The preceding quotations show that, besides other significations, there is no doubt that the term _Penicillum_ was used to designate a soft sponge, and perhaps also a brush or pledget of charpie that was occasionally employed in ophthalmic practice, for the double purpose of fomenting or cleansing the eye, and of dropping local applications into it. But it seems very unlikely that a stamp should be used by the oculist to mark the material of these _Penicilli_ with. It would be both difficult and unnecessary to stamp in any way either a piece of sponge or of charpie with such an inscription as that found upon this and the other Roman seals. And I would venture to suggest, that it appears much more probable that the collyrium, ointment, or lotion, that was to be used with the sponge or charpie, was sometimes designated _Penicillum_, from the special mode in which it was to be applied; in the same way as we have found various eye-drops passing under the general designation of _Stactum_, from the special mode in which they were applied to the diseased organ. In this way the LENE PENICILLUM in the legend of our present oculist-stamp would not signify the material which was used in the application of the medicine, but the name of the medicine or collyrium as indicative of the mode in which it was to be used. The employment of the collyrium PENICILLUM mixed with an egg (EX OVO) is often indicated upon the oculist-stamps; and in the ancient Roman authors it is a mode in which many of the collyria were directed to be prepared before they were applied to the diseased eye. SECTION VIII. STAMP NO. VII.—CONTAINED IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM. In his paper in the _Archæologia_ (vol. ix.), Mr. Gough published a sketch and account of a medicine-stamp, inscribed on three of its sides, and remarkable in one or two respects. The sketch which he has given of it is copied into Plate II., No. VII. The stamp itself is preserved in the British Museum. It is thicker, and more rounded at the edges, than the generality of these flat medicine-stones. After quoting the three inscriptions on its sides, Mr. Gough gives the following very brief and unsatisfactory account of the reading of this stamp. “From the inscriptions,” he observes, “we learn that the owner’s name was FL., or FLAVIUS SECUNDUS, and that his composition was made of Opobalsamum and Myrrh, and the white of eggs.”[535]