Benvenuto Cellini mentions that, about the time of his writing, certain vases were discovered, which appeared to be antique urns filled with ashes. Amongst them were iron rings inlaid with gold, in each of which was set a diminutive shell. Learned antiquaries, upon investigating the nature of these rings, declared their opinion that they were worn as charms by those who desired to behave with steadiness and resolution either in prosperous or adverse fortune.[208] (By way of parenthesis: This dare-devil man of fine taste, Cellini, having finished a beautiful medal for the Duke of Ferrara, the patron of Tasso, the magnificent Alfonso sent him a diamond ring, with an elegant compliment. But the ring was really not a valuable one. The Duke threw the mistake upon his treasurer, whom he affected to punish, and sent Cellini another ring; but even this was not worth one quarter of the sum he owed him. He accompanied it with a significant letter, in which he ordered him not to leave Ferrara. The artist, however, ran away as fast as his legs would carry him, and was soon delighted to find he was beyond the fury of the “Magnifico Alfonso.”) § 5. Ancient physicians carried signets or rings, frequently wearing them upon the thumb, upon which were engraved their own names, sometimes written backwards, or the denominations of the nostrums they vended. With regard to one of these seals, we find the word _aromatica_ from _aromaticum_, on another _melina_, abbreviation of _melinum_, a collyrium prepared with the alum of the island of Melos.[209] A seal of this kind is described by Tochon d’Annecy bearing the words _psoricum crocodem_, an inscription that has puzzled medical antiquaries. It has been suggested that the use of talismanic rings as charms against diseases may have originated in the phylacteries or preservative scrolls of the Jews, although it is easy to imagine that, in the earliest days of medicine, the operator, after binding up a wound, would mutter “thrilling words” in incantation over it, which, in process of time, might be, as it were, _embodied_ and perpetuated in the form of an inscription, the ring, in some degree, representing a bandage.[210] It appears to us this is much further from fact than that a barber’s pole represents an arm with a bandage. Amulet rings for medicinal purposes were greatly in fashion with empyrics and ancient physicians.[211] In Lucian’s Philopseudes, one of the interlocutors in a dialogue says that since an Arabian had presented him with a ring of iron taken from the gallows, together with a charm constructed of certain hard words, he had ceased to be afraid of the demoniacs who had been healed by a Syrian in Palestine. In another dialogue, a man desires that Mercury should bestow a ring on him to insure perpetual health and preservation from all danger. These rings were to be worn upon the fourth or medical finger.