In the present instance, by reversing the usual mode of procedure in such investigations, we may perhaps arrive at the probable truth. In other words, if we consider the disease prescribed for, we may possibly arrive at a knowledge of the drug prescribed. Now the affection on this side of the Bath stamp is _old cicatrices_ (VETERES CICATRICES). This disease, or rather result of disease, is mentioned on various Roman medicine-stamps discovered on the continent of Europe, as on examples found at Verona, Lillebonne, Ingweiler, and Saint Cheron,[492] and in one which I shall notice in the sequel, lately detected in Ireland. In all the instances which I have just named, the collyrium indicated on the inscriptions as the remedy (VETERES CICATRICES), is the collyrium termed DIAMYSOS or DIAMYSUM, which contained, as its principal ingredient, the metallic preparation known under the name of Μισυ, or Mysy, among the ancient medical authors; and Marcellus Empiricus gives a formula for the formation of a collyrium DIAMYSOS from it. Looking to these facts, in relation to other analogous Roman medicine-seals, it seems not an improbable conjecture that the word on this third side of the Bath stamp is the same, perhaps more or less mis-spelt or contracted; and consequently, that the whole inscription is T. JUNIANI DIAMYSUM AD VETERES CICATRICES. The re-discovery of the stamp itself can alone settle this and other difficulties connected with it. If we judged of the nature of the inscription by the characters of the letters, as given by Gough, the disputed word might perhaps be more correctly read DRYCUM or DRYXUM. And possibly, in this way, it may signify an astringent and detergent collyrium, made from the bark, acorn, or galls of the DRYS (δρυς) or oak—a tree that held a place in the materia medica of Hippocrates, Galen, and the other ancients, and which still maintains its place in our own modern Pharmacopœias. Dioscorides, and the other old pharmaceutical authorities, describe the _Drys_ or Quercus as possessing desiccant, astringent, and other properties; and they attribute especially these powers to the gall excrescences that so often grow upon it, and which they incorrectly deemed the fruit of this tree. According to Oribasius, the gall of the oak—“siccat, repercutit, contrahit, constringit, et particulas infirmas roborat.”[493]