ABRAXAS-STONES are largely medical in character—medical talismans.[472] Much might be said of them. Fort remarks: “These gems, endowed with omnipotent curative and talismanic power, quickly acquired a celebrity undiminished for ages, and whose possible interpretation even yet attracts erudite attention.”[473] Each of these remarkable objects consisted of a piece of glass, paste, or other mineral substance, occasionally a metallic one, on which was usually some figure, often a serpent, or inscription, together with the word “abraxas,” which constituted their distinctive feature. The Greek letters of the mystical word, “abraxas,” equaled in numerical value 365,[474] the number of days in the year. After speaking of the serpent of evil on one, Sharpe says: “Underneath it is written the magical word Abrasa, _hurt me not_, an Egyptian word, which the Greeks made use of, as believing that the evil spirits were better acquainted with the Egyptian language than with the Greek.”[475] Not a few, however, believe that the word is not such at all. [Illustration: FIG. 21.—ABRAXAS-STONE. (From De Wilde.)] The abraxas-stones are believed to have originated with the Basilidian Gnostics, a sect which Basilides, a Syrian by birth, who lived under Trajan and his successor, in the latter half of the first century, was instrumental in originating. Whether they were intended at first to be simply a means of recognition is an undecided question. Those given to magic adopted them largely. The opinion has been expressed that doubtless the greater part of the stones were made in the middle ages.[476] CHAPTER XVI. MEDICAL AMULETS. Any object believed to be possessed of a mysterious power of warding off or removing evil of any kind may be regarded as an amulet. A medical amulet is one capable of warding off or of removing a disease or diseases. The prevention of disease, or, what is much the same thing, the preservation of health, is the use to which it has been chiefly put. This is quite as true of its use to-day as formerly. In speaking of medical amulets one has no reason to use only the past tense. They are still much used, as the reader of Brande, or of the publications of the Folk-Lore Society, or of _Notes and Queries_, well knows. Nor are the patrons of them of the illiterate class only. Every physician has, doubtless, met with instances of their use by persons of intelligence. Here is a clergyman who carries a chestnut in his pocket to keep off rheumatism; and there is an attorney-at-law who keeps a stolen potato about him for the same purpose. In ancient times, however, their use was extremely common, all but universal.