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 The medical knowledge of Shakespeare. 
 
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/\ GI3SO 
 
 Exeter ; 
 Printed by William Pollard, North Street, 
 
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD CAMPBELL, 
 LORD HIGH CHANCELLOR, 
 
 &c, &c. 
 
 My Lord, 
 
 Some months have elapsed since your Lordship 
 kindly gave me permission to dedicate to you the following 
 pages, which, in great measure, owe their origin to your 
 Lordship's interesting work on " Shakespeare's Legal 
 A cquirements. ' ' 
 
 In the meanwhile, your Lordship's merits have placed 
 you on the very summit of professional honour, from which 
 you reflect augmented lustre on the republic of letters, of 
 which you are so eminent a citizen. 
 
 I feel the highest satisfaction in presenting this work to 
 the public under the sanction of your Lordship's name, 
 as a testimony of my admiration of your Lordship's 
 character, and of our common reverence for him who 
 stands in literature "the foremost man of all this world." 
 
 I remain, 
 Your Lordship's most obedient Servant, 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 Exeter, April 16th, 1860. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction ... 
 
 Page 1 
 
 The Tempest ... 
 
 57 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona 
 
 ... 61 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor 
 
 ... 66 
 
 Measure for Measure 
 
 ... 68 
 
 Comedy of Errors 
 
 75 
 
 Love's Labour Lost ... 
 
 78 
 
 Taming of the Shrew... 
 
 ... 84 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream 
 
 89 
 
 Merchant of Venice ... 
 
 ... 92 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well ... 
 
 ... 95 
 
 As You Like It 
 
 ... 107 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing 
 
 ... 112 
 
 Twelfth Night 
 
 ... 118 
 
 Winter's Tale 
 
 ... 125 
 
 King John 
 
 ... 132 
 
 King Richard II. 
 
 ... 139 
 
 King Henry IV, First Part ... 
 
 ... 144 
 
 King Henry IV., Second Part ... 
 
 ... 148 
 
 King Henry V. 
 
 ... 165 
 
VI. 
 
 King Henry VI., First Part ... 
 
 Page 170 
 
 King Henry VI., Second Part . . . 
 
 ... 373 
 
 King Henry VI., Third Part ... 
 
 ... 180 
 
 Richard III. ... 
 
 ... 182 
 
 King Henry VIII. 
 
 ... 188 
 
 Macbeth 
 
 ... 191 
 
 Coriolanus 
 
 ... 201 
 
 Julius Caesar... 
 
 ... 212 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra 
 
 ... 217 
 
 Cymbeline 
 
 ... 222 
 
 Troilus and Cressida ... 
 
 ... 228 
 
 Romeo and Juliet 
 
 ... 238 
 
 Timon of Athens 
 
 ... 245 
 
 Hamlet 
 
 ... 259 
 
 Lear ... 
 
 ... 266 
 
 Othello 
 
 ... 269 
 
 Pericles 
 
 ... 275 
 
 Titus Andronicus 
 
 ... 278 
 
 Venus and Adonis 
 
 ... 278 
 
 The Rape of Lucrece... 
 
 ... 281 
 
 Sonnets 
 
 ... 285 
 
 The Lover's Complaint 
 
 ... 289 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE. 
 
SHAKESPEARE'S MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 The perusal of Lord Campbell's interesting work on 
 Shakespeare's legal attainments, brought to the author of 
 the following pages the conviction, that the knowledge of 
 the great dramatist was in each department so extensive 
 and exact, that it required the skilled observation of a 
 professional mind fully and fairly to appreciate and set it 
 forth. He found many passages cited in Lord Campbell's 
 able criticism in proof of Shakespeare's legal acquirements, 
 which, in an ignorance of legal phraseology, certainly not 
 greater than common, he had mistaken for phrases of vulgar 
 significance having no legal import; and, reasoning from 
 analogy, he was led to the belief that passages of medical 
 significance would be overlooked unless they were expressly 
 sought for by some one whom the bias of a medical education 
 had qualified to execute the task. 
 
 Although the author desires explicitly to disavow the 
 intention to put forward in behalf of his own profession, 
 any rival claims for the honor of having occupied the un- 
 accounted-for period of Shakespeare's early manhood, he must 
 confess, that it would be gratifying to professional self-esteem, 
 
 B 
 
if he were able to shew that the immortal dramatist, who 
 bears, as Hallam says, " the greatest name in all literature, 
 paid an amount of attention to subjects of medical interest, 
 scarcely if at all inferior to that which has served as the 
 basis of the learned and ingenious argument, that this 
 intellectual king of men had devoted seven good years of 
 his life to the practice of the law. The honor of medicine 
 would appear somewhat abated, if Shakespeare had made 
 no further references to it than those contained in the 
 contemptuous description of Romeo's starved apothecary 
 and his shop, and in Macbeth's impatient exclamation, 
 " throw physic to the dogs." 
 
 The truth, however, when eliminated, appears to be so con- 
 trary to so slighting a regard, that it would be difficult to point 
 to any great author, not himself a physician, in whose works 
 the healing art is referred to more frequently and more 
 respectfully than in those of Shakespeare ; the sacred writings 
 alone being excepted, for in these the calling of the 
 physician certainly receives its highest expression of 
 honor. The motive, however, for writing, and the excuse 
 for publishing the following pages, is not to exalt the medical 
 profession by citing in its glorification the favourable opinion 
 and special knowledge of the great bard, but to contribute to 
 the elucidation of his universal genius, and to prove that, 
 among others, " the myriad-mind" had paid close attention 
 to this most important and personally interesting subject 
 of study. 
 
 In criticisms on Shakespeare, the judgment is often blinded 
 by the incense of indiscriminating adulation. To insist that 
 every trivial reference to the common ailments of mankind 
 is a proof of medical study, would be to fall into this error, 
 
since there are few who have not had personal experi- 
 ence of disease, and there are none who have not heard 
 the subject descanted upon by others ; and the very existence 
 of disease implies the application of remedies, though, it may 
 be, not by doctors, since what Tacitus says of nations is true 
 of individuals, that none have been without medicine, though 
 many without medical men. The causes of law are, in 
 the social state, as common as the causes of medicine, but 
 its practice is more rare ; and, it is not every quarrelsome 
 fellow who even'knows, like the Capulet swash-buckler, that, 
 by forcing his adversary to begin the fray, he will have the 
 law on his side. Now although it must be granted, that 
 technical expressions are the trade marks of the mind, and 
 that their frequent and appropriate use can only be accounted 
 for by their having been stamped upon the memory by some 
 pressure more urgent than casual and general conversation, it 
 must be remembered that Shakespeare's father was engaged in 
 legal transactions, from which the son might have garnered 
 many technicalities which his infallible memory would after- 
 wards reproduce. But the use of technical expressions 
 may appropriately be acquired by poets for the purpose 
 of their art, and by means of special study undertaken 
 for that end. This is remarkably the case in the 
 abundance of nautical expressions made use of in the second 
 Canto of Don Juan, numbers of which are purely technical, and 
 derived from professional sources which have been carefully 
 noted. In the olden time, however, these signs of peculiar 
 mental training would have less value than at present, 
 when every calling is so denned, and separated from every 
 other calling. In the olden time, a man might be an ad- 
 miral and a general, and a statesman, and a country 
 B* 
 
gentleman, and somewhat of a lawyer, doctor, and divine 
 into the bargain ; and this universality of education stamped 
 itself upon the works of the old authors; upon those of 
 Montaigne, for instance ; and, above all, upon those of 
 Shakespeare. Hence arises the easy possibility of mis- 
 judging the calling of an old writer, from the profes- 
 sional knowledge indicated in his works. There is more 
 of medicine than of law in Bacon's Essays and Advance- 
 ment of Learning, and nearly as much of law as of medi- 
 cine 'in Kabelais ; yet the former was a practising lawyer 
 and judge ; while the latter was a practising physician, 
 and a medical, as well as a general author ; who, in 
 addition to his immortal biography of Pantagruel and 
 Panurge, translated the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and 
 some of Galen's works. There is, perhaps, no author 
 who so profusely employs technical terms as Rabelais, 
 and this not only in medicine and in law, but in 
 maritime and other professional business ; so that this readi- 
 ness of one author to use the terms of art proper to 
 several callings, greatly decreases the value of such word- 
 signs, as an indication of the calling of the author himself. 
 Another indication of professional training, less obvious, 
 but less deceptive than the employment of professional 
 language, is to be found in the existence of a professional 
 habit of mind. No one has represented this habitude of 
 thought with more truthfulness, and with less exaggera- 
 tion than Shakespeare himself. The formalism of the 
 lawyer in Escalus, and the self-possession of the doctor 
 in Cordelia's physician, the pedantic strategist in Fluellen, 
 the scheming statist in Polonius, and many other forms 
 of professional characterization, bear the impression, not 
 
more of individual differences of disposition, than of the 
 sidelong growth of mind which special education impresses. 
 The intellectual and moral influences of the professions, 
 are treated of, systematically, by Archbishop Whately, in 
 his work on Rhetoric, and it will be worth while to con- 
 sider, whether the mental peculiarities which he indicates 
 as incidental to the studies of law and medicine, are to 
 be found in Shakespeare. The Archbishop imputes to the 
 medical profession a tendency to infidelity, and even to 
 atheism, as its most important and prevailing bias ; 
 an opinion, which he says, is common even to a pro- 
 verb — the old Latin proverb we presume : " Ubi tres 
 medici duo athei." The Archbishop can scarcely be 
 called unjust in this imputation, for it is accepted by 
 one of the most pious of physicians, the author of the 
 Religio Medici himself. He, however, finds a curious 
 argument against its truth, namely, that "though in point 
 of devotion and piety, physicians do meet with common 
 obloquy; yet, in the Roman Calendar, we find no less 
 than twenty-nine saints and martyrs of that profession." 
 The Archbishop's opinion, however, is as old as Chaucer, 
 who, describing the Doctour of Physike, says, that 
 
 " His studie was but litel on the Bible." 
 
 If this imputation be in any degree just, it cannot be 
 said that Shakespeare partakes of the characteristic ; for, 
 although the sceptical doubts of Hamlet probably indi- 
 cate a phase in the poet's own mind, his writings as a 
 whole are pervaded by an unquestionable and sincere 
 spirit of reverence, the more remarkable in his age, as it is 
 entirely divested of the bigotry which distinguished each 
 
6 
 
 of the two religious parties, which then divided society in 
 the fierce war of opinion. 
 
 The second great mental peculiarity which the Arch- 
 bishop attributes to the physician is that of indifference 
 to death. By this of course he means, sentimental indif- 
 ference; for he cannot and does not attribute to the phy- 
 sician a reasoning indifference to the ' fell anatomy', whose 
 victory is the physician's defeat. The medical man becomes 
 familiar -with the sight and the idea of death, and from 
 thence arises an absence of emotion in the contemplation 
 of this fearful event, which the Archbishop points to as 
 a mental characteristic. If this be true, which we some- 
 what doubt, the writings of Shakespeare indicate no 
 parallel bias as existing in his mir>d. Death had a 
 basilisk charm for his imagination, and in a variety of 
 most eloquent passages he turns the subject over, and 
 contemplates it from every side. "To lie in cold obstruc- 
 tion and to rot," or "to bathe in fiery floods," are to 
 him painfully obtrusive ideas, so that he cannot even face 
 the drunken caricature of death's image without a shudder. 
 The great mental peculiarity which Archbishop Whately 
 attributes to the legal profession, is one which at first sight 
 will appear far less important than the evils which he 
 alleges against the tendency of medical education ; but 
 inasmuch as it imputes to the lawyers a peculiarity in 
 the use of man's highest attribute, it will in truth be found 
 to imply a mental warp even more radical than that which 
 is laid to the charge of the doctors. The charge amounts 
 to this, that the lawyer habitually employs his intellect 
 for the purpose of proving a certain proposition which he 
 assumes to be true. On this point, Whately, quoting from 
 
Bishop Coplestone, says, " Reasoning comprehends inferring 
 and proving, which are not two different things, but 
 the same regarded in two different points of view; he 
 who infers proves, and he who proves infers ; but the word 
 ' infer' fixes the mind first in the premise, and then on 
 the conclusion. The word ' prove,' on the contrary, leads 
 the mind from the conclusion to the premise. — To infer is 
 the business of the Philosopher, to prove of the Advocate. 
 The former, from the great mass of known and admitted 
 truths, wishes to elicit any valuable additional truth what- 
 ever that has been hitherto unperceived, and, perhaps, 
 without knowing with certainty what will be the terms of 
 his conclusion. Thus, the Mathematician, e. g., seeks to 
 ascertain what is the ratio of circles to each other, or what 
 is the line whose square will be equal to a given circle. 
 The Advocate, on the other hand, has a proposition put 
 before him, which he is to maintain as well as he can. His 
 business, therefore, is to find middle terms (which is the 
 invention of Cicero) ; the Philosopher's to combine and select 
 known facts or principles, suitably for gaining from them 
 conclusions which, though implied in the premises, were 
 before unperceived ; in other words, for making ' logical 
 discoveries.' " 
 
 Now it cannot be doubted that the tendency of Shake- 
 speare's mind was strongly bent against this professional mode 
 of reasoning. He may, indeed, briefly have adopted it on one 
 or two occasions to serve a particular purpose, as where 
 Warwick reasons so like a lawyer, to prove that Gloster was 
 murdered by Suffolk and Beaufort ; but the prevailing ten- 
 dency of Shakespeare's mind was eminently adverse to this 
 proving process of reason. His intellect was in the widest 
 
sense philosophic, embracing known truths, and stretching 
 forward to grasp the unknown by bold and subtle inference. 
 
 Shakespeare appears, therefore, to have had no professional 
 warp of mind. The well-balanced strength of his intellect 
 would either indicate that he had exercised it in some 
 gymnasium of thought, like that which " sweet philosophy" 
 affords; or if this Pegasus had indeed been in professional 
 harness, it would seem most probable that he had not 
 strained ijj one direction for seven years, since he could 
 scarcely have done so without contracting some mental 
 distortion, which would have injured the beautiful symmetry 
 of his powers ; and, therefore, if in harness at all, the 
 likelihood is that he had changed from one to another 
 employment, picking up terms of art and knowledge of men 
 in many different phases of life. Altering the words of his 
 own sly philosopher, might he not say, " What, would you 
 tie me down to law, to physic, or to the ferula ? Am I 
 not William Shakespeare, old Shakespeare's son of Stratford? 
 By birth a wool-comber, by education a clerk, by transmu- 
 tation an actor, and now by present profession a play-wright 1" 
 
 But, whatever changes he may have undergone, how- 
 ever various the points of view from which he may have 
 looked upon life, one thing is certain, that he must have 
 been a keen observer of men, and an insatiable devourer 
 of books. According to Bacon's dictum he could not have 
 been full without the one, or ready without the other. He 
 is both the fullest and the readiest of men, and, therefore, 
 must have been a student, living in the world. 
 
