gad §, No 4., Jan. 26. 56.) 
similar, but the crest differs. I shall feel obliged 
by being informed what family the arms belong 
to. J.J. B. 
Dublin. 
[There are no less than ten or twelve coats of similar 
bearings to those on the signet ring, but none of which 
corresponds in name with the letter B. The ring is pro- 
bably as old as the middle of the sixteenth century. We 
hardly think the swan, which occupies the place of a 
erest, to be a crest, not being placed on a wreath or 
coronet. It is more probably a device only, placed to 
supply the want of a crest. We are inclined to believe 
with our correspondent, from the-circumstances which he 
mentions, that the arms are those of an Jrish family. ] 
Card. — What is the meaning of the word 
“ card” in the following passage ? — 
“ Reason is as the card which directs the course, and 
shows what is fittest to be done; but the will is as the 
helm and rudder that turns about the whole fabrick.’’ — 
Penitent Pardoned, p. 163., ed. 1679. 
Whether the word means the chart or the com- 
pass, I am unable to say. B. H.C. 
[The word card in the extract refers to the mariner’s 
eompass; or more properly the paper on which the points 
of the wind are marked. Pope says: 
“ On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail, 
Reason the card, but passion is the gale,” 
So again Beaumont and Fletcher: 
“. . . .) «We're all like sea cards, 
All our endeavours and our motions, 
As they do to the north, still point at beauty.” 
Chances, i. 11. 
Hamlet exclaims: 
“How absolute the knave is! We must speak by the 
card, or equivocation will undo us.” 
See Steevens’s note on Hamlet, Act V. Sc. 1.] 
_ Proclamation against Vice and Immorality. — 
When was this proclamation first issued? It has 
been one of the first documents issued by the new 
Sovereign on the three last demises of the crown. 
EK. H. D. D. 
_ [This proclamation was first issued on June 1, 1787, in 
the twenty-seventh year of George III. It will be found 
in The Clergyman’s Assistant, and in the Gentleman’s 
Magazine of June, 1787, p. 534.] 
Replies, 
ROBERT POOLE. 
(1* S. xii. 468.) 
f Robert Poole, M.D., alias Theophilus Philan- 
thropos, to whom your esteemed correspondent 
J. O. has directed attention, was buried in Isling- 
ton Churchyard, 3rd June, 1752. Vide Lysons’s 
Environs, vol. ii. p. 491. He was, as his writings 
abundantly prove, a religious enthusiast, and pro- 
fessional oddity. Mr. Wadd terms him “a me- 
thodistical physician.” —Mem. Maxims and Me- 
moirs, p. 155, 
NOTES AND QUERIES. 77 
Dr. Poole was not a member of the College of 
Physicians of London, and I have sought in vain 
for any particulars of his birth-place, parentage, 
or education. A complete series of the physicians 
to St. Thomas’s Hospital from the commencement 
of the last century is now before me, and I can 
state decidedly that he never held any medical 
appointment in that institution. He was perhaps 
a physician’s pupil, and at the time he published 
his only medical work, may not improbably have 
been an aspirant for the appointment of physician 
when a vacancy might next occur. However this 
may be, his views were diverted into another 
channel, and on the establishment of the Mid- 
dlesex Hospital in August, 1745, Dr. Poole was 
appointed its sole physician. He had, however, 
resigned that office previously to the general quar- 
terly meeting of October, 1746, on which occa- 
sion thanks were voted him for his past services. 
Almost immediately after this, the doctor fell 
under the heavy displeasure of the board, and an 
angry correspondence ensued. ‘This is too long 
for insertion in your pages, but may be seen at 
length in Wilson’s History of the Middlesex Hos- 
pital, 8vo., London, 1845, p. 182. His resigna- 
tion of the physicianship to. the Middlesex Hos- 
pital, was doubtless due to the circumstance that 
he was then actively engaged in getting up the 
Small Pox Hospital, of which, if we may trust the 
inscription on his gravestone, he is to be regarded 
as the principal founder. The hospital was opened 
in 1746, and Dr. Poole was its first physician. 
He retained office for two years only, and was 
succeeded in 1748 by Edward Archer, M.D. Of 
Dr. Poole’s subsequent career, I know nothing. 
The Beneficent Bee was evidently, as J. O. infers, 
a posthumous publication. The doctor's portrait, 
by Aug. Armstrong, engraved by J. Faber, is 
mentioned by Mr. Wadd in his Nuge Chirur- 
gic@, p. 127. 
Unless there were two editions of the Vade 
Mecum, your correspondent is in error as to the 
exact title. The copy before me runs thus: 
“A Physical (not Physician’s) Vade Mecum, or Fifth 
Gift of Theophilus Philanthropos, wherein is contain’d 
the Dispensatory of St. Thomas’s Hospital, with a Cata- 
logue of the diseases, and the method of their cure pre- 
serib’d in the said Hospital. To which is also added the 
Dispensatory of St. Bartholomew’s ard Guy’s Hospital, 
&c., &e. London: Printed for, and sold by E. Duncomb, 
in Duck Lane, Little Britain, 1741. 
W. Mong, M.D. 
Finsbury Place. 
PUBLICATION OF BANNS. 
2" 8. i. 34.) 
Although the legislature may not have intended 
to direct the publication of banns to take place 
after the Second Lesson at Morning Service, and 
