We have already had occasion to allude to the disasters which attended the Scottish campaign of Severus, and to the imperfect health of the emperor himself during his invasion of Scotland. The evidence of Herodian further shows us that during it he was attended by his own physicians, and that their conduct after the emperor’s return from Scotland to York, whilst in the highest degree commendable as regards their faith and duty to the emperor, proved the cause of their own downfall and destruction. The anxiety of Caracalla for the death of his father Severus is well known. We have the testimony of Herodian to the fact, that while the father and son were living at York, Caracalla at one time attempted to destroy his father with his own hand. The same historian further informs us, that the unhappy son attempted to induce the medical attendants of Severus to adopt means to hasten the emperor’s death.[421] He adds further, that in consequence of the court physicians not complying with his unrighteous request, Caracalla, immediately after the demise of Severus, commenced his reign of bloodshed and terror by putting to death these recusant physicians of the late emperor.[422] In the retrospect, it affords a strange subject of meditation for us in the nineteenth century, to consider that, some fifteen hundred years ago, it thus happened in England, that a number of physicians were themselves doomed to death for refusing to pervert their professional trust so far as to become the murderers of the royal invalid who had confided his health to their care. And the modern physician may look back with some degree of pride upon the fact, that in an age and at a court where cruelty and corruption held unrestrained sway, some members of the medical profession at least remained so uncorruptible as to endanger and sacrifice their own lives rather than tamper with the life of their patient.[423] [Illustration: Nº I Fig. I Fig. II Fig. III Nº II Nº III ROMAN MEDICINE STAMPS.] ANCIENT ROMAN MEDICINE-STAMPS. SECTION I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON THE DISCOVERY, CHARACTERS, ETC., OF ROMAN MEDICINE STAMPS. About two hundred years ago there were found at Nymegen, in Holland, two small, greenish, flat, square-shaped stones or tablets, each engraved on its four lateral surfaces or edges with inscriptions, the letters of which were cut incuse and retrograde. In his work on the Roman and other antiquities of Nymegen,[424] Schmidt, one of the greatest archæologists of his day, described these two stones; but he confessedly altogether failed in interpreting their nature and uses, or in reading the legends inscribed upon them.