Page:Notes and Queries - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/85

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NOTES AND QUEEIES.

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similar, but the crest differs. I shall feel obliged by being informed what family the arms belong to. J. J. B.

Dublin.

[There are no less than ten or twelve coats of similar bearings to those on the signet ring, but none of which corresponds in name with the letter B. The ring is pro- bably as old as the middle of the sixteenth century. We hardly think the swan, which occupiei the place of a crest, to be a crest, not being placed on a wreath or coronet. It is more probably a device only, placed to supply the want of a crest. We are inclined to believe with bur correspondent, from the circumstances which he mentions, that the arms are those of an Irish family.]

Card, What is the meaning of the word " card " in the following passage ?

" Reason is as the card which directs the course, and shows what is fittest to be done ; but the will is as the helm and rudder that turns about the whole fabrick." Penitent Pardoned, p. 163., ed. 1679.

Whether the word means the chart or the com- pass, I am unable to say. B. H. C.

[The word card in the extract refers to the mariner's compass ; or more properly the paper on which the points of the wind are marked. Pope says :

" On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, Reason the card, but passion is the gale."

So again Beaumont and Fletcher :

" . . . . We're all like sea cards, All our endeavours and our motions, As they do to the north, still point at beauty."

Chances, i. 11. Hamlet exclaims :

" How absolute the knave is ! We must speak by the card, or equivocation will undo us."

See Steevens's note on Hamlet, ActV. Sc. 1.]

Proclamation against Vice and Immorality. When was this proclamation first issued ? It has been one of the first documents issued by the new Sovereign on the three last demises of the crown.

E. H. D. D.

[This proclamation was first issued on June 1, 1787, in the twenty-seventh year of George III. It will be found in The Clergyman's Assistant, and in the Gentleman's Magazine of June, 1787, "p. 534.]

ROBERT POOLE.

(I 1 * S. xii. 468.)

? Robert Poole, M.D., alias Theophilus Philan- thropes, to whom your esteemed correspondent J. 0. has directed attention, was buried in Isling- ton Churchyard, 3rd June, 1752. Vide Lysons's Environs, vol. ii. p. 491. He was, as his writings abundantly prove, a religious enthusiast, and pro- fessional oddity. Mr. Wadd terms him " a me- thodistical physician." Mem. Maxims and Me- moirs, p. 155.

Dr. Poole was not a member of the College of Physicians of London, nnd I have sought in vain for any particulars of his birth-place, parentage, or education. A complete series of the physicians to St. Thomas's Hospital from the commencement of the last century is now before me, and I can state decidedly that he never held any medical appointment in that institution. He was perhaps a physician's pupil, and at the time he published his only medical work, may not improbably have been an aspirant for the appointment of physician when a vacancy might next occur. However this may be, his views were diverted into another channel, and on the establishment of the Mid- dlesex Hospital in August, 1745, Dr. Poole was appointed its sole physician. He had, however, resigned that office previously to the general quar- terly meeting of October, 1746, on which occa- sion thanks were voted him rbr his past services. Almost immediately after this, the doctor fell under the heavy displeasure of the board, and an angry correspondence ensued. This is too long for insertion in your pages, but may be seen at length in Wilson's History of the Middlesex Hos- pital, 8vo., London, 1845, p. 182. His resigna- tion of the physicianship to the Middlesex Hos- pital, was doubtless due to the circumstance that he was then actively engaged in getting up the Small Pox Hospital, of which, if we may trust the inscription on his gravestone, he is to be regarded as the principal founder. The hospital was opened in 1746, and Dr. Poole was its first physician. He retained office for two years only, and was succeeded in 1748 by Edward Archer, M.D. Of Dr. Poole's subsequent career, I know nothing. The Beneficent Bee was evidently, as J. O. infers, a posthumous publication. The doctor's portrait, by Aug. Armstrong, engraved by J. Faber, is mentioned by Mr. Wadd in his NugcB Chirur- gic(B, p. 127.

Unless there were two editions of the Vade Mecum, your correspondent is in error as to the exact title. The copy before me runs thus :

"A Physical (not Physician's) Vade Mecum, or Fifth Gift of Theophilus Philanthropes, wherein is contain'd the Dispensatory of St. Thomas's Hospital, with a Cata- logue of the diseases, and the method of their cure pre- scrib'd in the said Hospital. To which is also added the Dispensatory of St. Bartholomew's and Guy's Hospital, &c., &c. London : Printed for, and sold by E. Duncomb, in Duck Lane, Little Britain, 1741.

W. MUNK, M.D.

Finsburv Place.

PUBLICATION OF BANNS. (2 J S. i. 34.)

Although the legislature may not have intended to direct the publication of banns to take place after the Second Lesson at Morning Service, and