The Art and Science of Healing: From Antiquity to the Renaissance

This amulet includes the typical iconography of the sort of gemstone used to cure eye diseases. It is made of green and red jasper, recalling the color of the actual lizard. Over the engraved lizard is the crescent of the moon, an allusion to the time when the procedure should be performed. Actually, in De medicamentis, Marcellus Empiricus says that “the lizard must be caught and the remedy prepared in the old moon, that is, from the 19th to the 25th, on a Thursday in the month of September” (8.49). On the obverse, there are two inscriptions: on the left, ολωρβισ, and on the right, ολυωρβ.