"In ancient Rome, when men loved fighting, And wounds and scars took much delight in, Man-menders then had noble pay-- Which we call surgeons to this day. 'Twas order'd that a huge long pole, With basin deck'd, should grace the hole, To guide the wounded, who unlopt Could walk, on stumps the other hopt; But when they ended all their wars, And men grew out of love with scars. Their trade decaying, to keep swimming, They joined the other trade of trimming; And to their poles, to publish either, Thus twisted both their trades together." The principal objection that can be made to this answer is that it leaves the question unanswered, after making only a very lame attempt to answer it. Lord Thurlow, in a speech delivered in the House of Peers on 17th of July, 1797, opposing the surgeons' incorporation bill, said that, "By a statute still in force, the barbers and surgeons were each to use a pole. The barbers were to have theirs blue and white, striped with no other appendage; but the surgeons', which was the same in other respects, was likewise to have a gallipot and a red rag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation." But the reason why the surgeon's pole was adorned with both blue and red seems to have escaped the Chancellor. The chirurgical pole, properly tricked, ought to have a line of blue paint, another of red, and a third of white, winding round its length, in a regular serpentine progression--the blue representing the venous blood, the more brilliant colour the arterial, and the white thread being symbolic of the bandage used in tying up the arm after withdrawing the ligature. The stick itself is a sign that the operator possesses a stout staff for his patients to hold, continually tightening and relaxing their grasp during the operation--accelerating the flow of the blood by the muscular action of the arm. The phlebotomist's staff is of great antiquity. It is to be found amongst his properties, in an illuminated missal of the time of Edward the First, and in an engraving of the "Comenii Orbis Pictus."