Probes were the most common medical instruments. They were designed for multiple applications, including surgical procedures, the preparation of pharmaceutical recipes, personal hygiene, and even nonmedical procedures such as mixing paints. On display are examples of regular probes and olivary probe. The latter consist of very thin handles ending in the shape of an olive. This olivary end was usually employed to mix ointments, but it could also function like a modern eye-dropper by wrapping the olivary end with a piece of cloth soaked in a liquid medical recipe, and then squeezing the cloth so that the ointment would slide down toward the other end of the probe and onto the area in need of the medicine. Celsus talks about using the olivary to test the texture of a fistula and its effect on the body:
First of all, however, it is necessary to pass a probe into the fistula, that we may learn both its direction and depth, and at the same time whether it is moist or rather dry. This is known when the probe is withdrawn. But if there is bone in the neighborhood, we can also learn whether the fistula has reached and penetrated the bone or not, and how far the damage has gone. For if what is touched by the end of the probe is soft, the disease is still limited to the flesh; if it meets with more resistance, the fistula has reached bone.
Listen to the translation: