Olive oil in ancient pills to treat sore eyes

Tablets found in ancient Rome contained pollen grains from an olive tree as a key ingredient. Other ingredients included plant and animal oils.

New Scientist (12 January 2013) reported that an analysis of ancient pills recently found on a cargo ship wrecked off the Italian coast at about 140 BC suggested that physicians treated sore eyes with the same active ingredients as doctors do in the present day.

Erika Ribechini of the University of Pisa, Italy, heading the analysis team, said that the pills may be the oldest medical tablets ever analyzed. The disc-shaped tablets were 4 centimetres wide and a centimetre thick. Ribechini thinks the physicians of Rome dipped the tablets in water and dabbed them directly on the patient’s sore eyes. She maintains that there is evidence that Pliny the Elder, the Roman physician, prescribed zinc compounds for the treatment of sore eyes almost 250 years after the shipwreck. (PNAS, DOI:10.1073/pnas.1216776110 and E. Ribechini’s Naturalis Historia)

The scientists said the tablets were made primarily from zinc carbonates hydrozincite and smithsonite, similar zinc-based minerals in today’s eye and skin medications. Olive oil continues to be used in many medicinal and beauty creams of today.

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