 In commenting upon Shakespeare's description of diseases 
 of the mind, it has been possible to compare his knowledge 
 with the most advanced science of the present day. The study 
 
of the laws which govern the moral and intellectual part 
 of man, had even in ancient times attained to a degree of per- 
 fection that makes all modern metaphysics appear like a twice 
 told tale. Metaphysical science is as old as Aristotle and 
 Plato, but physical science, upon which modern medicine 
 is founded, traces its parentage no higher than to Shake- 
 speare's great contemporary, Bacon. Shakespeare, therefore, 
 wrote in the mere infancy of medicine as a physical science ; 
 and it would be as unfair to compare his medical knowledge 
 with that of the present day, as it would be to compare 
 Lord Bacon's own chemical absurdities in his Natural 
 History of the Form of Hot Things, with the mature en- 
 lightenment, of Liebig, or of Faraday. 
 
 This view of the right method of conducting the pro- 
 fessional criticism of an old author, did not at first present 
 itself. The easy and pleasant task of re-perusing the plays, 
 marking all passages of medical significance, and estimating 
 their import by the light of ,the knowledge we at present 
 possess, appeared sufficient for the end in view. But the unfair- 
 ness and inadequacy of this mode of estimating Shakespeare's 
 medical knowledge quickly became apparent ; and, in at- 
 tempting to form an opinion of the degree in which an 
 old author was acquainted with an old subject, it became 
 evident that the operation of time must carefully be borne 
 in mind ; which, as Shakespeare himself says : 
 
 " Doth Hot old books, and alter their contents." 
 
 Dr. Willis, in his Preface to the Works of Harvey, 
 commenting upon the meaning to be attached to a passage 
 in Osesalpinus, gives a caution eminently needful in the 
 execution of the task we have in hand. 
 
 " The interpretation which successive generations of men 
 
10 
 
 give to a passage in a writer some century or two old, 
 is very apt to be in consonance with the state of knowledge 
 at the time, in harmony with the prevailing ideas of the 
 day ; and, doubtless, often differs signally from the meaning 
 that was in the mind of the man who composed it. The 
 world saw nothing of the circulation of the blood in Servetus, 
 Columbus, Caesalpinus, or Shakespeare, until after William 
 Harvey had taught and written." 
 
 In order to give to medical passages in Shakespeare a just 
 critical interpretation, that is an interpretation in conso- 
 nance with the medical knowledge of his own time, it will be 
 needful to give a brief sketch of the state of medicine in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It may be thought that 
 the various histories of medicine would give the needful 
 information on this point, but reference to them has resulted 
 in disappointment. Le Clerc's History of Physick, made 
 English by Brs. Drake and Baden in 1699, might be 
 expected to give a satisfactory statement of the condition 
 of physick in the age immediately antecedent to its publi- 
 cation, but it is unfortunately monopolized by dissertations 
 on the medicine of the Greeks and Arabians ; a fault 
 which does not escape the observation of the first English 
 historian of Physick, Dr. Friend ; who, although expressing 
 his high opinion of Le Clerc's learning and judgment 
 on the medical history of the ancients, says, that the 
 fifty-six pages which he designed should serve for a con- 
 tinuation of the history down to the middle of the sixteenth 
 century, " is not only a very imperfect and superficial per- 
 formance, but in many particulars inaccurate and erroneous." 
 
 Dr. Friend, shortly after Le Clerc, wrote a really original 
 account of the progress of his science which even now 
 
II 
 
 well merits perusal, and which has evidently served 
 as stock for the soups and sauces of his successors, Dr. 
 Lettsom and Dr. Hamilton. The latter's History of Medicine 
 and Surgery is an excellent work on the subject, possessing 
 the immense advantage of having been written after Sprengel 
 had given to the world his learned Oeschiohte der Artz- 
 neikunde, the first work which really grappled with the 
 subject. All these works however on the history of medi- 
 cine have the common characteristic, that they describe the 
 successive improvements and the progress of knowledge, but 
 do not dwell upon the actual state of knowledge at any 
 particular time ; they do not describe the degree of ignorance 
 as well as that of knowledge ; and with slight exceptions they 
 do not indicate the social state and position of the men who 
 practised the art while they studied the science of medicine. 
 The history of a great discovery or the growth of an important 
 opinion is given by them with more or less exactness, but 
 there is no history of medicine which can be referred 
 to, with any probability of discovering whether Shakespeare 
 uttered the professional opinion of his day, when he affirms 
 
 that 
 
 " The sovereign' st thing on earth 
 Was parmaeeti for an inward bruise," 
 
 or whether Romeo's description of the starved apothecary 
 and his shop is in any degree a fair representation of the 
 social state of the drug- vendors of Shakespeare's time. Now a 
 reference to Woodall's Surgeon's Chest proves that the virtue 
 attributed to the internal administration of spermaceti, which we 
 should now laugh at, exactly tallies with the opinion of one of 
 Shakespeare's professional contemporaries ; and a reference to 
 the numei-ous books of medical politics which abound about 
 
12 
 
 that period, would shew that the apothecaries, instead of being 
 lean and starved, were stigmatized by the physicians for their 
 exorbitant gains and their wealth. Original authorities, there- 
 fore, must be referred to in order to compare Shakespeare's 
 medicine with the books and men of his day. This has been 
 attempted ; the medical works of that age have been studied, 
 it is hoped with sufficient success to enable the medical 
 passages of the dramatist to be brought to the test of a fair com- 
 parison with the opinions of his professional contemporaries. 
 Perhaps, it may be permitted so far to anticipate the proofs, as 
 to state that this research has been rewarded by establishing the 
 fact, that Shakespeare's theoretical knowledge of medicine 
 closely corresponded to .that prevailing at his time among its 
 professors, and that he had authority even for his trivialities 
 and most glaring absurdities. Who would have thought that, 
 when he says that toothache is owing to a humour or a worm, 
 he had the authority of John of Gadisden for the opinion ? 
 Who would have thought when he describes Queen Mab's 
 charioteer as 
 
 " Not half so big as a round little worm 
 " Pricked from the lazy finger of a maid." 
 
 that the curious statement was supported by the authority of 
 an eminent contemporary surgeon ? 
 
 These, and other instances, to be adduced in their proper 
 place, appear to amount not merely to evidence, but to 
 proof, that Shakespeare had read widely in medical literature. 
 
 The author of an Essay in the Censura Literaria considers 
 that he establishes the fact of Shakespeare's knowledge of 
 French, by the plagiarism of a line from an obscure French 
 poem, thus ; Jaques winds ixp the description of dotage by 
 the singular line, 
 
13 
 
 * " Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything," 
 
 Gamier describes the ghost of Admiral Coligny, 
 
 " Sans pieds, sans mains, sans nez, sans oreilles, sans yeux;" 
 
 and the critic remarks, that if the copy of a single verbal 
 error from Holinshed, viz. " on this side Tiber," instead 
 of " on that side Tiber," is a proof that the dramatist had read 
 that historian, why is not also his copy of this repetition of 
 sans, and his parody of Coligny's ghost, an equally good 
 proof of his having read Garnier in the original French 
 language ? 
 
 It must be admitted that the copy of a trivial circumstance 
 or of an error, is better evidence that the original has been 
 seen, than the copy of some important essential would be. 
 The Chinese artist, who copied the crack in a plate, must 
 have seen that individual plate ; while in the absence of the 
 representation of the defect, it could not have been proved that 
 he had not copied from any one of some hundreds of plates 
 having the same form and pattern. On the same principle, 
 therefore, the coincidence of Shakespeare's verbal expression of 
 some medical absurdities with that of the medical works of his 
 day, is better evidence that he had read those works, than 
 the expression of undoubted medical truths, as that the 
 sun breeds agues, or that surfeit is followed by sour digestion. 
 
 Not only was medical science raw and young in Shake- 
 speare's time, but even the social foundations of the medical 
 profession were of recent date. In the dark ages the prac- 
 tice of physic had fallen into the hands of monks and 
 women, and so long as its practice consisted mainly in the 
 blind application of a few empirical receipts, the clerical 
 doctors do not appear to have been interfered with by their 
 
H 
 
 ecclesiastical superiors. But when the dawn of sftience 
 rendered secular study needful to the priestly adepts, the 
 Popes interdicted practices and studies which tended to 
 break down the wall of separation between the clergy and 
 the laity. 
 
 The union of the two professions in the middle ages 
 is thus noted by Fuller, in his Worthies of England : 
 
 " The Ancient Brittans, who went without cloathes, may well be 
 presumed to live without physick. Yet, seeing very Beasts know 
 what is good for themselves (the Deer, Cretan Dictamum ; and 
 Toad, his Antidote of Plantaine) ; sure they had some experimental 
 receipts used amongst them, and left the rest to nature and tem- 
 perance to cure. The Saxons had those they termed Leaches, or 
 Bloud-letters, but were little skilled in methodical practise. Under 
 the Normans, they began in England (and would we had fetch'd 
 Physicians only, and not Diseases from Prance!) Yet three 
 hundred years since it was no distinct profession by itself, but 
 practised by men in Orders; witness Nicholas de Pernham, the 
 chief English Physician and Bishop of Durham ; Hugh of Eves- 
 ham, a Physician and Cardinal ; Grisant, a Physician and Pope. 
 Yea, the word Physician appears not in our Statutes till the days of 
 King Henry the Eight, who incorporated their Colledge at London : 
 since which time they have multiplied and flourished in our Nation, 
 but never more, and more learned, then in our age, wherein that 
 art, and especially the Anatomical part thereof, is much improved, 
 our Civil Wars perchance occasioning the latter." 
 
 In the quaint and witty pages of this author, we find 
 many other traces of the extent to which, in old times, " the 
 medicine for soul and body went hand-in-hand together"; 
 a state of affairs which Fuller would wish to see insti- 
 tuted anew, by making " a physician liable to excommuni- 
 cation for visiting a patient thrice before acquainting a 
 priest of his sickness." Thus, among the physicians of 
 Cornwall, he ranks Dr. Attwell, "parson of St. Tue, well 
 seen in the theoricks of physick," who, " although he now 
 and then used blood-letting, he mostly, for all diseases, pre- 
 scribed milk, and often milk and apples, which, either by 
 
15 
 
 virtue of the medicine, or fortune of the physician, or fancy 
 of the patient, recovered many of desperate extremities. " 
 Attwell was living in 1602. He also notices Dr. Phreas, 
 of London, who taught and practised physick in Italy, 
 and whom "the Pope rewarded with the Bishoprick of 
 Bath and Wells ; he died in 1465. Sir George Ripley, 
 an alchymist physician, in 1450, "who gave yearly to those 
 Knights of Rhodes, a hundred thousand pounds towards 
 maintaining the war against the Turks. This vast donation 
 make some suspect Sir George for a knight, who might, 
 by this, have been eques auratus, though, never more 
 indeed than Sir Priest and Canon of Bridlington." John 
 St. Giles, "physician to Philip, King of France, who, 
 having the care of bodies, took upon him the cure of 
 souls," and became " in his old age, famous for his divinity 
 lectures in Oxford." According to Matthew Paris, "Robert 
 Grosthead, the pious and learned Bishop of Lincoln, being 
 sick on his death bed, sent for this Mr. John Giles, learned in 
 physic and divinity, that from him he might receive comfort 
 both for body and soul." Grosthead died in 1253, so that it 
 would appear that even the recent thunders of the Pope were 
 unable to make it appear to his immediate subordinates, 
 that the practise of physic and the profession of divinity 
 were necessarily inconsistent. 
 
 Dr. Millingen, in his Curiosities of Medical Experience, 
 explains the origin of barber surgeons, from the deca- 
 dence of medical practice among the priests. In 1163, 
 at the Council of Tours, Pope Alexander III., main- 
 taining that the devil, to seduce the priesthood from the 
 duties ot the altar, involved them in mundane occupations 
 under the plea of humanity, prohibited the study both of 
 
16 
 
 medicine and law amongst all who had taken religion* 
 vows. 
 
 In 1215 Honorius III. " fulminated a fresh anathema," 
 ordaining, that as the church abhorred all cruel and san- 
 guinary practices, not only no priest should be allowed the 
 practice of surgery, but that the priestly benediction should 
 be refused to all those who professed it. Unable to quit 
 their cloisters, in surgical cases, which could not be so easily 
 cured at a distance, sooner than lose the emoluments of 
 the profession, they sent their servants, or rather the barbers 
 of the community, who shaved, and bled, and drew teeth in 
 their neighbourhood ever since the clergy could no longer 
 perform their operations, on the plea of the maxim, ' Ecclesia 
 abhorret a sanguine ;' bleeding and tooth-drawing being, 
 I believe, the only cases where this maxim was noticed. 
 From this circumstance arose the barber craft, or barber- 
 surgeons." 
 
 " Surgery, thus degraded, the separation between its prac- 
 tice and that of medicine became unavoidable, and the two 
 branches were formally made distinct by Bulls of Boniface VI. 
 and Clement V." 
 
 Primrose, in his Popular Errours of PhysicJc, 1651, 
 gives a more charitable, and, probably, a more correct account 
 of the motives which led to the interference of the Popes 
 with the medical occupations of the inferior clergy, than that 
 attributed by the modern doctor, who is sceptical of anything 
 good under the cassock. He says, " Wherefore, the Divine 
 seems to be blameworthy, who, leaving and neglecting 
 the nobler science to which he hath given up his 
 name, and hath gotten to himself a character never to be 
 blotted out, doth addict himself to another so slippery, so 
 
17 
 
 hard, so inconstant." The abovementioned decrees of the 
 church, as they are quoted by Primrose, indicate that the real 
 apprehension was neglect of spiritual things. " Because no 
 man, warring for God, doth entangle himself also in secular 
 affairs ; let the Laies, who have more leisure, do these works 
 one for another." — p. 16. 
 
 But if the Popes in those old times were hostile to 
 medicine, the doctors it appears returned the compliment 
 by excluding priests from their corporation. The statutes 
 of the College of Physicians excluded all persons who were 
 in holy orders. A curious instance of this will be found 
 in the published proceedings of the College of Physicians 
 against empiricks, by Dr. Goodall, in the prosecution of Dr. 
 Alexander Leighton, in 1617, which is thus recorded, p. 401 : 
 
 " Dr. Alexander Leighton being required by the Censors to give 
 an account by what authority he practised Physick, He told them 
 by virtue of his Doctour's degree, which he had taken at Leyden, 
 under Professor Heurnius. He was charged as being in Presby- 
 ter's orders, and asked why he did not stick to his Ordination. 
 He excepted against the Ceremonies, yet owned himself a Preacher, 
 and acknowledged his practising of Physick. In several parts 
 whereof he was examined, but giving no satisfaction, and being 
 perverse as to Ecclesiastical affairs, he was by the President and 
 Censors interdicted practice. After this, endeavouring to procure 
 a Licence, it was denied him, because in Holy Orders, the Statutes 
 of the College declaring that none such should he admitted into the 
 College, or permitted to practice. Wherefore he was a second time 
 forbidden practice. But he still persisting to practice in London 
 or within seven miles, was arrested, and afterwards censured, 
 tanqucm mfamis, he having been censured in the Star Chamber, 
 and lost his ears." 
 
