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. The sign is generally explained thus: The pole represents a stick, usually held in his hand by the patient while getting bled, and the red and white spiral stripes, blood and a bandage, respectively. The colors, it may be observed, are not always arranged in spiral parallel stripes; nor are the colors limited to red and white. The use of blue with, or even without, red is partly allowable, on account of venous blood being somewhat bluish in hue. Mr. Jeaffreson, indeed, says that “the chirurgical pole, properly tricked out, ought to have a line of blue paint, another of red, and a third of white,”[517] spirally arranged. On the top of the pole there is usually placed, in Great Britain, France, and other European countries, a brass basin, with a semicircular gap in one side. This vessel is used by the barber to keep the clothes of his patrons from being soiled. With a gallipot, instead of the basin, one has the real pole of the surgeon, which has been extensively used as a sign. Without either, it is in use by the barbers in this country. Lord Thurlow, a member of the House of Commons, delivered a speech on the 17th of July, 1797, in opposition to the Surgeons’ Incorporation Bill, in which he said: “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 appendage; but the surgeons’, which was the same in other respects, was likewise to have a gallipot and a red flag, to denote the particular nature of their vocation.”