Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/352

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

f9 th S. II. OCT. 29, '98.

between the year of licence and marriage appears, from 1555 to 1587. The marriages, for this period at all events, have been set on one year too many. It seems a pity some full test was not applied before the alteration was adopted. A. T. M.

MEDICAL SPECIALISM IN ANCIENT EGYPT. In modern Europe from time to time certain persons attempt to raise an outcry against the growth of specialism in medical and surgical practice a growth which, with all due regard to the general practitioner, is for obvious reasons surely destined to increase.

In view of the objections which some people entertain to the increase of medical and surgical specialism, it is curious to note the remarkable extent to which it seems to have been carried by that astute people the ancient Egyptians, as recorded by Herodotus in the following passage, which occurs in the eighty-fourth section of his second book :

r/ 8e IrjTpiKrj Kara. raSe aA.?}?, ot <5e oSo ot 6'e Tcny Kara vy]Svv, oi Se TIOV

A physician for each disease physicians for the treatment of the eyes, others for affections of the head, others for the teeth, others for ailments of the stomach, and others still for the more obscure internal complaints a degree of specialism at least equal to any now prevailing. But doctors' bills must have been somewhat heavy in ancient Egypt. PATRICK MAXWELL.

Bath.

'HELBECK OF BANNISDALE.' In an article upon Mrs. Ward's novel in the Nineteenth Cen- tury for October, Dr. St. George Mivart quotes, from memory, from a book whose title and whose author he has forgotten (foot-note, p. 647). The book is ' Beatrice : or, the" Unknown Relatives,' by Miss Catherine Sinclair (London, Bentley, 1852), and the reference is vol. iii. pp. 114-5.

GEORGE ANGUS.

St. Andrews, N.B.

ECLIPSE ISLANDS. The great interest attaching to Canon Taylor's work on ' Names and their Histories ' makes it desirable to point out an error at p. 115, where in the Glossary we read :

" Eclipse Islands, off King George's Sound, West Australia, derive their name from a lunar eclipse here observed by King on October 2nd, 1840."

No eclipse occurred on the date here men-

tioned in 1840, nor, indeed, any total eclipse of the moon in that year. The voyage in which King (i.e., Capt. Philip Parker King) surveyed the intertropical and western coasts of Australia was performed between the years 1818 and 1822, and his account of it published in 1827. The lunar eclipse took place on 2 Oct., 1819, whilst he was passing along the north coast of West Australia between Capes Londonderry and Voltaire, near a group of islets, which he therefore named Eclipse Islands, and a conspicuous hill on the largest he also called Eclipse Hill. But (as I pointed out in C N. & Q.,' 7 th S. v. 284) another group of islands on the opposite, or southern, side of West Australia, near King George's Sound, also bears the name of Eclipse Islands, given by Vancouver, who observed a partial eclipse of the sun (total farther south) whilst passing near the group on the morning of 28 Sep- tember, 1791. W. T. LYNN. Blackheath.

"MR. W. H.": SHAKSPEARE'S SONNETS. Mr. Sidney Lee, in his interesting notice of Thomas Thorpe in the ' Dictionary of National Biography,' advances the theory that William Hall, of London, printer and stationer, may have been the " Mr. W. H." of the much-dis- cussed address prefixed to the Sonnets. This speculation may not be regarded as absolutely convincing, but it is more credible than to suppose that in any case a nobleman would be described as " Mr." at a period when special deference was paid to rank.

The possibility that the mysterious owner of the initials was a Hall, of a Worcester- shire family of that name, was dealt with eight years ago in the pages of 'N. & Q.' (7 th S. ix. 227).

Mr. Lee also expresses the opinion that " begetter," the term employed in the Dedica- tion, means procurer of the Sonnets that is to say, one who has in some way obtained possession of them in MS. form. May I suggest that the word will scarcely bear the strain 1 ? Does it not rather, in this place, give the idea of an inspirer, or animater ? and is not this view confirmed by the Sonnets themselves? WM. UNDERBILL.

46, Blatchington Road, Hove.

FRENCH PROVEE,B. The French proverb "Qui rit vendredi, dimanche pleurera," is well known. It is plain from the context in ' Les Plaideurs,' where it is used, that in Racine's time it signified, as it does now, that sorrow treads on the heels of joy. But a natural question arises as to why Friday and Sunday are the two days mentioned in the proverb, when any other two days of the week, placed