 The church, however, made her power felt in the College 
 of Physicians, although none of her sons were admitted into 
 its corporation. The Act of the 3rd Henry VIII., c. ii., pro- 
 vides that candidates for permission to practice shall be first 
 examined, approved, and admitted by the Bishop of London, 
 c 
 
IS 
 
 or by the Dean of St. Paul's, calling to him or them four 
 doctors of physick ; and, for surgery, other expert persons 
 in that faculty. The second clause enacts, that beyond the 
 seven-mile precinct of London, no person shall exercise or 
 occupy, as a physician or surgeon, but if he be first approved 
 and examined by the Bishop of the diocese, or by his Vicar- 
 General. 
 
 The preamble of this first Act of the physicians gives a 
 curious insight into the practice of medicine in the early part of 
 the sixteenth century. It runs thus, "Forasmuch as the science 
 and cunning of physick and surgery (to the perfect knowledge 
 whereof be requisite both great learning and ripe experience) is 
 daily within the realm exercised by a great multitude of ignorant 
 persons, of whom the greater part have no manner of insight 
 in the same, nor in any other kind of learning : some also 
 can no letters on the book, so far forth that common arti- 
 ficers, as smiths, weavers, and women, boldly and accus- 
 tomably take upon them great cures, and things of great 
 difficulty; in the which they partly use sorcery and witch- 
 craft, partly apply such medicines unto the disease as be 
 very noxious, and nothing meet therefore ; to the high 
 displeasure of God, great infamy to the faculty, and the 
 grievous hurt, damage, and destruction of many of the 
 king's liege people ; most especially of them who cannot 
 discern the uncunning from the cunning." 
 
 This Act refers both to physicians and surgeons, and it was 
 not till the 14th and 15th of Henry VIII. that an Act 
 was passed, making a body corporate of the faculty of 
 physick within London and seven miles compass, giving 
 the power of fine and imprisonment to the office-bearers 
 of the college upon persons presuming to practice without 
 
19 
 
 their licence. " Ita quod punicio hujusmodi medioorum 
 utentium dicta facilitate Medicine sic in premissis delin- 
 quentium per fines amerciamenta & imprisonamenta cor- 
 porum suorum & per alias vias rationabiles & congruas 
 exequatur." 
 
 An Act passed in the 32nd of Henry VIII. excepts the 
 physician from keeping watch and ward, or the office of con- 
 stable, or other office of the kind ; it gives the college power to 
 choose four of their body yearly to search the apothecaries' 
 wares in London, and to levy a forfeiture of 100 shillings in 
 case of an apothecary refusing to have his house searched. 
 And " forasmuch as the science of physick doth comprehend, 
 include, and contain the knowledge of surgery, as a special, 
 member and part of the same ;" it enacts, that any of the 
 company or fellowship of physicians may " practice and 
 exercise the said science of physick in all and every his 
 members and parts." That is, it enacts that any of the 
 physicians may practice surgery. 
 
 The college had their charter renewed and extended by 
 James I., and subsequently by Charles II. ; and Dr. Goodall's 
 interesting book, " The Physicians of London," 1684, from 
 which the above extracts have been taken, bears ample testi- 
 mony to the vigour with which the college exercised their powers 
 of fine and imprisonment upon all who invaded their rights. 
 
 The barbers and surgeons were made one company by 
 statute of the 22nd of Henry VIII., before which time they had 
 been distinct companies, under statutes of Edward IV. and 
 Henry VII., the barbers being incorporated but the surgeons 
 " not having any manner of corporation." Henry VIII.'s Act, 
 which incorporates both in one company, provides, however, 
 that no barber in London shall use surgery, and no surgeon 
 
20 
 
 shall use the craft of shaving. The powers given to surgeons 
 under this statute were greatly inferior to those already cited 
 as given to physicians. The four wardens, however, were em- 
 powered to inflict upon persons offending against the articles 
 the forfeit of £o for every month. It would app'ear from 
 a statute passed in the 34th and 35th of Henry VIII., 
 that the powers of the surgeons had been exercised in an 
 arbitrary and oppressive manner ; " Since the making of the 
 said Act (3rd of Henry VIII.), the company and fellowship 
 of the surgeons of London mindful only of their own lucres, 
 and nothing the profit of the diseased or patient, have sued, 
 troubled, and vexed divers honest persons, as well men as 
 women, whom God hath endued with the knowledge of 
 the nature, kind, and operation of certain herbs, roots, and 
 waters, and the using and administration of them to such 
 as being pained with customable diseases, as women's breasts 
 being sore, a Pin and Web in the eye, uncomes of 
 hands, scaldings, burnings, sore mouths, the stone, strangury, 
 saucelim and morphew, and such other diseases ; and yet 
 the said persons have not taken anything for their pains 
 or cunning, but have ministered the same to poor people 
 only for neighbourhood and God's sake, and of pity and 
 charity. And it is now well known that the surgeons 
 admitted will do no cure to any person but where they shall 
 know to be rewarded with a greater sum than the cure 
 extendeth unto : — Be it enacted, that it shall be lawful to 
 persons having knowledge and experience of the nature 
 of herbs, roots, and waters, to practice, use, and minister 
 to any outward sore, uncome, wound, apostemations, 
 outward swelling, or disease ; any herb or herbs, baths, 
 pultes, and emplaisters, according to their cunning, &c. ; 
 
21 
 
 or drinks for the stone, or strangury, or agues, without 
 suit, vexation, trouble, penalty, or the loss of their goods ; 
 the aforesaid statute, or any Act to the contrary thereof 
 made in any wise notwithstanding." 
 
 The apothecaries, or, as Queen Mary's Act has it, the 
 potecaries, forming the third estate of medicine, although 
 their existence was very, evident from the penalties to which 
 they were liable in the statutes of the physicians, had no 
 separate corporation of their own, until James the First 
 granted them a charter and corporation in the thirteenth 
 year of his reign. The apothecaries had been made one cor- 
 poration with the grocers of London in the fourth of this 
 reign ; but in the second charter they were separated from 
 the company pi the grocers, and constituted into a distinct 
 corporation of their own, with master, wardens, common 
 seal, &c. No grocer was henceforth permitted to keep an 
 apothecary's shop. Great power was given to the apothecaries 
 over the purchase and sale of medicines, and of entering 
 and searching shops and houses, to discover and burn un- 
 wholesome and hurtful medicines ; but in their orders con- 
 cerning medicines they were to advise with the President 
 and Censors of the College of Physicians ; who, moreover, 
 had special powers of their own, to "execute the search, 
 and view, and the due punishment of the potecaries for 
 any their evil and fawty stuffe, without the assistance 
 of any of the said wardens." 
 
 The great powers of the College of Physicians appear to 
 have brought them abundance of litigation, not only with the 
 irregular practitioners, whom they prosecuted and imprisoned, 
 and who now and then got a verdict against them for false 
 imprisonment, but also with the rival corporations of sur- 
 
22 
 
 geons and apothecaries. Goodall records, that " there hap- 
 pening in the reign of Elizabeth to arise a difference between 
 the physicians and surgeons, whether the surgeons might 
 give inward remedies in the scrofula, French pox, or any- 
 kind of ulcer or wound," Dr. Caius so learnedly defended 
 the rights of the physicians, that it was unanimously agreed 
 by the Queen's Commissioners that it was unlawful for the 
 surgeons to practice in the forementioned cases. 
 
 At a later date the contentions of the College of Phy- 
 sicians, who were Galenists, with their innovating chemical 
 brethren, and with the apothecaries and irregulars, were fre- 
 quent, and afforded, as one result, a curious class of old 
 medical literature, which may be called medico polemical. 
 
 Goodall himself was the author of a book in 1677, " written 
 in defence of the College of Physicians against a bold and 
 impudent libel, published with design to expose that learned 
 Society to contempt." 
 
 An anonymous author, signing himself " M. N.," and 
 who after announced himself to be Dr. Nedham, pub- 
 lished in 1666 a well written and learned attack upon 
 the monopoly of the College, under the title of " Medela 
 Medicince, for the free profession and renovation of 
 the art of Physick." "The physicians," he says, "are so 
 confident as to attempt an autocracy in the art of physick," 
 in which he claims "a greater latitude in the profession 
 and practice than the interests of some men of the same 
 profession would be willing to allow." 
 
 Nedham's attack was answered by Dr. Twisden, a fellow 
 of the college, in his work entitled " Medicina veterum 
 vindicata," or an answer to a book entitled "Medela Me- 
 dicince," 1666, in which he vindicates the profession, by 
 
23 
 
 which he means the college, " which, of late, has been struck 
 at by many writers." 
 
 This, however, may be considered rather as a war of 
 opinions than of classes, Nedham belonging to the new sect 
 of chemical physicians, while Twisden and the members of 
 the college generally were Galenists or methodists, holding 
 by the old doctrines of the faculty. 
 
 But the great medical iconoclast of the century was Dr. 
 Gideon Harvey, Physician in Ordinary to His Majesty. Three 
 of his works are at hand ; " The Family Physician and the 
 House Apothecary" 1676, is the earliest, and is an attack 
 upon the avarice and the excessive profits of the apothecaries. 
 The body of the book is occupied by receipts for the 
 domestic preparation of medicines ; the introduction, how- 
 ever, is instructive on the medical manners of the time. 
 " I have oft seen bills of apothecaries (says he) risen to 20?., 
 and sometimes 30?., in the time of a fortnight ; what is 
 more, I have known an apothecary's bill so extravagant that 
 the sum at the bottom of his account amounted to the sum 
 of 50?. in the space of thirty days ; when the ingredients 
 of the whole course could not be computed to stand him in 
 40s. But that which sounds worse than all this is, that 
 not long since an apothecary of our suburbs brought in 
 bills for less than three quarters of a year's physick to nine 
 patients, amounting to 1,500?." And all this, as he ex- 
 plains, was for "the little diseases, a sweating bolus, or a 
 potion of mithridate, for a pain in your head and limbs, 
 coughs, stuffing in the head," &c, " the furthest point the 
 apothecary can safely steer." For the greater diseases the 
 greater remedies must be employed, for which a physician 
 is necessary, " who is as little capable to cure great diseases 
 
24 
 
 with ordinary medicines, as a grainer is able to cut curious 
 figures in steel with the ordinary tools of a carver or stone- 
 cutter; or a barber to take off the hair of your beard 
 with a chopping knife." 
 
 " Touching these great medicines, it is very fortunate 
 they have not yet arrived to the knowledge of the little 
 apothecaries, or the prescribing surgeons, who, using them 
 without method, though sometimes they might do good, 
 yet, for want of capacity in the applications, would certainly 
 at most times do great mischiefs with them; and, therefore, 
 every physician ought to reserve them secret by preparing 
 them himself ; and when necessary to be used, to send them 
 to the apothecary to be exhibited, or to give them to his 
 patients with what directions are requisite." 
 
 In the " Conclave of Physicians detecting their intrigues, 
 plots, and frauds against their patients," 1683, Dr. Gideon 
 Harvey flys at higher game, and rises with the occasion to 
 greater piquancy of vituperation. " Know then," says he, 
 " this famous conclave is the eldest quack synagogue, consist- 
 ing of a physick pope or patriarch, and a competent number 
 of medicinal cardinals, "who, being grown ancient, covetous, 
 and through forgetfulness ignorant, are to govern the rest, 
 and whenever they are consulted they are to impose upon 
 the juniors their pretended long experience, which they are 
 to embrace with the same implicit faith the Turks do their 
 Alcoran." "Against those who refuse being admitted into their 
 conclave, and will not conform, they send forth their Bulls 
 and anathemas, declaring them mountebanks, quacks, chy- 
 mists, barbers, ignorants, &c. ; and if such should at any 
 time have a patient die under their hands of an incurable 
 disease, they thunder at it; lie killed the patient, poisoned 
 
25 
 
 him, applied wrong medicines, and the like. According to 
 the examination of their treasury, once in eight or ten years 
 they proclaim a jubilee, setting open their doors to physicians, 
 barbers, apothecaries, and renegade priests, who, upon the 
 payment of a certain sum of chequeens, are honored with 
 a fop character, and received into the church porch of 
 iEsculapius, being forbidden to enter any further during the 
 time it is occupied by the whole Conclave or Consiglio picolo, 
 though, at other seasons, they have toleration to peep in, 
 or take a turn or two." 
 
 This satirical description of the Year of Grace in the 
 olden time, is interesting at the present date, when, after 
 long desuetude, the old custom has been once more revived, 
 though under a judicious liberality which would leave no 
 sore even for the venom of Dr. Gideon to rankle in. 
 
 Dr. Gideon's abusive book gives a ludicrous picture 
 of the profession in those times from its weak side. The 
 hypocritical physician, punctual at church, that he may be 
 fetched out by his apothecary under the pretence of a pro- 
 fessional call, that he may " make an impression on the 
 people — that he is a man of great physick business," p. 1 09. 
 The virtuoso physician, who, posting to a sick gentleman 
 in a coach-and-four, is arrested by " an unhappy gaudy but- 
 terfly," whicb he hunts while the patient dies, the seed 
 thought of one of Peter Pindar's odes, p. 60. The avaricious 
 physician, to whom the wife of a poor man brings " an 
 urinal of her sick husband's urine" for him to cast ; " the 
 doctor having given the round toss to the urinal," asks 
 " whether her husband had forty pound to spend on a 
 physician," and has the conscience to accept her only groat, 
 p. 113. The doctor of undaunted boldness, who gives three 
 
2G 
 
 hundred and sixty grains of calomel to a patient, whom 
 " a coach keeping apothecary," had handed over to him 
 with nodes on the tibia, &c. The " infant physician, mimicking 
 a decrepit gravity by apuysing his velvet body on his japan 
 crutche, and drawing his broad-brimmed beaver over his eyes," 
 p. 2 It All these, and others, are sketched with wonderful 
 quaintness embellished with vigorous abuse. 
 
 The third work of this author is in Latin. The title 
 is : " Oideonis Harvei, M.D., Medici Regis et Regince, Ars 
 curandi morbos expectatione, item de vanitatibus dolis et 
 mendaciis medicorum." Instead of the printer's name it has 
 the following motto from Celsus, " Multi magni morbi curan- 
 tur abstimentia et quiete." It is without date, but must 
 have been subsequent to the " Conclave of Physicians ;" since 
 he says, " Plures obitus causam potius quam putativae con- 
 valescentise gratias medicis debent, uti amplissime et fideliter 
 libello cui Medicorum Conclave titulus apponitur exhibui." 
 
 This is really a scientific work, and ought not to have been 
 marred by a repetition of the gross abuse which pervades 
 the vernacular satire. It might well have been named 
 " The Fallacies of the Faculty," and is remarkable as the 
 earliest treatise on the subject of expectant medicine, and the 
 enunciation of a partial truth which has recently become de- 
 veloped into the doctrine of a school ; the most fair and 
 faithful statement of which is to be found in the recent 
 work of Sir John Forbes. 
 
 Although not elaborated into a creed, the principle of 
 expectant medicine had been recognized and its foundations 
 justly indicated, at a still earlier date, as the following good 
 story from Bullein's " Neiu BoJce of Phisicke, 1559" will 
 shew : — " Once I fel into a great sicknes, and hitherto I am 
 
27 
 
 skant recovered of it, the surfite was so great ; but counsail 
 was geuen me, that I should not stay myselfe upon the 
 opinion of any one Physition, but rather upon three: then 
 said I : to retain three at once, requireth great charge, for 
 those men to whome lives be committed, ought liberal re- 
 wardes to be geuen. Then sayde my frend, they are good 
 gentelmen, and no great takers. What be theyr names, said 
 I : He answered saying : The fyrste was called Doctor Diet, 
 the second, Doctor Quiet, the third, Doctor Merryman." 
 
