Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/75

 12 8. II. JULY 22, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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his spurs from his heels, and then made proclamation that none hereafter should style him by the name of Sir Francis Mitchel Knight, but Francis Mitchel, arrant knave. He was then sent back in his coach to prison ir Finsbury, all the boys hooting after him. Cf. ' The Court and Times of James I.,' edited by R. F. Williams (London, 1848), vol. ii. p. 260. L. L. K.

"ON THE FLY " : A PROLONGED DRUNKEN

BOTJT. Before the days of the Licensing Act of Bruce, passed in 1872, when a prolonged and continuous drunken bout could be indulged in at public-houses with much greater freedom than now, a partici- pator in such was said in North-East Cornwall to be " on the fly." This is not one of the meanings given to the phrase in Farmer and Henley's ' Dictionary of Slang,' and, there- fore, may be noted. DUNHEVED.

STEEL IN MEDICINE : THE ' N.E.D.' The treatment of this subject in the Great Dictionary is not very satisfactory. The statement that in early practice iron filings were sometimes administered internally is curiously inadequate ; reduced to powder, they were frequently given, and I remember a time in which there was still a considerable popular demand for them. Mars saccharatus here called sugar of steel, but more properly sugared steel was official in Scotland, and was nothing more than iron filings boiled with twice their weight of white sugar until they were uniformly encrusted. The statement that iron and steel were ordinarily regarded as two different medicines, with similar but not identical therapeutic effect, is also open to criticism. It would be more accurate to say that the ordinary notion was that essentially they were the same, but that iron was preferred as more readily yielding its principles. " Salt of steel" is defined as "usually, iron chloride (but used also for the sulphate or other salts of iron)." The fact is that the sal Mortis, or salt of steel, of our pharmacopoeias, both English and Scotch, was the green sulphate of iron. It is strange that there is no mention of " steel drops " as a synonym for " tincture of steel." The earliest indeed, the only quotation for Ens Veneris is dated 1758, but this preparation was the invention (s;ivs Dr. Brookes) of Robert Boyle, in the seventeenth century, and the name is cer- tainly much older than the date given. Quinoy suggests that the inventor chose it because the preparation was especially intended for the disorders of women. Be this as it may, the name was unfortunate, as

it led to the substitution of sulphate of copper for sulphate of iron in the formula of the Edinburgh pharmacopo?ia, Venus being the symbol of copper, as Mars was of iron.

C. C. B.

H. S. ASHBEE. In my memorial note (9 S. vi. 121) about him I iastanced as what might be considered a portrait of Ashbee the warrior in Caliari's picture in the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square (No. 1325). I now wish to retract this.

On a visit to the National Gallery since the war I found many pictures had been removed, and some rehung in different places. Caliari's picture used to hang in the dark over a door, and was some sixteen feet above the floor. When I saw it a short time ago it was on the floor. In this position the face is totally different from what it appeared when skied in the dark, and totally unlike Ashbee, who was a fair man, with a fine open countenance that inspired confidence, and made one think that what he said could be trusted, as, indeed, it could. Now, on seeing the picture closer, I consider it a libel on Ashbee to make the suggestion that he was like this warrior.

I have been there again just before sending this note (which was written some months ago) to see the picture, but it has been packed away for safety. RALPH THOMAS.

WE must request correspondents desiring in- formation on family matters of only private interest to affix their names and addresses to their queries, in order that answers may be sent to them direct.

THOMAS^' CONGREVE, M.D. With most copies of the existing first (1717) and second (1723) editions of ' A Survey of Stafford- shire ,' by Sampson Erdeswicke (d. K 3),

is bound up a pamphlet entitled :

"A I Scheme | or, | Proposal | For making a | Navigable Communication [Between the I Rivers of Trent and Severn, I In the County of Stafford. By Dr. Thomas Congreve, | of Wolver-Hampton. | LONDON, I Printed for E. Curll in Fleet-street, 1717."

If any reader could inform me as to \ this Dr. Congreve was born, where he graduated, and where and when he died, or zive me any other biographical information, he would be doing me singular sen-ice. R. Simms in his ' Bibliotheca Staffordiensis merely mentions the pamphlet without further reference to its author. '~

A. STANTON WHITFIELD, F.R.Hist.S.

High Street, Walsall.