Moliere, in his seventeenth-century satires on the European medical profession, ridicules the excessive use of the clyster. The popularity of the phlebotomy then is attested to by the notoriety of this technique today. (Rare is the schoolboy who does not think that George Washington was bled to death.) There is no reason to doubt that the clyster and phlebotomy enjoyed as wide usage in colonial Virginia as in Europe, but the evidence surviving to prove this assumption is slight. Dr. Blanton, the historian of medicine, could find only meager references to the use of clyster (or glyster) and he sums them up as follows: Among the effects of Nathaniel Hill was '1 old syringe.' In York County records we find that Thomas Whitehead in 1660 paid Edmond Smith for '2 glysters.' George Wale's account to the estate of Thomas Baxter in 1658 included a similar charge. George Light in 1657 paid Dr. Mode fifty pounds of tobacco for 'a glister and administering.' John Clulo, Francis Haddon and William Lee each presented bills for similar services. The survival of such meager evidence for what was probably a common practice indicates the difficulties confronting the historian of medicine. Nor has Dr. Blanton been able to find, as a result of his research, any more evidence of phlebotomy although, again, its utilization must have been widespread. Blanton sums up his evidence for bleeding as follows: Dr. Mode's bill to George Light includes 'a phlebothany to Jno Simonds' and 'a phlebothany to yr mayd.' Dr. Henry Power twice bled Thomas Cowell of York County in 1680, and Patrick Napier twice phlebotomized 'Allen Jarves, deceased, in the cure of a cancer of his mouth.' Colonel Daniel Parke in 1665 rendered John Horsington a bill for 'lettinge blood' from his servant; and we find Dr. Jeremiah Rawlins and Francis Haddon engaging in the same practice. The horoscope often determined the proper time for bleeding and notations have been found in an early American Bible recommending the days to, and not to, bleed. Although medicine today looks askance at astrological medicine and bloodletting, it remains difficult to explain the widespread popularity of such practices unless the patients enjoyed some beneficial results, psychological or physical. Drug therapeutics, clysters, and bloodletting did by no means exhaust the seventeenth-century physician's treatments and remedies. The works of European painters of the century remind us of uroscopy or urine examination. One of the outstanding paintings illustrating the technique is by artist Gerard Dou who has the young doctor intently examining the urine flask while taking the pulse of a pretty young lady. Unfortunately, such revealing pictorial representations of life and medicine in colonial Virginia do not exist.