 Dr. Gideon classifies the physicians of the college in his day 
 into six sects, who support the art of medicine, he says, like 
 the six feet of a monster. First, there are the chalybeate doc- 
 tors, who cure all diseases with preparations of steel or copper ; 
 then there are the medical ass-drivers, who put all their 
 patients upon a diet of asses' milk ; next come the Jesuitical 
 doctors, cheats a capite ad calcem, who depend upon bark, 
 Gideon's favourite aversion ; then the medical water-bailiffs, 
 who drench their patients at the mineral springs ; then the 
 butcher doctors, lamii dodores, who always phlebotomize ; 
 and lastly, illustrious in their greater numbers, the muck 
 doctors, stercorarii doctores, who expel diseases by purga- 
 tion. He cites an unfortunate instance of his great name- 
 sake's treatment, William Harvey, who doubtless belonged to 
 this last illustrious sect, in proof of a pet, but sufficiently 
 false theory, that the practical physician may waste his time 
 in the study of anatomy. 
 
 Gideon Harvey says of him that he was : " Felicissimus 
 a/natomicus, licet medicus nequaquam insignissimus ;" 
 and that, in his unlucky judgment, he prescribed a purge 
 for Lord Rainton, half a dose ot which operated eighty times, 
 
28 
 
 so that the whole dose would probably have sent the patient 
 to Hades. 
 
 Dr. Willis is very angry with Aubrey for reporting of 
 the great Harvey, that "though all the professsion would 
 allow him to be an excellent anatomist, I never heard that 
 any admired his therapeutic way." What will he say to 
 the more specific accusation of the contemporary doctor? 
 
 We have seen that the charges made by apothecaries in the 
 • olden times were exorbitant beyond anything known in these 
 days. As might be expected, the irregular quacks had still less 
 conscience ; thus, Goodall mentions that one George Butler, 
 who gave the College no little trouble in 1633, charged 
 30s. a piece for 25 pills ; ,£37 1 0s. for a box of pills ! 
 They, however, had something in them, virus aut virtus, for 
 three given to Mrs. Style for a sore leg, had the effect of 
 killing her the night she took them. One Dr. Tenant, also 
 prosecuted by the College, in James the First's reign, " was so 
 impudent and unconscionable in the rating of his medicines, 
 that he charged one pill at £6, and an apozeme at the 
 same price." 
 
 The reported prosecutions by the College contain many 
 instances of a like character, so that the president and society 
 might claim to have protected the ignorant public not only 
 from poison, but from extortion. 
 
 The fee of the physician in the olden time, appears to have 
 been the still customary guinea. Gideon Harvey gives sarcas- 
 tically the details of a case in which a patient was treated by 
 three physicians, who attended daily, and sometimes twice 
 a day. " This Repetatur (he says) at three guineas more, 
 is somewhat dearer than neck-beef." Again : " Jt Persistat 
 in usu julapii nuper prcescript. Every word in this pre- 
 
29 
 
 scription costs the patient half-a-guinea, but it's no great 
 matter, he will not want the money whither he is going." 
 These charges, it must be admitted, appear exorbitant, 
 since in Shakespeare's time, the value of money was at least 
 five-fold that which it at present bears. This, is well known 
 from other sources, but there is at least one passage in the 
 dramas which marks the change. 
 
 " Shallow. How a score of ewes now ? 
 
 Silence. Thereafter as they be : a score of" good ewes may be 
 worth ten pounds." Henry IF., Part II 
 
 At the present time, a score of good ewes in Warwickshire 
 would be worth fifty pounds. 
 
 On the other hand, the now customary six and eight 
 pence of the lawyer appears, in Shakespeare's lifetime, to 
 have been three and four pence, or just half. 
 
 " Clown. As fit as ten groats-is for the hand of an attorney." 
 
 All's Well that Ends Well. 
 
 The fee of the physician is also referred to : 
 
 " Kill thy physician, and thy fee bestow 
 Upon the foul disease." Kent, in Lear. 
 
 Its amount, however, is nowhere specified, but it was suffi- 
 cient to afford the means of rapid wealth. Thus, we find that 
 William Harvey, though in little esteem and moderate prac- 
 tice during a considerable portion of his career, was enabled to 
 bequeath the then great sum of ■£'20,000 ; and the many 
 foundations of colleges and lectureships which we owe to other 
 physicians of that day, testify both to their wealth and 
 their public spirit. 
 
 The wealth and social position of the olden physicians is 
 apparent, even from many passages in the satirical attacks 
 we have referred to. Thus, it is shewn, that they habitually 
 
30 
 
 rode in coaches, when to do so was the luxury of the 
 rich and the great; they clothed in velvet, and wore 
 velvet caps of a conceited cut ; but, above all, they aimed 
 at maintaining themselves at the highest level of intellec- 
 tual aristocracy, in their knowledge of the learned and 
 modern languages, and their attainments in the general 
 science and literature of their age. It was for these ac- 
 complishments that the earlier physicians were most cele- 
 brated, even among the men of their own time. Thus, Fuller, 
 in his English Worthies, records of Dr. Linacer, the founder 
 of the College, that, " Returning unto England, he brought 
 languages along with him, and was the first restorer of 
 learning in our nation. It is questionable whether he was 
 a better Latinist or Grecian, a better grammarian or 
 physician, a better scholar or man for his moral deport- 
 ment." .Dr. Caius, contemporary with Shakespeare, and 
 the founder of the College bearing his name at Cambridge, 
 was a man of the same metal. " I may call these two 
 doctors the two phenixes of their profession in our nation," 
 says Fuller. Another Fellow of the College of Physicians, 
 contemporary with Shakespeare's later years, was the Marquis 
 of Dorchester, who, at the age of forty-three, applied himself 
 to the study of physic, and acquired great proficiency therein ; 
 "he esteemed his Fellowship in the College, an honour 
 second only to that of his peerage, and maintained that 
 his colleagues were the most learned society in the world, 
 and he bequeathed to them his library of the value of 
 i?4,000, being the best at that time in any private hand 
 in the nation." 
 
 Classical learning, rather than natural science, the peculiar 
 province of the medical man, appears to have been the 
 
81 
 
 characteristic of the physicians in the sixteenth century ; 
 but, in the early part of the seventeenth century, 
 medical science took a bound in the discovery of Shakespeare's 
 great contemporary, Harvey ; and, somewhat later in the 
 century, in the more numerous and purely professional, 
 though less brilliant achievements of Sydenham, to whom 
 the installation of the rational medicine of modern times 
 may be said to be due. The names of Harvey and of 
 Sydenham would alone be sufficient to make the London 
 College illustrious for ever. It must not, however, be thought 
 that medical knowledge increased in a regularly progressive 
 manner during these times ; on the contrary, very emi- 
 nent members of the College wrote from time to time, 
 incredible nonsense, so that an examination into the tenets 
 of that day would indicate that the march of science was 
 not like the peaceful progress of a great king, but rather 
 like that of a general, whose army gaining here, and beaten 
 back there, after many vicissitudes, remains master of the 
 country ; a proof of this may be found in the doctrine 
 of fermentation, published by the celebrated anatomist of the 
 brain, Dr. Willis, in 1659, who maintained that all natural 
 changes in organic bodies depend upon fermentation in 
 their constituent principles, which are spirit, sulphur, salt, 
 water, and earth : and in the works of Sir George Ent, a 
 great man in his day, who maintained that the virus of 
 intermittent fevers and of small pox was not derived from 
 the blood, but from a certain nutritious juice, and that 
 the blood serves, not to nourish the body, but to keep it 
 warm ; and, that the urine is not conveyed to the kid- 
 neys by the emulgent arteries, which only bring the blood 
 thither to cherish and keep them warm, but by the nerves. 
 
32 
 
 Among the most singnlar records of the College, pub- 
 lished by Goodall, are the letters which passed between 
 the Society, as the members then called themselves, and 
 Elizabeth's great statesman, Walsingham. "Walsingham ap- 
 pears to have been a favourer of empirics, and a believer 
 in them, for he had submitted his own health to one of 
 the fraternity ; though this evidence of his faith may not 
 be thought worth much by those who are acquainted with 
 the pranks which men play with their own bodies. A 
 humorous disciple of the hydropathic empiricism of the 
 present day acknowledges that he had no faith in Priestnitz, 
 because he treated himself according to his system, but 
 that when this high priest of Hygeia fontana had sub- 
 jected a favorite horse to the same therapeutics, he 
 yielded implicit credence at least to the German's honesty. 
 
 The College of Physicians at the present day may care 
 little that those who make the laws of the land may now 
 and then rebel against the laws of nature, and the dictates 
 of sense, by their adhesion to empirical follies ; but in 
 Elizabeth's time, statesmen possessed greater powers and 
 exercised them in a more arbitrary manner than they 
 dare to do now. Walsingham wrote to the College in 
 1551, in behalf of one Margaret Kennix, as he says, by 
 Her Majesty's commandment, "signifying how that it 
 was Her Highness' pleasure that the poore woman shoold 
 be permitted by you quietly to practise and minister to 
 the curing of diseases and wounds by the means of certain 
 simples, in the applieing whereof it seemeth God hath 
 given her an especiall knowledge." In this herb-practice, 
 it appears, she "was restrained by the College, contrary to 
 Her Majesty's pleasure." "I shall, therefore, desire you 
 
S3 
 
 forthwith (proceeds Walsingham) to take order among your- 
 selves for the re-admitting her into the quiet exercise of 
 her small talent, lest, by the renewing of her complaint 
 to Her Majesty thorough your hard dealing towards her, 
 you procure further inconvenience therby to yourself, then 
 perhaps you woold be willing shoold fall out." The reply 
 of the physicians is truly courageous, daring, as it does, 
 both the displeasure of the great man, and of his despotic 
 mistress. " We act," they say "under the straight band of our 
 oth and conscience, which we esteem of greater weight than 
 that we can release ourselves thereof at our pleasure." They 
 appeal to the ' holsome lawes,' in the administration of which 
 they are " no whit culpable for not suffering either her or any 
 other whatsoever, to intrude themselves into so great and 
 dangerous a vocation ;" and they decline to accede to his 
 honor's request ; and as for his threat, they end, " professing 
 ourselves to be more willing and content to abide any incon- 
 venience whatsoever may ensue, rather than to be brought to 
 allow of so disorderly an attempt either in hei-, or in any other 
 her lyke." 
 
 Five years subsequent to this, Walsingham again addressed 
 the College in favour of one Not, a practitioner in physick, 
 whom they had committed to prison in the Compter. The 
 College appears to have been too strong for the Secretary, for 
 this Not had been his own medical attendant, a fact which he 
 assigns as the reason of his interference. " Forasmuch as 
 both myself have heretofore used him, and divers other 
 gentlemen have also received good by him." 
 
 The President and Society of Physicians again deny 
 the great man's request, alleging their oath and the laws. 
 They say, that Not " stubbernly (upon what encouragement 
 
34 
 
 we know not,) of purpose infringeth our privileges, and #ie 
 holsome lawes of this realme, which we by solemn oth are 
 bound to maintain." 
 
 Walsingham again tried to bend the College to his views 
 in 1589, when he wrote requesting them to release from 
 prison one Paule Buck, a practitioner in physick and surgerie. 
 He received a reply similar in tenor to the former ones ; 
 and upon two members of the College waiting on him, 
 with the letter, he assured them, "that he would never 
 act in anything contrary to the benefit or dignity of their 
 society ; and if upon any time by the importunity of friends 
 he did write upon such an occasion, he, notwithstanding, 
 left them to act what they thought most prudent." 
 
 It appears, therefore, upon due consideration of the 
 evidence of these old works, that the medical profes- 
 sion in the time of Shakespeare, consisted of physicians, 
 surgeons, and apothecaries. The physicians in London con- 
 stituted a corporation, yielding great powers. Its mem- 
 bers possessed the influence derived from mental superiority, 
 wealth, and high social position. Familiar at courts, and 
 the friends of kings, they maintained their privileges with 
 a high hand. With great learning they possessed little 
 knowledge. Their professional opinions were founded mainly 
 upon the dogmata of Galen ; and their practice upon a com- 
 plcated pharmacy of vegetable substances, interspersed with 
 offensive animal matters, and directed by mixed traditions of 
 experience and superstition. But withal they were the freest 
 intellects of their age, and the first to apply the great mental 
 instrument for the discovery of natural truth bequeathed to 
 them by Bacon ; the doctrines of the Novum Organon resulting 
 in the discovery of Harvey, half a century before they cul- 
 
35 
 
 minated in those of Newton. Moreover, the very want 
 of that minute knowledge which is apt to invest the 
 physician of the present day with a crust of pedantry, com- 
 pelled the physician of olden time to sharpen his intellect 
 in the ways and thoughts of men, so as to derive as 
 much light as possible through the narrow openings of 
 knowledge. 
 
 The olden physician, therefore, was a man of the world, 
 whose good taste, and good manners, formed by travel and 
 learning, provided a decent cloak for his scientific ignorance, 
 and whose good sense and keen observation enabled him 
 • to look into the secrets of men, when those of nature were 
 still unrevealed. This is the " kind of men " of which a phy- 
 sician ought to be according to Queen Elizabeth, as we 
 see in her letter recommending her physician, Dr. James, 
 to the ' Emperor of Russia :' "Quod hominum genus (medicum) 
 quoniam et plurimarum rerum cognitionem et morum probi- 
 tatem non vulgarem postulat." Such physicians Shakespeare 
 may have known in this Dr. James, or in Dr. Caius, or in 
 Dr. W. Harvey, and certainly did know in his son-in-law, 
 Dr. Hall. Such physicians he has represented in Lear» 
 Cymbeline, and Macbeth. 
 
 As any attempt to delineate the ordinary practice of 
 physic as it existed in Shakespeare's time, during the 
 infancy of the science, must necessarily be of antiquarian 
 rather than of scientific interest, it will best be illustrated in 
 these pages from the case-book of a physician, whose life 
 was intimately bound with that of our great poet, and from 
 the recorded treatment of the poet's own near relatives. 
 
 Shakespeare's eldest daughter Susanna, married Dr. John 
 
 Hall, a physician of great provincial eminence, practising 
 D 5 
 
36 
 
 at Stratford upon Avon. The registration of his marriage 
 
 stands thus : 
 
 " 1607, June 5, John Hall, Gentleman, and Susanna Shaxspere." 
 
 From the terms of this entry, Mr. Collier, in his exact 
 and careful estimate of the meagre accounts which have 
 come down to us of Shakespeare's belongings, appears to arrive 
 at the conclusion that Hall occupied a lower professional 
 grade before he practised as a • physician. " The eldest 
 daughter of "William and Ann Shakespeare, Susanna, having 
 been born in May, 1583, was rather more than twenty 
 four years old, when she was married on the 5th of June, 
 1607, to Mr. John Hall, of Stratford. He is styled 'Gentle- 
 man' in the register, but he was a professor of medicine, 
 and subsequently practised as a physician." Mr. Collier 
 supposes " that the ceremony was performed in the presence 
 of our great dramatist, during one of his summer excursions 
 to his native town," and he thinks the New Place, other- 
 wise called the Great House at Stratford, was Shakespeare's 
 country residence, and that " Dr. and Mrs. Hall were joint 
 occupiers, and aided in keeping up the vivacity of the 
 family circle." And when Shakespeare went to London, in 
 1614, on business relating to the enclosure of common lands 
 near Stratford, Hall accompanied him, as we learn from a 
 notice of an interview with the father and son-in-law, by 
 Thomas Greene. 
 
