In addition to his medical practice, lecturing and teaching at the London Hospital, and his publishing of several medical works, the Irish physician Archibald Billing (1791 1881) was also an amateur artist and antiquarian. This illustrated book on gemmology was first published in 1867. Beginning with the works of ancient Greece, for him the highest pinnacle of civilization, Billing discusses the use of engraved gems, putting cameos and intaglios in the context of contemporary monumental sculpture, and tracing the history of carving in miniature back to the seal-stones of the Egyptians and...