Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1898-01-07
A RELIC OF PAGAN DAYS.
The r. ON n Physicinn's Prescrip-
tfOn Once n Prayer to Jupiter.



From the Chicago Post
Reminders of a time when mortals were
supposed to have close intercourse with the
gods come up now and then. and often in
the most unexpected places. For example,
there are some five thousand persons in
Chicago who daily write invocations to
Jupiter or Zeus. Many times this number
give of their substance for these talismanic
ciphers. hoping thereby to be rid of some
bodily ILL., Now, the curious part of this
latter-day pagan worship is that those who
make the sign of High Olympus king have
little, if any, thought of what they are
doing, and those who eagerly seek the
''parchments' never suspect they are tax
ing part in medico-religious rite of the
middle ages. In short, the priests of
Jupiter" are physicians and druggists, the
suppliants their patients or customers, and
the parchments ordinary prescriptions.
In the left-hand upper corner of every
PHYSICIANS prescription or druggists recipe
may be found a letter r. having line
drawn obliquely across it's tail
Not one person in ten who writes a pre-
scription takes the trouble to recall the
significance of that little stroke across
the r." and not one in a thousand who
carries prescription to the dispenser
knows anything at all as to the meaning
OF the symbol. Physicians and druggists
text books tell us it stands for recipe
and means take of the following" Many
Of those who write and dispense prescrip-
lions will pause in their busy moments long
enough to say 1t is mere arbitrary sign
and means little. If anything: but the
student of ancient things finds In that
well-known symbol a relic of the days
when prescriptions had to be blessed of the
gods to be effective. and will tell us it
originally meant May Jupiter or Zeus Tor
some other god who happened to be not
over-busy at the time) bless this prescrip-
ton and bring the patient health"
To
antiquity of this medical symbol or tails
man, differ somewhat as to its exact origi-
nal meaning. The oldest form of the letter
appears to have been a figure like the
English letter e." with the lower heri-
zontal part crossed with a scepter-shaped
line. This, or some modification of 1t, has
been from time immemorial the symbol of
the planet Jupiter And this is given as
the reason for placing it at the head Of
prescriptions, for the great planet, bearer
OF the name of the father of life, was be-
heved in olden days to have peculiar and
powerful influence over diseases. The SYM
boil has also been generally described as
simply the initial letter for Zeus, the Greek
name for Jupiter. But this only accounts
for part of it, as it makes no provision
for the Scepter-Stroke, an object which ac-
companied or entwined by a serpent, was
prominent in representations of Jupiter.
Still others have figured 1t as being made
up of the initial and terminal letters of
Zadakiel. the angel and spirit of the great
planet Some, taking it to be a combina-
ton of ''R" and L." have held that it
might be derived from the name of
Raphael. angel of the sun. while one-Tay-
lor-says, This ideogram resolves itself
into an arm, grasping a thunderbolt"
which is only another way of ascribing it
to Jupiter
The bulk of testimony. therefore, seems
to strengthen the first position that the
symbol is fragmentary and obsolete medi-
cal talisman, once potent with the unseen
powers, but now meaning to the average
person little more than 81, ill-tasting
mixture and, perhaps, improved health.