Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/549

 io*8.i.JrsE4,i9M.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

453

that year the Paschal full moon occurred on 21 March, which by the Gregorian reckon- ing would have been called 31 March. Easter Day would be the Sunday after, i.e., the day which, by the Julian reckoning (then universally followed), was called 27 March, and by the Gregorian (had it then been used) would have been called 6 April. 8 April, stated by M. C. L. as given by some work which he does not name, was an impossible date, not being a Sunday by either reckoning. In actual fact, then, Easter Day fell on the same day in 1513 by both the Julian and the Gregorian reckon- ings. A similar agreement, I might mention, occurred in 1702 Easter falling by both reckonings on the same real day, though it was called by the Old Style 5 April, and by the New 16 April, the difference then being eleven days, as it was when the style was changed in England in 1752.

W. T. LYNN. Blackheath.

^. J. DORMER, the REV. C. S. WARD, and E. W. B. give the same dates as MR. LYNN.]

BIRDS' EGGS (10 th S. i. 327, 372). MR. E. P. WOLFERSTAN seems to think the "grass- hopper warbler " a rarer bird than it was, certainly, some years ago, even in Northern England, where I found its nest and dimly speckled eggs on not a few occasions. One would have imagined the smart business capacity of the buyer of the warbler's eggs from the old woman was a detail that would have been better kept in the background.

B.

PRESCRIPTIONS (10 th S. i. 409). I remember coming across a learned disquisition on the mysterious hieroglyphics which adorn medical prescriptions. It was therein stated that the initial R was not onjy a contraction of Recipe, but also represented the astrological sign for Jupiter. This induces the quaint re- flection that the twentieth-century physician still relies upon the benevolence of a pagan deity for the efficacy of his pills and potions. I think, too, the sign for a scruple (etymo- logically a little rock) was understood to be half that hot-cross bun which conventionally represents the earth it resembles, by the way, the reversed minuscule epsilon used in some tenth-century MSS. as a contraction of ejus. Whether the minim sign was traced to the zodiacal Scorpio I forget, but it seems that the denarius or drachm was at one time represented by an approximation to the hieroglyphic for Pisces. At least, in Darem- berg's ' Celsus ' the latter weight appears as two brackets joined by a hyphen )-(, copied

presumably from the oldest (tenth-century) MS. In this edition of that Roman physi- cian's works the sextans is indicated by a z or = (like R. Recorde's mathematical symbol of equivalence) ; the triens by zz, or = = ; and the ounce by so plain a dash,, that it cannot claim even a distant cousinship with the delightful curlie-wurlie in whose artistic delineation doctors nowadays display such professional skill. J. DORMER.

According to a writer in the Saturday Review of 20 March, 1875, p. 380, the R with which physicians' prescriptions usually begin, and which, as they use it, is simply the first letter of the Latin word Recipe = take (i.e. the following ingredients in the quantities ordered), is to be seen in Egyptian medical papyri dating some 2,000 years B.C. as the symbol of Ra, and means, " In the name of Ra" or "O Ra, god of life and health, inspire me." Can any Egyptian scholar confirm this statement or explode it ?

MICHAEL T. SADLER.

Dr. J. A. Paris, in his ' Pharmacologia/ 1843, says :

" Even those salutary virtues M'hich many herbs possess were, in times of superstitious delusion, attributed rather to the planet under whose ascendency they were collected or prepared than to any natural and intrinsic properties in the plants themselves ; indeed, such was the supposed importance of planetary influence, that it was- usual to prefer [sic] to receipts a symbol of the planet under whose reign the ingredients were to be collected ; and it is, perhaps, not generally known, that the character which we at this day place at the head of our prescriptions, and which is under- stood to mean nothing more than Recipe, is in fact a relict [sic] of the astrological symbol of Jupiter, as may be seen in many of the older works on pharmacy ; although it is at present so disguised by the addition of the down stroke, which converts in into the letter R, that were it not for its cloven foot we might be led to question its supernatural origin. In later times the heathen symbols were dropped, and others substituted to propitiate the favour and assistance of heaven." Pp. 20-21.

See also Dr. Otto A. Wall at considerable length in the Chemist and Dmgqist for 25 July, 1891, on 'Jupiter and Prescriptions,'

pp. 159-61. J. HOLDEN MACMlCHAEL.

See 1 st S. i. 399 ; 7 th S. xii. 428, 498 ; 8 th S. i. 114; but very much more information is desirable on the origin and date of the marks used to designate weights and measures in medical prescriptions.

EVERARD HOME COLEMAN.

71, Brecknock Road.

Any pharmacist whose acquaintance AlR. INGLEBY happens to possess will show him a copy of Dr. Pereira's 'Selections from