Caduceus as a symbol of medicine emblem of the physician [...] it is most unfortunate that the 'confusion' exists." In an anonymous rebuttal contained in a letter to the editor published three months later in "The Military Surgeon" it was claimed that the late Col. John R. van Hoff was a member of the board that selected the emblem ("if he was not the one who was chiefly instrumental in its adoption"). In the letter to the editor reproduced by Emerson, the anonymous author claims According to this view the caduceus was not intended to be a medical symbol (and, though explained differently, this reflects the
Christ with a Staff "Self-Portrait as the Apostle Paul" - these may have influenced this work. In an image by the copper-plate engraver Schelte a Bolswert, after a drawing by Gerard Seghers, St James the Less is shown with a book. The work is first mentioned in 1836, when it was in the collection of Christopher Bethell-Codrington. When his estate was auctioned on 12 May 1843 it was sold for £252 to the art dealer Christianus Johannes Nieuwenhuys. On 11 December 1854 it was sold at auction for 13,000 francs to count Raczyński from the collection of 'baron de Mecklembourg' in Paris. In 1898