 It will be an interesting subject of enquiry, whether 
 such of the Dramas as were written after their author 
 entered into terms of intimate relationship with a physician, 
 well educated in the professional knowledge of his time, 
 bear any impression of the mental contact, since it is scarcely 
 possible, but that some influence should have been exercised 
 
37 
 
 upon the impressible mind of the poet, by the husband of 
 his favourite daughter, living with him in the same house. 
 Speaking of the death of the poet, Mr. Collier remarks, 
 "We need hardly entertain a doubt, that he was attended 
 in his last lillness by his son-in-law, Dr. Hall, who had 
 then been married to Susanna Shakespeare more than eight 
 years ; we have expressed our opinion that Dr. and Mrs. 
 Hall lived in the same house with our poet, and it is to be 
 recollected, that in his will he leaves New Place to his 
 daughter Susanna. Hall must have been a man of con- 
 siderable science for the time at which he practised ; and 
 he has left behind him proofs of his knowledge and skill, 
 in a number of cases which had come under his own eye, 
 and which he described in Latin ; these were afterwards 
 translated from his manuscript, and published in 1657, by 
 James Cooke, with the title of Select Observations on 
 English Bodies. But the case of Dr. Hall's father-in-law 
 is not foiind there, because most unfortunately the obser- 
 vations only began in 1617. One of the earliest of them 
 shews that an epidemic called 'the new fever,' then 
 prevailed in Stratford, and ' invaded many.' Possibly 
 Shakespeare was one of these ; though had such been the 
 fact, it is not unlikely that, when speaking of 'the Lady 
 Beaufou' who suffered under it, only July 1st, 1617, Dr. 
 Hall would have referred back to the earlier instance of 
 his father-in-law. He does advert to a certain ague of which, 
 at a period not mentioned, he had cured Michael Drayton, 
 ('an excellent poet,' as Hall terms him,) when he was 
 perhaps, on a visit to Shakespeare. However, Drayton, as 
 formerly remarked, was a native of Warwickshire, and Dr. 
 Hall may have been called in to attend him at Hartshill." 
 
38 
 
 The registration of Dr. Hall's burial is in these terms : 
 " 1635, Nov. 26. Johannes Sail, Medicus peritissinrns," 
 a designation which a careful perusal of his work, for the 
 opportunity of which we have to thank Mr. Collier, appears 
 fairly to justify. 
 
 The title of the work is as follows : " Select Observations 
 on English Bodies, or Cures Empirical and Historical 
 Performed on very eminent Persons in Desperate Disor- 
 ders. First written in Latine by Mr. John Hall, Physician, 
 of Stratford, where he was very famous, as also in the 
 counties adjacent. Now put into English for common 
 benefit, by James Cook, Practitioner in Physick and Chi- 
 rurgery. London : Printed by John Shirley, at the Golden 
 Pelican in Little Brittain, 1657." 
 
 " Observation xxxv. \^ child of Mr. Walker's, of Ilmington, 
 Minister, aged six monthsT* aithcted with .the, faJjjnj^Sffkness , "by 
 consent was tbdkJ&SSSffr' ' Frrsi£_' 1"" causeiTround^ pieces of ^riony 
 Root's J To' ,l TeTianged a5ouF'"5ie ; TSfeclt. TvVben the Fit afflicted, 
 I coMrn'StfaS?r£o be~"a^pued" a witli''"a~spunge to the Nostrils, the 
 Juyce of Rhue, mixed with White-wine Vinegar ; by the use of 
 which it was presently recovered ; and falling into the fit again, it 
 was removed in the same manner. To the Region of the Heart 
 was applied the following : $> Theriac. ven. 311. Bad. Peson. put. 
 3SS. Misc. The hah- was powdered with the powder of the Roots 
 of Piony. And tbns the child was delivered from all its Fits." 
 
 " Observation lx. Talbot, the first-born of the Countess of 
 Salisbury, aged about one year, being miserably afflicted with a 
 Feaver and Worms, so that Death was only expected, was thus 
 cured. There was first injected a Clyster of Milk and Sugar. 
 This gave two stools, and brought away four worms. By the 
 Mouth was given Hartshorn bwrnt, prepared in the form of a 
 Julep. To the Pulse was applied TTng. Populeon 3U mix , d with 
 Spiders Webs, and a little Powder of Nutshels. It was put to 
 one Pulse of one Wrist one day, to the other the next. To the 
 Stomach was applied Mithridate ; to the Navel, the Emplaster 
 against Worms. And thus he became well in three days, for which 
 the Countess returned me many thanks, and gave me great Re- 
 ward." 
 
39 
 
 " Observation lx. [2nd Cent. Dr. Hall's own Case.] Thou, O 
 Lord, which hast the power of Life and Death, and drawest from the 
 Gates of Death, I confess, without any Art or Counsel of Man, but 
 only from Thy Goodness and Clemency, thou hast saved me from the 
 bitter and deadly symptoms of deadly Fever, beyond the expec- 
 tation of all about me, restoring me, as it were, from the very jaws 
 of Death to former health ; for which I praise Thy name, most 
 merciful God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying Thee 
 to give me a most thankful heart for this great favour, for which 1 
 have cause to admire Thee. About the 57th year of my age, 
 August 27, 1632, to Septemb. 29, I was much debilitated with 
 an immoderate Flux of the Hemorrhoids; yet daily was I con- 
 strained to go to several places to Patients. By riding, a hardness 
 being contracted, the Flux was stayed for fourteen days. After I 
 fell into a most cruel torture of my teeth, and then into a deadly 
 burning Fever, which then raged very much, killing almost all 
 that it did infect, for which I used the following method, which, 
 by the help of God, succeeded : First I purged thus, 9> Rhubarb 
 infused ^i., (surety it was infused in some proper water, I sup- 
 pose giii.J Syrup J)iaserios §i., Meet, e Succ. Has. 5iii. This gave 
 four stools. After I had used the Decoction of Hearts-horn, and so 
 the disease was almost cast out by Urine ; it flowed very much for 
 four days space ; so that I was not only much maciated, but also 
 weakened, so that I could not move myself in my Bed without 
 help. I also had Convulsion of the Mouth and Eyes. Then was a 
 Pigeon cut open alive, and applied to my feet, to draw down the 
 Vapours ; for I was often afflicted with a slight Dehrium. Then 
 my wife sent for two Physicians. I had used a Clyster with 
 Emolient Serbs and Electu, Diacath. and Leniti. By the Phy- 
 sicians, my friends, was prescribed the following Electuary, of which 
 I swallowed the quantity of a Nutmeg twice a day : B> Elect, de 
 Gem, cal 5ii., Spec. Plerisarch. 5i., (from fear of the Scurvy), 
 Mdnus Christi perlat ; 51. Conserv. Buglos. et Violar. a gii. Syr. 
 Luju. §i., Syr Viol. ^ss. IAmon §i. 01. Vitrol gut. vi. f. Elect. The 
 27th of Septemb. I was thus purged : B Elect. Lenit. §iss, Aq. 
 Absynih §iv. Misc. It gave three stools. At the hour of sleep, I 
 took Diacodium, Syrup of Bed Poppies, with Diascordium. For 
 the heat of the Back : Bj Befrig. Gal. giss. Cerat Santal. §ss. Succ. 
 Sed. Acet. Vini alb. a coeh. i. f. Unguent, mol. An Emplaster for 
 the Region of the Heart: B Labd. 5yj. Styrac. Calam. §ss. Spec, 
 Aromat Bos. 9iv., Mosc. gr. iv., Misc. I again was purged thus : 
 Bo Syr. Biaserios §iss, Elect, e Succ. Bos. Jiii., Aq. dehor q. s. 
 It is to be observed, before the Physicians came, there were drawn 
 gvii. of Blood from the Liver Vein, and three days after that were 
 the Le eches ap^Kpd jjft foe H e morrhoids~a nd thence removed %x, 
 aftefthe Decoction of Hartshorn. Thus, I was pretty well able 
 
40 
 
 to take Meat. After, I used Chalybiat Wine, -with. Juyce of Scurvy- 
 grass, and Syr. Sceletyrk. Foresti, and purged once a week with. 
 Pul. sanct. Syr. Diaserios, et infus. Bhab. For the pain of the 
 teeth, I used 01. Lig. Heraclei. After, I was troubled with Itch 
 in the Scrotum, which was cured with our Decoction of Sarsa. 
 with Anti-scorbutic Serbs. And so I became perfectly well, praised 
 be God." 
 
 " Observation xkxti. Elizabeth Hall, my only daughter, 
 [Shakespeare's granddaughter,] was vexed with Tortura Oris, or the 
 convulsion of the mouth, and was happily cured as followeth : First, 
 I exhibited these Pills : "$> Pil. Cock, et Aurear. ana $i. f. Pil. 10. 
 She took five the first day, which gave her seven stools ; the next 
 day with the other five, she had five stools. I fomented the part 
 with Theriac. Androniac. et Aq. Vitce. To the Neck was used this : 
 JS> Unguent Martiat., 3fartiat. Magn. Ji. 01. Laurin. Petrolei, 
 Castor, et Terebinth, ana ^ss. de lateribus 5»s. Misc. By this she 
 had great advantage, her Courses being obstructed. Thus I purged 
 her : Bj PH- foetid 5i. Castor. 51. de Succin. Bhab. agaric, ana 3iss. 
 f. Mass. She took of this five pills in the morning of the bigness 
 of Pease ; they gave eight stools. The next day she took Aq. 
 Opihalm. see Ostor. 3, as B> Tutice, Sfc. Her courses flowed. For 
 an opthalmia, of which she laboured, I used our Opthalmick Water, 
 dropping two or three drops into her Eye. Her Courses staying 
 again, I gave the following Sudorific Decoct., B Lign. Vitae. §ii., 
 Sassafras §ss., Sassap. Ji. Chin. 5vi. macerat. per 24 hor. in Aq. 
 fontan. ibviii. After, boyl them to ffbiv. After the use of these, 
 the former form of her Mouth and Face was restored (there was 
 not omitted 01. Sarsap., which was above all to anoint the Neck), 
 Jan. 5, 1624. In the beginning of April she went to London, and 
 returning homewards, the 22 of the said month, she took cold, 
 and fell into the said distemper on the contrary side of the face ; 
 before it was on the left side, now on the right ; and although she 
 was grievously afflicted with it, yet, by the blessing of God, she was 
 cured in sixteen days, as followeth: % Pil. de Succin. 5ss. Aurear. 
 3i. f. Pil. v. She took them when the same night her Neck was 
 anointed with Oil of Sassafr. In the morning I gave Jss. of Pil. 
 Bussi, and again used the said Oil with Aqua Vitce, and dropped 
 into her eye the Opthalmick Water. The aforesaid Oil being 
 wanting, I used the following ; Jt Pul. Castor. Myrrh Nuc. Mosch. 
 Croci. a 3i. 01. Buta, Laurin. Petrol. Tereb. a Jii., TTngu. Martiat. 
 §ss., 01. Costin de Peper. a 5L, Misc. But first the Neck was 
 fomented with Aqua Vitm, in which was infused Nutmegs, Cinna- 
 mon, Cloves, Pepper. She eat Nutmegs often. To the Nostrils 
 and top of the Head was used the Oil of Amber. She chewed on 
 the sound side, Pellitory of Spain, and was often purged with the 
 following Pills : Bj Pill, fetid. 9i. Castor pul. 3ss., Pil. Russi. et 
 de Succin a 3i. f. Pil, No. v. And thus she was restored. 
 
41 
 
 " In the same year, May 24, she was afflicted with an Erratick 
 Feaver ; sometimes she was hot, and hy and hy sweating, again 
 cold, all in the space of half an hour, and thus she was vexed oft in 
 a day. Thus I purged her : 9> The Boots of Parsley, Fennel, each 
 Mss., Elder Bark Mii., Roots of the Vulgar Oris, of Madder, each 
 Mss., Boots of Sparagus Mii. Boyl them in sufficient quantity of 
 Water, to six pints. To the straining, add Rhubarb, Agarich, each 
 |ss., Sena Jvi., Mechoacan §ii., Calamus Aromaticus §i., Aniseeds 
 |i., Oinamon |ss. Infuse them in a vessel well stopt acording to 
 art, strain it again, and to the straining add Sugar sufficient to 
 make a Syrup. Of this, take §iv., Rhubarb infused in %v. of 
 Chicory Water Jii. Mix them, and give seven spoonfulls every 
 day fasting. It gave seven or eight stools without pain. $k Sarsap. 
 Ji., Sassafr. tyi., Guaiac. §i., IAquoris §ss. Serb of Succory, Sage, 
 Rosemary, each Mss. Boyl them in ten pints of Water, till half he 
 wasted. Of which she took a draught hot, in the morning. The 
 following was used to anoint the spine : $> Gum, Galban. Bdel. 
 dissol. in Aq. Tit. a Jss. Benzoin §L, Styrac. liquid Ji., Mil. Rut. 
 Chamcepith. Flor. Stcechad. Lavendula, a 5ii., Rad. costi. §ss, Cas- 
 torei 3i., infund. Misc. et pulverisat in Aq. Vitae. It is to he in- 
 fused in some hot place for some days. Before it was used, the 
 spine was rubb'd. An hour after it was used, all the symptoms 
 remitted daily till she was well. Thus was she delivered from 
 death and deadly diseases, and was well for many years. To God 
 he praise." 
 
 " Obsebvation xix. Mrs. Hall, of Stratford, my wife, [Shakes- 
 peare's daughter] being miserably tormented with Cholick, was cured 
 as followeth : 9> Diaphxn. IDiacatholic. ana gi., Bui. Holland Jii-, 
 01. Rutce. §i., Lact. q. s. f. Chyst. This injected gave her two stools, 
 yet the Pain continued, being but little mitigated; therefore, I ap- 
 pointed to inject a pint of sack, made hot. This presently brought 
 forth a great deal of wind, and freed her from all pain. To her 
 Stomach was applied a Blaister de Labd. Crat. cum Caran. et Spec. 
 Aromat. rosat. et 01. Macis. With one of these Clysters, I de- 
 livered the Earl of Northampton from a grievous Cholick." 
 
