[151:1] The Cosmopolitan, vol. xx, p. 363.
[152:1] Braid, Neurypnology, p. 338.
[153:1] The Cosmopolitan, February, 1896.
[154:1] H. Bernheim, M.D., Suggestive Therapeutics, p. 111.
CHAPTER XIV
ANCIENT MEDICAL PRESCRIPTIONS
From early times it was a universal custom to place at the beginning of a medical prescription certain religious verses or superstitious characters, which formed the invocation, or prayer to a favorite deity.[155:1] Angelic beings were frequently appealed to, and among these the Archangel Raphael was thought to be omnipotent for the cure of disease. John Aubrey, in his "Miscellanies," relates that a certain physician, Dr. Richard Nepier, a person of great piety, whose knees were horny with much praying, was wont to ask professional advice of this archangel, and that his prescriptions began with the abbreviation "R. Ris." for Responsum Raphælis, Raphael's answer. The name of Raphael was often seen on amulets and talismans. But our information regarding this angel is derived chiefly from the Book of Tobit, where Raphael is represented as the guide and counsellor of the young Tobias. In one of the later Midrashim, Raphael appears as the angel commissioned to put down the evil spirits that vexed the sons of Noah with plagues and sicknesses after the Flood, and he it was who taught men the use of "simples," and furnished materials for the "Book of Noah," the earliest treatise on materia medica.[156:1]
A recent writer affirms that ℞ is the emblem of the sun-god Ra, and signifies "In the name of Ra," or "Ra, God of Life and Health, inspire me."[156:2] This deity was regarded as the Supreme Being, not only by the Egyptians, but by other heathen people of antiquity, because the sun was the greatest and most brilliant of the planets.