Cut reeds in an elevated meadow;
Beat some pure date-sugar with some pure honey;
Add some sweet oil which comes from the mountain;
Mix them together.
Rub [with this ointment] the body of the [sick man].”
The reference to the “art of the apothecary” made in the Bible[513] has been regarded as “the first recorded notice upon the subject of medicine and pharmacy,”—as, for example, by the late professor, Dr. George B. Wood;[514] but here we have explicit evidence that farther back, say 1000 years before the time of Moses, people were in the habit of having medicines stored in vases of a set kind, and that the Babylonians had considerable pharmaceutical knowledge, as well as that their medical practice was not exclusively magical; or, as Mr. Halevy puts it, “it proves that the Babylonians were in the possession of a rational medicine as well as a magical one.”[515] He further remarks that it is “the only known specimen of an Assyro-Babylonian prescription.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
MISCELLANEOUS MEDICAL SYMBOLS.
The Barber’s and Surgeon’s Pole.—The peculiar pole made use of by barbers as a sign seems to have been medical in origin. For a long time the barber performed all the duties of the surgeon. It was in the year 1461 that, on petition, King Edward IV granted “the freemen of the Mystery of Barbers of the city of London, using the mystery or faculty of surgery,” “the mystery,” which constituted the beginning of the present Royal College of Surgeons of England.[516] It was not, however, until the middle of the eighteenth century (1745) that each began to limit his functions.