteres cicatrices. A little mark at the close of the first line, resembling a minuscule C is somewhat indistinct. If taken as a letter, it ?)un/ signify the w^ord colhjrium. Juventius and Tutianus are names occurring in inscriptions given by Gruter. The compound termed Diamysus occurs on other stamps of this description ; on one, published by Schmidt, in his Antiquities of Nimeguen, and by Spon, is read, — Marci Ulpi Heracletis diamysus. " It is " (observes Gough) " a mineral composition, of which sec Marcus Empiricus, viii. 72, and Pliny, xxxiv. 12."'^ Marcellus speaks of dya?nysios, as of virtue " ad aspritudines oculorum." Misy (probably from i-v(>^ com- primo) appears to have been a kind of copperas, or Roman vitriol, of a caustic or astringent quality, of which Celsus and Dioscorides, as well as Pliny, have detailed the virtues.^ The latter states emphatically those for which it was formerly esteemed by the ocularii. " Extenuat scabritias oculorum in- veteratas : — collyriis additur," &c. ^Marcellus, a native of Bor- deaux who lived in the fourth century, in his singular Treatise, " de Medicamcntis Empiricis, Pliysicis ac Pationabilibus," speaks of '' collyrium, diamysos (juod facit, ad aspritudines oculorum tollendas, et ad lacrA'^mas substringendas." Maffci, in his "Museum Veronense," p. 135, mentions another of these stam[)s, of which the correct reading is pro- bably Diamisus ad veteres cicatrices, as upon that found in - ArcliEieologia, vol. ix, p. 2"2,0. word " Dyinassicii," i.f. flos leris. Com- •'' The term was I't'taiiU'd l)y tlic nu'ilieval pare Diicaiif^o, Gloss. Inf. Graocit. — alchemists. See Rulainli, Lexicon Alclie- " Vlvtnv, rh xaAKavSor, in Glcssis latricis mifT, fic, V. Misy. They used also the MSS. ex Cod. Heg."