classics are rather difficult of access, surprisingly so considering that until a few decades ago they were reverenced as works of authority for medical practice; but the fact seems to be that our predecessors were largely content to draw their knowledge of these authors from mediaeval Latin translations. Part of one of the most interesting authors has never been published in the original Greek, and for our knowledge of it we are dependent on a sixteenth-century Latin translation, supplemented, it may be, by fugitive consultations of codices in libraries and museums. Others of the Greek texts have not been reprinted since the sixteenth century, and bristle with the ingenious but at first perplexing shorthand contractions with which the Renaissance typographer imitated the Compendia of the manuscripts. These difficulties can be got over with patience, however, and the waste of gray matter necessary as a preliminary is not out of proportion to the results to be obtained. Even as a quarry for philological materials the medical classics are far from being worked out, and it is surprising how many words one meets with which are not to be found in the best Greek-English dictionaries. The method pursued in the present investigation was to make a complete examination of the classical medical, surgical, anatomical, and pharmaceutical writings which have been preserved to us, copying out the portions in which an instrument was mentioned. These extracts were then rearranged in ledger form, each extract being classified under the heading of the instrument it referred to. Out of the enormous number of references thus obtained, those passages were selected which seemed to throw any light on the shape and size of the instrument to which they referred. Next, an examination was made of the reports of finds in various localities; as many specimens in various museums were examined as possible; and annotations of classical texts were searched for any further information they might give. The total information thus gained is so arranged that under the heading of each instrument will be found a series of selected extracts from different authors, with the deductions from them which it is possible to make regarding the appearance of the instrument, and an illustration is given of it from some ancient specimen where such is in existence. Failing actual ancient specimens, I have fallen back on mediaeval or ancient Arabian authors for illustration.