 " Obseevation xxxiii. Wife was troubled with the Scurvy, 
 accompanied with Pain of the Loins, Corruption of the Gums, 
 Stinking Breath, Melancholy, Wind, Cardiac Passion, Laziness, 
 difficulty of Breathing, fear of the Mother, binding of the Belly, 
 and torment there, and all of a long continuance, with restlessness 
 and weakness. There was given this Bole : Jk Electuary of Tama- 
 rinds 3ss., Cream of Tartar ^i., wd% them. To the Back was ap- 
 plied, Umplast. Oxyeroceum, which freed her from pain of the 
 Loins and Belly, Feb. 9, 1630. The tenth day, taking cold, she 
 had again miserable pain in her joints, so that she could not lye 
 in her Bed, insomuch as when any helped her, she cried out miser- 
 
42 
 
 ably ; for which I used this Ointment : Jfe Capon's Grease, Oil 
 of Sweet Almonds, of Dil. et Roses, Macilage of the Roots of 
 Alihwa, drawn with Mallow Water, each §i. mix them. After 
 anointing, the foresaid Plaster was applied with good success, for 
 she was quieter all night ; but yet in the morning she was troubled 
 with wind. Then I gave of Sennurtus s Electuary, which is thus 
 framed : Jfc The Conserve of the tops and leaves of Scurvy Grass jiii., 
 The flowers of Bugloss, Clove Gilly-flowers, and Damask Roses, 
 each ^ss. The flesh of Candid Nutmegs, Citron Pills, candid and 
 cut, each §i. Honey of Juniper Berries Jhi-, Confectio Alkermes 
 Jss., Syrup of Cinamon 5^i. Syrup of Scurvy Grass, or that of 
 Forestus, sufficient to make an Electuary, to which was added Oil of 
 Sulphur, sufficient to sharpen it. For the constipation of the Belly 
 was used this Suppository : B> Honey §i. Spec. Hier. Pic.Sii., Troch 
 Alband 9ss., Cummin Seed gss., make a long Suppository. For the 
 Cardaic Passion was used Elect. Pleresarchon. Dose, |ss., fasting, 
 yea, at any hour it was used, drinking the following Stilled Wine 
 after it : % Fumatory, Brook-lime, Water Cresses, Scurvy-grass, 
 Betony, Agrimony, Marts-tongue, each Mss., Bark of Capparis, 
 Ash, Tamaris, each 5ss, Roots of Elicampana, Polipody, each Jiii., 
 Madder Liquoris, Calamus Aromaticus, Eringoes, each §ss,, 
 Yellow Sanders, Red Coral, Shavings of Ivory, each "yn., Cloves, 
 Mace, Cinamon, Ginger, each Jhi-, Ceterach, Flowers of Broom, 
 Rosemary, Marygolds, Epithymum, each p. i., Juniper Berries, gi., 
 Steel -prepared according to Crato §iv., White Wine Wbviii., infuse 
 them together at the Fire in Bal. Mar., for eight days at least, 
 stirring them twice a day ; after strain it three or four times, and 
 to the straining add Saffron ^ss., first drawn out of Scurvy-grass 
 water confect. Alkermes 9ii., Sugar sufficient to sweeten it. Dose 
 is two or three spoonfulls in the beginning, which may be increased 
 if there be need. And by these she was cured." 
 
 Notwithstanding the amusing credulity indicated in the 
 two first quoted cases, and in many others, measured by the 
 knowledge of his day Hall may well have deserved the title 
 of being " a most skilful physician," yet his statements must 
 not be accepted as the trustworthy exponents of the nature 
 of disease. An example of this is afforded in the record of 
 the cases of what he calls " the new feaver,'' which Mr. Collier 
 thinks it probable was the cause of the poet's own death, 
 The " new feaver " of the Lady Beaufou appears to have 
 been neither more nor less than a case of small-pox, with 
 
43 
 
 typhoid symptoms ; and the " new feaver " as it affected the 
 doctor himself, to have been an affection of the brain, 
 proceeding from the suppression of an habitual hcemorrhoidal 
 flux. In the olden times, when a disease was merely re- 
 cognized as an aggregate of symptoms, and not as a variable 
 condition of one or more organs of the body, recognizable 
 by varying symptoms, it was a common thing for the phy- 
 sician to designate an old form of disease, modified in its 
 appearance by epidemic or other influence, as "the new 
 feaver," or the like. Gideon Harvey hits this weakness of 
 his contemporaries in the following terms : " It was named 
 by his men of physick, the new disease, a name of ignorance, 
 or their accustomed asylum ignorantice, to which they take 
 their refuge, . when they know not what the disease is, or 
 what to call it. One time they shall tell you it is an ague ; 
 another, it is a feaver ; a third, it is an ague and feaver ; a 
 fourth, it's a feaver and ague ; a fifth, it's the new disease ; 
 a denomination so idle, that every novice in physick might 
 well suspect they had never read Hippocrates or Galen, 
 especially, upon observing, that every autumnal or epidemick 
 distemper is by them termed new, whereas the gentle pox 
 excepted, there is not any among all those they have nomi- 
 nated new diseases, but what is amply described in many 
 ancient authors." The very next case to the Lady Beaufou's 
 is recognised as one of small pox ; it occurred in the same 
 house and was treated in the same manner. Her Ladyship's 
 case is thus detailed. 
 
 " Observation ixxvii. The Lady Beaufou, godly, honest, 
 being of a noble extract, continuing healthful till the age of 28, 
 which was 1617, July 1, fell into a burning malign continual Feaver, 
 with great Pain of the Head, most vehement Heat, Pain in the 
 Stomach ; the Body all over, especially the Arms, was full of Spots; 
 
44 
 
 the Urine was red and little. It was then called the New Feaver; 
 it invaded many'; I was called the third day of its invasion. The 
 Stomach being stuffed and burdened with ill humours, as I per- 
 ceived, I advised the following vomit : Jk Mmetich Infusion 3 ix. 
 This gave twelve vomits without any great trouble. The day 
 before she had (unknown to me) drunk much milk to quench her 
 thirst, by reason whereof the vomit at first drew forth a wonderful 
 quantity of curdled milk, so that she was almost choaked, after came 
 Choler mixed with phlegm, afterward burnt Melancholy. She 
 had also six Stools Phlegmy, mixed with green Choler and much 
 Serosities. Her vomiting ending in three hours, I gave her a Pill 
 of Laudan. Paraselsi gr. vii. (sure he mistook her, for four is a good 
 dose), after which she slept four hours, the Pain of her head ceasing. 
 Then tome unknown, her servant gave her a draught of Whey, 
 which being drunk, she presently had three vomits of black stuff 
 without any trouble, and two such like Stools, and was cruelly 
 afflicted with the Hiccough, to allay which I gave Claret wine burnt 
 with Aromatick, which succeeded ; she was quieter the rest of the 
 Night, but did not sleep well. In the morning I gave Chicken- 
 broth, made with appropriate Herbs, and so for four hours she 
 rested. At the end of that time I gave a draught of the Decoction 
 of Heartshom hot. On Munday morning, having some evacuation, 
 I appointed the same decoct, should be given cold. She was 
 miserably afflicted with Pustles, with great heat of the Tongue 
 and Throat that she could not drink without great difficulty, for 
 which she used the following Grargarism : 9> Diamoron simp. §iv., 
 Honey of Roses §ii., Hosewater fbj., Oil of Sulphur, so much as made 
 it sharpish. After the use of the Heartshom Decoction, the seventh 
 day, the Pox appeared, yet the foresaid Grargarism was used for the 
 throat, and she drunk of the Decoction of Heartshom cold four times 
 a day, and so she was cured. I ordered that the Pox after the 
 eighth day should be anointed with this : 9> Common Oil and 
 Carduus Water well shaken together, and so there were left no scars." 
 
 The surgeons in Shakespeare's time formed a very dis- 
 tinct class from the physicians. They were incorporated, it 
 is true, but they had no ^statutory powers corresponding 
 to those of the physicians. The latter restricted them from 
 giving any internal medicines, even to promote the cure 
 of external injuries. The physicians had, by law, the power 
 of practising surgery as a part of their art, but not the 
 slightest reciprocal liberty was accorded to the surgeons. 
 
45 
 
 Fuller notes tins abrupt limitation of the art, while, -with his 
 usual sound sense, he hits upon the true reason of its ab- 
 surdity. " The healing of diseases and wounds were anciently- 
 one calling (as still great the sympathy betwixt them ; many 
 diseases causing wounds, as ulcers ; as wounds occasioning 
 diseases, as feavers) till in process of time they were sepa- 
 rated, and chirurgeons only consigned to the manual oper- 
 ation." The professional custom of the present day affords 
 a curious reverse o£ this state of things in the olden time, 
 since now surgeons frequently practise physic, to a greater 
 extent than their own art, while physicians are restricted 
 by custom and their own laws, from the practice of surgery. 
 Eeferring to the rules made by Harvey at St. Bartholo- 
 mew's Hospital, for the government of the house and 
 officers, Dr. Wells says : " The doctors' treatment of the 
 poor chirurgeons in these rules is sufficiently despotic, it 
 must be admitted ; but the chirurgeons in their acquiesence 
 showed that they merited no better handling. The only 
 point on which they proved restive, indeed, was the revela- 
 tion of their secrets to the physician ; a great outrage, 
 when every man had his secrets, and felt fully justified in 
 keeping them to himself. But surgery, in the year 1633, 
 had not shewn any good title to an independent existence. 
 The surgeon of those days was but the hand, or instrument 
 of the physician ; the dignitary mostly applied to his famulus 
 when he required a wen removed, or a limb lopped, or 
 a broken head plaistered ; though Harvey, it seems, did 
 not feel himself degraded by taking up the knife or prac- 
 tising midwifery."— Life of Harvey. 
 
 A reference, however, to the works of Clowes and Woodall, 
 will convince the reader that, in spite of Acts of Parliament, 
 
46 
 
 charters of colleges, or rules of hospitals, the treatment of 
 some important constitutional diseases fell to the lot of 
 the chirurgeons. Clowes writes a separate work on the 
 treatment of lues venerea, and Woodall has a chapter 
 on the treatment of scurvy, and another on that of plague 
 and its pestilential feaver. Although in contradistinction to 
 the physicians, these old surgeons wrote in the vernacular, 
 their works bear evidence that they were learned men. 
 John Banester, Maister in Chirurgie, translated Wecker, 
 in 1585, adding notes of his own, and thus affording one of 
 the best early works on surgery in our language. William 
 Clowes makes frequent reference to the works of Galen and 
 Celsus, and to those of continental authors, written in Latin 
 and French ; he also mentions conversations he had with 
 French surgeons. Most of his references are to professional 
 authors, among whom no doubt his reading principally lay. 
 The penultimate chapter in his work is actually a justification 
 for publishing it in English, to which many persons " envy- 
 ing the light of knowledge in others, and the good of our 
 country and commonwealth " had objected. " It embaseth 
 the art, they say ; it maketh it common, whereby every 
 bad man, and lewd woman, is become a surgeon : and 
 thus it is a hindrance to a number of good and honest 
 artists." Clowes however refers in his justification to Hip- 
 pocrates, Galen, Avicenna, Pliny, and the many French and 
 German authors who wrote in their own native tongue : 
 and he especially cites the custom of Ambrose Pare\ then 
 recently deceased to the following effect. "Now they say 
 he was a man unfurnished of the sacred gifts of Grammar 
 and Bhetorick, neither had he ever tasted of the sweet 
 fountain and well-spring of Philosophic, and therefore could 
 
47 
 
 not be a good surgeon; he answereth such like cavillers 
 and telleth them plainly that it is possible for a man to be 
 a good surgeon although he had never a tounge in his head : 
 he never went about to teach the tounges, but to write 
 and teach the art of surgery in the French tounge to all 
 young practisers, for the better relief and comfort of many 
 sick and diseased persons." 
 
 As a counterpart to Dr. Hall's medical cases, and a fair 
 example of the surgery of those days, the following account 
 from Clowes, of the method of amputation may serve. It 
 will be observed that the application of cauterising irons 
 for the arrest of hermorrhage is spoken of as a necessity of 
 common occurrence, a practice referred- to by the poet. The 
 system of tying arteries, for the invention of which Ambrose 
 Pare - bears the honour, is here attributed by one of his own 
 contemporaries, to a forgotten name, one Gulemew; as often 
 happens, the real inventor may have been obscured in the 
 bright glory of some fortunate and prominent sponsor. 
 
 " The manner and order of the taking or cutting off a mortified and 
 corrupt leg or arme, which commeth oftentimes, by reason of 
 wounds made with gunshot, Sfc. Gap. 24. 
 
 '■ Sith as I haue said, that oftentimes it happeneth, by reason of 
 the euill accidents which follow wounds made with gunshot, &c. 
 That trie whole member commeth to gangrena, sideratio, or spha- 
 celus, so that we are many times constrained forthwith to make a 
 speedy dispatch, to cut off the member, which shall be don as Gale 
 and others, very skilfully haue pointed in the whole and sound 
 parts. And if it so fall out that the leg is to be cut off beneath the 
 knee, then let it be distant from the joint fower inches, and three 
 inches aboue the knee ; and so likewise in the arme, as occasion is 
 offered. These things being obserued, then through the assistance 
 of Almightie Grod, you shall luckily accomplish this worke by your 
 good industrie and diligence. But you must be very circumspect 
 and carefull of all things, whicli concerne the methodicall perfection 
 of this worke ; that is, you shall have a great regard to the state of 
 his body for evacuation and dieting : And after that his body is 
 
48 
 
 well prepared and purged, then the same morning you do attempt 
 to cut off the member, be it leg or arme, let him have some two 
 houres before, some good comfortable caudell, or other broths, ac- 
 cording to the discretion of the Physition or Chirurgeon, onely to 
 corroberate and strengthen his stomacke, and in any wise omit not, 
 but that he, or ghee, have ministered unto them some good ex- 
 hortation concerning patience in adversitie, to be made by the 
 minister or preaeher. And you shall likewise aduertise the friends 
 of the patient, that the worke which you go about is great, and not 
 without danger of death, for that many accidents, and euill symp- 
 toms do happen, which in such cases many times do admit no 
 cure ; all which being well considered, then ordaine the night 
 before, some good defensatiue, and let it be applied two or three 
 times about the member. [The defensative appears to have been 
 a kind of ointment, for whab purpose applied is not very clear. 
 The prescription for Gale's defensative, given by the author, is 
 Armenian boll, barley flour, dragon's blood, sealed earth, and 
 olibanum, mixed up with vinegar and whites of eggs.] 
 
