The bulky figure of Paracelsus, or, as he called himself, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus _Bombastus_ von Hohenheim, used formerly to be a constant apothecaries’ symbol. From an advertisement in the _London Gazette_, July 22-26, 1680, about a stolen horse “with a sowre head,” we gather that there was at that time a sign of PARACELSUS in Old Fish Street. Information about the horse with “the sowre head” would also be received at a house in Lambeth, with no less a dignitary for its sign than the BISHOP OF CANTERBURY, his grace having been thus honoured from a neighbourly feeling.
Doctor Butler, (_ob._ 1617,) physician to James I., and, according to Fuller, “the Æsculapius of that age,” invented a kind of medicated ale, called Dr Butler’s ale, “which, if not now, (1784,) was, a few years ago, sold at certain houses that had the BUTLER’S HEAD for a sign.”[75] One of the last remaining Butler’s Heads was in a court leading from Basinghall into Coleman Street.
That singularly successful quack, Lilly, though he ought not to be placed in such good company as the king’s physician, was also a constant sign, in the last century, at the door of sham doctors and astrologers. Not unfrequently they combined the BALLS (a favourite sign of the quacks) with Lilly’s head, as the BLACK BALL AND LILLYHEAD, the sign of Thomas Saffold, “an approved and licensed physician and student in astrology: he hath practised astronomy for twenty-four years, and hath had the Bishop of London’s licence to practise physick ever since the 4th day of September 1674, and hath, he thanks God for it, great experience and wonderful success in those arts.” He promised to perform the usual _tours de force_.
----“foretell what s’ever was By consequence to come to pass; As death of great men, alterations, Diseases, battles, inundations, Or search’d a planet’s house to know Who broke and robb’d a house below. Examined Venus and the Moon To find who stole a silver spoon.”
This address was “at the Black Ball and Lilly Head, next door to the Feather shops that are within Blackfriars gateway, which is over against Ludgate Church, just by Ludgate in London.”[76]
Classic authors also have come in for their share of signboard popularity in this country, which, at the time they flourished, was about as little civilized as the Sandwich Islands in the days of Captain Cook. These signs were set up by booksellers; thus HOMER’S HEAD was, in 1735, the sign of Lawton Gilliver, against St Dunstan’s Church, publisher of some of Pope’s works, and in 1761, of J. Walker at Charing Cross. Cicero, under the name of TULLY’S HEAD, hung at the door of Robert Dodsley, a famous bookseller in Pall Mall. In a newspaper of 1756, appeared some verses “on Tully’s head in Pall Mall, by the Rev. Mr G----s, of which the following are the first and the last stanzas:--