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ITALY—Round tin boxes recovered from a 2,000-year-old Roman shipwreck off the coast of Tuscany hold a mix of zinc and beeswax that may have been used as eye medicine. The wreckage was found along a trade route and had been carrying wine jars, an inkwell, tin and bronze jugs, Syrian-Palestinian glass bowls, and Ephesian lamps, in addition to medical equipment and the rare medicine sample. Impressions in the medicine tablets suggest that they had been wrapped in linen to keep them from crumbling.