 " All which being considered, you shall haue in readiness a good 
 strong and steady fourme, and set the patient at the very end of it ; 
 then shall there bestride the fourme behind him, a man that is 
 able to holde him, or hir fast, by both the armes ; which done, 
 if the leg must be taken off beneath the knee, let there be also 
 appointed another strong man to bestride the leg, that is to be cut 
 off, and he must hold the member very fast aboue the place where 
 the incision is to be made, and very steadily, without shaking, 
 drawing up the skin and muscles, and he that doth so hold, should 
 haue a large strong hand, and a good fast gripe, whereby he may 
 the better stay the bleeding, in the place and steede of a straight 
 band or ligature, which hand indeed is also very necessarie, for by 
 reason of the hard and close binding, it doth so benum that part, 
 that the paine of the binding doth greatly obscure the sence and 
 feeling of the incision ; and the foresaid hand is also a good direc- 
 tion for him that doth cut off the member ; but yet in some bodies, 
 it will not be amisse to admit bleeding according to discretion, 
 specially in such bodies as are of hot complexions, and do abound in 
 blood, and I haue often seene, by the skilfulnes of the holder, there 
 hath not been lost at a time fower ounces of blood : for in weake 
 bodies it is not good to loose much blood : for blood is said to be 
 the treasure of life, and for that cause chiefly, a good holder is not 
 to be spared. In like manner, there must be chosen another skilfull 
 man, that hath good experience in holding the leg below, for the 
 member must not be held too high, for feare of staying or choking 
 of the same, neither must he beare down his hand too low, for feare 
 of breaking or fracturing of the bones in the time it is a sawing or 
 cutting off: And he that is the master or Surgeon, which doth cut 
 
49 
 
 off the member, must be sure lie have a sharpe sawe, also a very 
 good eatlin, and an incision knife, and then boldly, with a steddy 
 and quicke hand, cut the flesh round about to the bones, without 
 staying, being sure the periosteum, or panicle that covereth and 
 compasseth the bones be also incised and cut, and likewise a certain 
 muscle or sinew, that runneth betweene the bones of the leg which 
 shall be done with your incision knife : All this being orderly 
 performed, then set your sawe as neere unto the sound flesh, as well 
 you may, and so cut asunder the bones, which done, Ambrose Pare, a 
 man of great knowledge, and experience in Chirurgie,willeth, presently 
 after the bones are cut asunder, that yee then draw the sides of the 
 wound together, with fower stitches, that are deepe in the flesh, 
 and made crosswise over the member, like unto the letter X, for 
 saith he, you may easily draw the portions of the skin and 
 their divided muscles, which before the section were drawne 
 upward, over the bones, and cover them close on every side, that 
 they may take the less aire, and the wound sooner conglutinate, 
 &c. I must eonfesse I have cured many, and yet never so stitched 
 them : notwithstanding, I wish all men to follow in the best way, 
 for the good of their patient. But I say, having prepared in a 
 readiness, this restrictive, to staie the flux of blood, I proceeded 
 then asfolloweth: Bj Boli Armeniaci^m.., Sanguinis Draconis, Aloes, 
 ana §i., Olibani giss., Terrce sigillatce, Mastichis ana gi., Lapidis 
 Hmmatitis §ss., Calais ex Testis ovorum, Mumiw, ana %i., Gypsi 
 5yj., Farina Volatilis §iv., Misce. Take of this Powder as much as 
 will serve your turne, and mixe with the said Powder, Pilorum 
 leporis, et ovorum albuminum ana. quod satis est, let your Hare 
 haires be the whitest and the softest that is taken from under the 
 belly of the Hare, and cut so fine as possible may be, and with the 
 said powder let all be mixed togither, and so brought to a reason- 
 able thicknesse. And note that before yee cut off the member, 
 let there be in like manner made for the purpose, three or fower 
 small bolsters or buttons, fashioned in the top or upper part like a 
 Dove's egge, or as a sugar lofe button, flat in the bottom to the 
 compasse of a French crown, and round upwards as aforesaid : 
 and these you shall make of very fine towe, according to Art, 
 wrought up in water and vinegar, whereupon you shall apply some 
 part of the restrictive, being mixed as I have before declared. But 
 yee shall heere further note that one Gulemew, a famous Chirar- 
 geon in Fraunce, with other very learned and skilful men, coun- 
 selleth us to drawe out the veins and arteries with an instrument 
 called a Baven's bill, and then they tie those vessels with a double 
 strong ligature or threed, and so safely stay the bleeding, but for 
 that I never practised this order by stiching the veins and arteries, 
 I will leave it as aforesaid, and procede with mine owne approved 
 practise : and, therefore, I say when the holder of the member 
 
50 
 
 above the knee doth partly release the fast holding of his hand, by- 
 little and little, whereby you may the better perceive and see the 
 mouths of the veins, that are incised and cut, and upon those veins 
 you shall place the round endes of the small buttons, and upon 
 them presently lay on a round thicke bed of towe made up in water 
 and vinegar, so that it be fit as neere as you can guess it, to the 
 compasse of the stumpe or member that is taken off, and thereon 
 spread the restrictive; and upon that againe you shall lay another 
 broder bed of towe made up as you have heard, so large that it may 
 compasse over the member, and that it may be safely tied to keepe 
 on the rest : whereupon yee shall in like manner spread of the re- 
 strictive reasonable thick, afore yee place it to the rest, and yee 
 shall cut it in fower places, one cut right over against another, 
 an inch in length and somewhat more : and yee shall tie or fasten 
 the said large bed to with a ligature, which they call a choke band 
 doubled two or three times, being flat, and fully an inch brode and 
 a yard long : in the middle of the said ligature or band, you shall 
 spread some of the restrictive, so that it may take the better hold 
 unto the large bed of tow, being very fast tied, then you shall place 
 thereon a double large bed of soft linnen cloth, and then with a 
 strong rowler of fower inches brode, and three or fower yards long, 
 let it be artificially rowled, and where the blood beginneth to shew, 
 in that place speedily lay on a good compressor or thicke bolster 
 made of tow brought up in water and vinegar, the thickness in the 
 middle to a man's hand, and the thinner towards the edges, in com- 
 passe of a Philip's dolor, more or lesse, as you suppose the greatness 
 of the flux to be, and couch them close to, in as many places as the 
 blood doth shew itselfe, and thus with two or three rowlers, and as 
 manj- soft linnen beds, some single, and some double, with a suffi- 
 cient number of bolsters, some great and some small, you may 
 safely stay the flux of blood : which order and way did never faile 
 me, nor any other that have used the same according unto the 
 order here prescribed : also sometimes we do use to draw over the 
 great bed of tow being surely tied with the foresaid chokeband, 
 a wet Oxe bladder, and so do pull it close up over the same, the 
 which is tied fast also with a ligature or chokeband, and upon 
 the same a double or single bed of soft linnen cloth, and thus with 
 a few brode bolsters and rowlers very orderly is staied the flux of 
 blood. All which being artificially done, then you shall as easily as 
 possible may be, carie the patient to his bed, having a pillow made 
 ready to rest the member on : Thus let him lie with as much quiet- 
 ness as you can, keeping a convenient diet : then the third or fourth 
 day if nothing do let, you shall have in a readiness steuphs of white 
 wine, with decent rowlers and bolsters, and other necessaries 
 meete for the second dressing. To conclude, yee shall here observe, 
 that if at any time you have not of my restrictive power in 
 
51 
 
 a readiness, you may use either Vigoes order, to cauterize the 
 place, with a bright canterizing iron, or else with M. Gales 
 powder, which is a most worthy invention, and better pleaseth 
 the patients, than the hot glowing irons, which are very 
 offensive unto the eie. But yet the powder wrought with ex- 
 treme paine, and made a very great eschar, and by that meanes 
 the bone hath been afterwards new cut againe, and so did make a 
 very long worke in some, ere ever they were cured. The powder 
 which I have here published, is of my own invention, and it never 
 causeth paine, but often bringeth with it a perfect white digestive 
 matter, which powder I did keepe secret to mine own private use, 
 and I did first put it in practise in jthe Hospitall of Saint Bartho- 
 lomewes, as it is well knowne at this day unto some of the Surgeons 
 that then served with me there, who were present with me at that 
 time, when there was taken off in one morning, seaven legs and 
 armes, where, by the assistance and helpe of Almightie G-od, we 
 staied all their fluxes of blood, without any paine unto them, but 
 onely in the compression and close rowling, and tenderness of the 
 wound excepted. After that time, it was given out, and made 
 knowne to divers Surgeons, that were very desirous to have it. 
 Amongst the rest, Master Crowe, a man of great experience and 
 knowledge in Chirurgerie, he was very earnest with me for it, which 
 for divers speciall occasions, I was the more willing to impart it 
 unto him, but not at his first request, untill he had seene with his 
 own eies, the experience and profe of it. Not many daies after, 
 the masters of the said Hospitall requested me, with the rest of the 
 Surgeons, to go to High-gate, some three or fower miles from 
 London, to cut off a maids leg, which they had seene in the visita- 
 tion of those poore spittle houses : the said leg was so grievously 
 corrupted, that we were driven upon necessitie, to cut it off above the 
 knee, which we did performe by the order before prescribed, and he 
 did see, we staied the flux, and lost not much above fower ounces of 
 blood, and so cured hir within a short time after. Then I gave 
 him the true maner and order of the making of the said powder. 
 Onely this I am to let you to understand, that since my first collec- 
 tion, I have added other simples, as Crocis martis, which though 
 it be here left out in this booke upon purpose, the powder will be 
 profitable notwithstanding. And after the publishing abroad of 
 the said restrictive powder, I did give and impart the same unto 
 many good Chirurgeons, which have been thankfull for it. But I 
 must needes say againe, other some have rewarded me most 
 unkindly, notwithstanding, I have knowne they have used it, unto 
 the profit of their patient, and so credit unto themselves : never- 
 thelesse, these could finde in their harts behinde my backe, to 
 reward evill for good : instead of thanks, I have been back-bitten, 
 and thus I reape for my labour chaffe for corne, ill will and private 
 
 E 2 
 
52 
 
 grudge for curtesies and friendship offered. Therefore I wish all 
 good Artists, considerately to beware and take heede unto whom 
 they impart heereafter their secrets, least they also enter with me 
 into the gap of ingratitude, or the unsavorie dunghill of despitefull 
 toongs, &c." 
 
 In the pharmacologia of Dr. Paris, late president of the 
 College of Physicians, is the following passage, on a con- 
 temporary of Shakespeare, illustrative of the dirtiness of old 
 medicine. " Amongst the remedies of Sir Theodore May erne, 
 known to commentators as the Doctor Caius of Shakespeare, 
 who was physician to three English Sovereigns, and who by 
 his personal authority put an end to the distinctions of 
 chemical and galenical practitioners in England, we shall 
 find the bowels of a mole cut open alive ; mummy made of 
 the lungs of a man who had died a violent death ; with a 
 variety of remedies, equally absurd and alike disgusting:" 
 p. 17. The learned author would have been more correct if 
 he had stated that Mayerne was among those who introduced 
 the distinction between the chemical and galenical physi- 
 cians, rather than that he terminated them. Mayerne having 
 defended his friend Quercetan for his chemical opinions, in 
 a work which brought upon him the wrath of the College 
 of Physicians of Paris, was expelled by the College from 
 their body. Dr. Nedham's translation of the document 
 recording this expulsion is an interesting example of the 
 high handed manner in which the " Galenick Dons " avenged 
 any dissent from their professional creed. 
 
 "The Colledg of Physicians in the University of Paris being 
 lawfully congegrated, having heard the Report made by the Cen- 
 sors, to whom the business of examining the Apology, published 
 under the name of Turquet de Mayern, was committed, do with 
 unanimous consent condemn the same as an infamous libel, stuffed 
 with lying reproaches, and impudent calumnies, which could not 
 
53 
 
 have proceeded from any but an unlearned, impudent, drunken, 
 mad fellow : And do judg the said Turquet unworthy to practise 
 physick in any place, because of his rashness, impudence, and igno- 
 rance of true physick : But do exhort all Physicians which practise 
 physick in any nations or places whatsoever, that they will drive 
 the said Turquet, and such like monsters of men and opinions, 
 out of their company and coasts ; and that they will constantly 
 continue in the doctrine of Hippocrates and Galen. Moreover, 
 they forbid all men that are of the Society of the Physicians of 
 Paris, that they do not admit a consultation with Turquet, or such 
 like persons. Whoever shall presume to act contrary, shall be de- 
 prived of all honours, emoluments and priviledges of the University, 
 and be expunged out of the Register of Eegent Physitians. Given 
 at Paris, in the Upper Schools, the Fifth day of December, Anno 
 Salutis, 1603. E. Hbeon, Dean of the Colledg." 
 
 After this expulsion, Mayerne came to England, and 
 attained from the first such high repute and success, that 
 it is difficult, notwithstanding the opinions of the commen- 
 tators, to reconcile with his position, the character of Dr. 
 Caius, in the Merry Wives, the only character in which 
 Shakespeare represents a physician in a mean and ridiculous 
 light. His contemporary, Dr. Nedham, says, that Mayerne 
 " became physician to two kings of France, and tw# of 
 England, and left a name of great honour and wealth 
 behind him. " 
 
 Another of his contemporaries, Dr. Harris, writes, "Mayerne 
 is still flourishing in our own memory, and his eminency was 
 sufficiently proved by an argument that will easily persuade, 
 I mean, by the greatest estate that perhaps ever was got 
 by physick. His favour with the great Henry the fourth 
 of France, and his royal reception here, do all speak loudly 
 his great name." — Pharmacologic/, Anti-Umpirica, 1683. 
 
 Mayerne's christian name, Turquet, which means a little 
 dog, had been made the peg for ridicule, by his angry 
 countrymen : hence perhaps the change to the more eupho- 
 
54 
 
 nious prefix which he assumed in this country. He was, 
 says Nedham, " a different guess sort of chemical, than 
 Paracelsus, or Van Helmont, dogmatical or rational, as well 
 as chemical, and did not despise reason, though it came 
 from the mouth of a Galenist ;" and although in the exercise 
 of this temperance of judgment he may have contributed 
 to reconcile the differences of the two factions, he certainly 
 did not put an end to them, as Dr. Paris supposes, since 
 we find the controversy at its height in the very works we 
 have cited, published many years after his decease in 1655, 
 at the age of 82. According to Fuller, the first person who 
 introduced chemical doctrines among the methodical physi- 
 cians of England was Dr. Butler, whose Abernethian eccen- 
 tricities are thus noted in the quaint pages of the biographer. 
 
 "William Butler, born at Ipswich, was bred Fellow of Clare Hall, 
 in Cambridge, where he became the Esculapius of our age. He 
 was the first Englishman who quickened Galenical Physick with 
 a touch of Paracelsus, trading in Chemical Seceits with great 
 successe. His eye was excellent at the instant discovery of a 
 cadaverous face, on which he would not lavish any art. This made 
 him at the first sight of sick Prince Henry, to get himself out of 
 sight. Knowing himself to be the Prince of Physicians, he would 
 be observed accordingly. Compliments would prevail nothing with 
 him, entreaties but little, surly threatnings would do much, and a 
 witty jeere do any thing. He was better pleased with presents 
 than money, loved what was pretty rather than what was costly, 
 and prefered rarities before riches. Neatness he neglected into 
 slovingliness ; and, accounting cuffs to be manacles, he may be 
 said not to have made himself ready for some seven years together. 
 He made his humoursomnesse to become him, wherein some of his 
 profession have rather aped than imitated him, who had morosi- 
 tatem wquabilem, and kept the tenor of the same surliness to all 
 persons. He was a good Benefactor to Clare Hall ; and, dying 
 1621, he was buried in the Chancel of St. Marie's, under a fair 
 Monument. Mr. John Crane, that expert Apothecary, and his 
 Executour, is since buried by him ; and, if some eminent Surgeon 
 was interred on his other side, I would say, that Physick lay here 
 in state, with his two pages attending it." 
 
55 
 
 Mayerne did not come to England until after the death 
 of his patron, Henri Quatre, in 1610, so that Butler might 
 well have preceded him in promulgating the new opinions 
 of the chemical school, but the priority of the Englishman 
 could only have been that of a few years. 
 
 Although we may doubt whether Shakespeare intended 
 to represent the learned and wealthy Sir Theodore Mayerne, 
 Baron d' Aubonne, &c, under the ridiculous character of Dr. 
 Caius, there can be no mistake as to the physician named 
 in Henry VIII. 
 
