E. D.
[Ralph Winterton, in 1632, translated the Considerations of Drexelius upon Eternity, in the Preface to which he says, "I left the temple of Hippocrates and the Muses, and betook myself into the sanctuary, to which consisteth in the due numbering of the days of this short life, by comparing them with the years of eternity; and so I fell upon translating this book of eternity. And this I found, by daily experience, to be the best hypnoticon that ever I used; for it brought me to my rest better than if had taken diacodion." In 1634 he was nominated Professor of Physic in the University of Cambridge; and in 1635 published an edition of the minor Greek poets. The first edition of his translation of Gerard's Meditations and Prayers was published in 1631, and in 1640 he translated Gerard's Summe of Christian Doctrine, 8vo. There is a Latin distich by Winterton among the Additional MSS. in the British Museum, No. 5955.]
Emblems of a Saint.
—At the sale of the late Mr. Cottingham's Museum of medieval art was sold on the seventh day "a corbel with a figure of a saint with a basket of birds in one hand, in the other a staff." Will you allow me to inquire, through your valuable columns, the name of this saint?
BURIENSIS.
[Joachim, the Father of Mary, is sometimes represented as holding in his hand a basket with two turtle doves in it.—See Die Attribute der Heiligen, &c., Hanover, 1843.]
Quack.
—Why are certain members of the medical profession so called? I have seen "in print" that the Egyptian hieroglyphic for a doctor was a duck. Does this afford a clue?
A. A. D.
[Our English Quack, or Quacksalver as it was originally written, is from the German Quacksalber, or rather the Dutch Kwaksalver; which Bilderdijk, in his Geslachtlijst der Naamwoorden, states should be more properly Kwabzalver (Iatroliptes), from Kwab, a wen, and zalver, to salve or anoint.]