 " Enter De. Butts. 
 Butts. This is a piece of malice : I am glad 
 
 I came this way so happily. The King 
 
 Shall understand it presently. [Exit.] 
 
 Granmer [aside], 'Tis Butts, 
 
 The King's physician ; as he passed along, 
 
 How earnestly he cast his eyes upon me ! 
 
 Pray Heaven he sound not my disgrace ! — 
 
 Enter at a Window above, the King and Butts. 
 Butts. I'll shew your Grace the strangest sight — 
 K. Henry. What's that Butts ?— 
 
 Butts. I think your Highness saw this many a day. 
 K. Henry. Body o'me where is it ? 
 Butts. There, my Lord : 
 
 The high promotion of his Grace of Canterbury ; 
 
 Who holds his state at door, 'mongst pursuivants, 
 
 Pages and footboys. 
 K. Henry. Ha ! 'tis he indeed, 
 
 Is this the honour they do one another ? 
 
 By Holy Mary, Butts, there's knavery : 
 
 Let them alone, and draw the curtain close ; 
 
 We shall hear more anon." Act v. Scene 2. 
 
 The man, who is here represented defeating for a time 
 the machinations of the detestable Gardiner, was Dr. William 
 Butte, who is noticed in the following terms by Goodall, 
 in the Epistle Dedicatory. 
 
56 
 
 " Dr. William Butte, Fellow of Gonville Hall, in Cambridge, and 
 Physician to King Henry VIII., was, Anno Domini 1529, admitted 
 into the College of Physicians. Upon which he was required to 
 subscribe to the due observation of the Statutes of the College, 
 and to give his promise to use his best endeavours for advancing 
 the honour and perpetuity thereof. He is mentioned by Bishops 
 Parkhurst and Fox with honour ; Ascham, in his Epistle Com- 
 mendatory to Dr. Wende, extols him highly, and the learned Dr. 
 Caius hath dedicated most of his books to him. His esteem was 
 such in the College of Physicians, that he is entered in the Annals 
 with the following character : ' Vir gravis ; eximia, literarum 
 cognitione, singulari judicio, summa, experientia, et prudenti con- 
 silio Dr.' He died in the reign of King Henry VIII., and lies 
 buried in Fulham Church, with this Inscription : ' Guil. Buttius, 
 Eg. Aur., et Medicus Begis Henry VIII., &c. Obit Novemb. 
 17, 1545/ &c." 
 
57 
 
 THE TEMPEST. 
 
 The passages having reference to medical subjects in this 
 play are mainly those which would be suggested by an aguish 
 district, * but they certainly indicate no precise knowledge 
 of aguish disease ; moreover the pinches and cramps so fre- 
 quently referred to as inflicted by Prospero's imps upon his 
 enemies, appear to be rather a part of the phantasmagoria of 
 the piece ; than intended to represent natural phenomenon. 
 Caliban's first curse breathes the poison of miasma, but in 
 form it must be owned more poetical than scientific. 
 
 " Gal. As wicked dew as e'er my mother brushed 
 With raven's feather from unwholesome fen, 
 Drop on you both ! a southwest blow on ye, 
 And blister you all o'er." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Again he says, 
 
 " All the infections that the sun sucks up 
 From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him 
 By inch-meal a disease." Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 The foul breath of the fen indeed pervades the country. 
 
 " Adrian. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. 
 
 Seb. As if it had limgs, and rotten ones ! 
 
 Ant. Or, as 'twere perfumed by a fen." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 Stephano refers the trembling of Caliban, really produced by 
 
 fear, to ague. 
 
 " He's in a fit now ; and does not talk after the wisest ; he shall 
 taste of my bottle. If he have never drunk wine afore, it will go 
 near to remove his fit." 
 
 " How now, moon-calf, how does thine ague ? " Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 The conspirators against Prospero are actually led into the 
 rotten fen, the emanations from which "overstink their feet;" 
 they emerge with the "nose in great indignation" at their 
 
58 
 
 own unsavoury plight, and as a climax to their distress, with 
 their bottles lost in the pool. 
 
 The punishments inflicted by Prospero upon his half-human 
 slave are half-medical, half-magical, and certainly do not re- 
 present a scientific description of aguish disease. 
 
 " Pros. For this be sure to-night thou shalt have cramps, 
 Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up." 
 
 " 111 rack thee with old cramps, 
 Fill all thy bones with aches." 
 
 " Go, charge my goblins that they grind their joints 
 With dry convulsions ; shorten up their sinews 
 With aged cramps ; and more pinch-spotted make them, 
 Than pard or cat o' the mountain." 
 
 " Gal. The dropsy drown this fool — let's alone, 
 And do the murder first. If he awake, 
 From toe to crown he'll fill our skin with pinches ; 
 Make us strange stuff." 
 
 " 0, touch me not ; I am not Stephano, but a cramp !" 
 
 Another train of medical thought in this drama has refer- 
 ence to insanity. The disease of the brain in this instance 
 is brought on by the magic art of Prospero, and therefore 
 affords no example of that natural development of mental 
 alienation of which such wondrous examples are represented 
 in so many other plays. It is remarkable that even here 
 mania should be described under two forms. Prospero, re- 
 ferring to the destruction produced by the storm, says, 
 
 " Who so firm, so constant, that this coil 
 Would not infect his reason ? 
 
 Ariel. Not a soul 
 
 But felt a fever of the mind, and played 
 Some tricks of desperation." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 At Prospero's command Ariel charms Alonzo, Sebastian > 
 and Antonio into madness. 
 
59 
 
 " Ariel. I have made you mad 
 
 And even with such-like valour, men hang and drown 
 Their proper selves." Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 The intention of suicide is expressed by Alonzo, that of des- 
 perate fight by the other two. The phrensy of Alonzo is also 
 distinguished by the fixed idea of his own guilt, and a state 
 resembling hallucination founded upon it. 
 
 " Alon. O, it is monstrous ! monstrous ! 
 Methought the billows spoke, and told me of it ; 
 The winds did sing it to me ; and the thunder, 
 That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronouno'd 
 The name of Prosper ; it did bass my trespass. 
 Therefore my son i' the ooze is bedded ; and 
 I'll seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, 
 And with him there lie mudded." Act iii. Scene 3. 
 
 This affords a beautiful example of the transition of absorb- 
 ing emotion into perverted sensation through the influence of 
 excited fancy, representing the lunatic of " imagination all 
 compact." It is the very opposite of matter of fact reason, 
 like the rebuke of the heroine's fancy in Sheridan's "Re- 
 hearsal." 
 
 fc The Spanish fleet thou canst not see, because 
 It is not yet in sight." 
 
 Gonzalo has a remarkable observation on the madness of the 
 
 three princes. 
 
 " All three of them are desperate ; their great guilt, 
 
 Like poison given to work a great time after, 
 
 Now 'gins to bite the spirits : — I do beseech you, 
 
 That are of suppler joints, follow them swiftly, 
 
 And hinder them from what this ecstacy 
 
 May now provoke them to." Act iii. Scene 3. 
 
 This distraction is removed from the brains of the three 
 
 princes by the charm of music, which Prospero calls, for the 
 
 purpose of chasing "the ignorant fumes that mantle their 
 
 clearer reason." 
 
60 
 
 The invocation to this music is couched in the following 
 
 pathological language. 
 
 " A solomn air and the best comforter 
 To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains 
 Now useless, boiled within thy skull ! " 
 
 When Alonzo recovers from the magic madness, and the 
 tide of understanding once more "fills the reasonable shores 
 that lay foul and muddy," he cannot at first make out whether 
 Prospero is not some " enchanted trifle," but he determines on 
 his reality on medical grounds, " thy pulse beats as of flesh and 
 blood." There are two or three passages of physiological sig- 
 nificance, independent of the leading train of thought on ague 
 and madness. Ferdinand replies to Prospero's caution, that 
 " strongest oaths are straw to the fire o' the blood," 
 
 " The white, cold, virgin snow upon my heart 
 
 Abates the ardour of my liver." Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 Gonzalo, referring to Sebastian's unfeeling speech to the 
 king on the supposed loss of his son, says 
 
 " The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness 
 And time to speak it in ; you rub the sore 
 When you should bring the plaster. 
 
 Ant. And most chirurgeonly." Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The same cool-headed old lord comments upon the strange 
 
 appearance of the imps that had brought the magic banquet, 
 
 by reference to the real monstrosities of human nature. 
 
 " Qon. Faith, Sir, you need not fear : When we were boys, 
 Who would believe that there were mountaineers 
 Dew-lapp'd like bulls, whose throats had hanging at them 
 Wallets of flesh ? Or that there were such men 
 "Whose heads stood in their breasts ? which now we find, 
 Each puttter-out of five for one will bring us 
 G-ood warrant of." Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 Shakespeare had, perhaps, the authority of some legend 
 for the assertion, that there were men whose " heads stood in 
 
61 
 
 their breasts." (See Othello, Act i. Scene 3.) Ambrose 
 Pars' describes and depicts infant monsters of this kind, but 
 Shakespeare may only refer to the effect produced by forward 
 curvature of the spine, in which the head appears to be 
 set below the shoulders. The mountaineers with wallets 
 of flesh at their throats were, without doubt, subjects of 
 goitre, who abound in mountainous districts. 
 
 TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. 
 
 After Speed has given to Valentine his ludicrous description 
 of a lover, in which, among other signs, are "to walk alone 
 like one that had the pestilence," and "to fast like one 
 that takes diet," the following quibble takes place upon the 
 within and the without of the symptoms. 
 
 " Val. Are all these things perceived in me ? 
 
 Speed. They are all perceived without ye. 
 
 Val. Without me they cannot. 
 
 Speed. Without you ? Nay, that's certain, for without you 
 were so simple, none else would ; but you are so without these 
 follies, that these follies are within you, and shine through you 
 like the water in an urinal, that not an eye that sees you hut 
 is a physician to comment on your malady." Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The singular pretence, to which these passages refer, of re- 
 cognizing diseases, by the mere inspection of the urine, is 
 alleged to have arisen, like the barber surgery, from the 
 ecclesiastical interdicts upon the medical vocations of the 
 clergy ; priests and monks being unable to visit their former 
 patients are said first to have resorted to the expedient of 
 divining the malady, and directing the treatment, upon simple 
 
62 
 
 inspection of the urine. However this may be, the practice 
 is of very ancient date. Richardus Anglicus, the earliest of 
 English Physicians, who flourished about the year 1230, left 
 two works on the subject, A Tractate of Urines, and a 
 work On the Mules of Urines. The uncertain and preten- 
 tious nature of medical opinions founded upon this basis was 
 also recognized in early times. Thus Fuller speaking of Robert 
 Recorde, a physician of Oxford 1550, whose "soul did not live 
 in the lane of a single science, but traversed the latitude of 
 learning," says that he wrote " Of the Judgments of Urines; 
 and though it be commonly said urina meretrix, yet his judi- 
 cious rules have reduced that harlot to honesty, and in a 
 great measure fixed the uncertainty thereof." 
 
 We learn from Dr. Harris' Pharmacohgia Anti-lSmpirica, 
 1683, that the illustrious founder of the College of Physicians 
 set his face against this quackery then so much in vogue. 
 
 " Nor have mountebanks on stages been the only physical im- 
 postors ; there have been as bad a race of deluders, both men and 
 women, who will, or have, undertaken to tell all things from the 
 urine, and the poor people who hardly know them, quid distant cera 
 lupitiis, are throughly convinced of their skill, by some cunning 
 stratagem or other. 
 
 " Linacer, a famous physician who lived in the time of Henry the 
 Eighth, was even then so concerned at the ridiculous humour of 
 nurses and other women, who upon every ailment, both great and 
 small, were too ready to carry about the patient's urine, expecting 
 they should be told all things from the mere speculation of it, 
 would often advise them in ridicule, to bring the patient's shoe 
 instead of the urine, and he would prophesie full as well over that. 
 Nay, further, there were a sort of knaves in his days, who, con- 
 sidering how well the vulgar would relish anything of novelty, 
 though never so absurd, would undertake to make discoveries of 
 diseases from the smell of the patient's shoe, as solemnly and 
 seriously as others from the urine." 
 
 The same author refers to an old statute of the College 
 itself, in which water-casting was denounced as belonging to 
 
63 
 
 tricksters and impostors, and any member of the College was 
 forbidden to give advice upon the mere inspection of the urine 
 without he also saw the patient. The statute of the College 
 runs thus, 
 
 " Statuvmus, et ordinamus, ut nemo, sive socius, sive candidatus, 
 sive permissus consilii quidqucm impertiat veteratoriis, et im- 
 postoribus, super urinarum nuda inspectione, nisi simul ad, wgrum 
 vocetur, ut ibidem, pro re natu, idonea medicamenta ab honesto 
 aliguo PTiarmacopola componenda prcescribat." 
 
 The same rule is practically laid down in the excellent work 
 on Medical Politics by Forestus, who, in his chapter " Be 
 Uromantia sive Inspectione Urinarum ; plures agyrtarwm 
 fraudes, et vulgi errores deteguntur," insists that the signs 
 of the urine must be studied in conjunction with those of the 
 pulse, " Urinse fraudes aperit discretio pulsus," which, as the 
 pulse cannot be felt without the presence of the patient, comes 
 to much the same thing as the rule of the College. Forestus 
 condemns the practice of water-casting, as, in his opinion, 
 altogether evil, and expresses an earnest desire that medical 
 men would combine to repress it ; but recognizing the difficulty 
 of persuading men to act in concert uprightly, he adopts the 
 middle course of advising them to act prudently, and so to 
 deal with this fallax nuncius as to derive either from revela- 
 tions ingeniously extorted from the persons who brought it, or 
 from the appearance of the excretion itself, some indications of 
 the disease which may exist. The custom which he ridicules 
 had, he acknowledges, become so rooted, and practised even by 
 learned physicians, that it appeared necessary to yield to 
 the errors and prejudices of the public. Quia mundus decipi, 
 gaudet decvpiatur, is his maxim ; and his cautions and direc- 
 tions, as might be expected, contain more craft than science. 
 But it is very evident from his pages that the old physicians, 
 
64 
 
 while pretending to knowledge they did not possess, had need 
 of all their cunning to prevent themselves from becoming the 
 dupes of their dupes. Thus Forestus, having told his readers 
 what were the probable ailments of " mulierculas subridentes, 
 aut pudore quodammodo suffusse," proceeds to explain how 
 various attempted frauds are to be detected, how wine or any- 
 other liquor, or the urine of cattle is to be recognized when 
 used to deceive the water-caster. The need of the latter 
 diagnosis may be illustrated, by what Primrose calls, " a merry 
 story." " A certain maid did carry her mistress's urine to a 
 physician, and having by chance spilled it, not knowing what 
 to doe, she catched the urine of a cow, which at that time by 
 good hap staled, and carried it to the physician : he gave 
 answer that the patient did eat too many salletts." 
 
 Forestus also gives some stories on this subject which were 
 thought droll in those days. The following shews one use of 
 botany. A noble lady wishing to deceive a physician, cele- 
 brated for his skill in water-casting, took to him the urine of a 
 sick farmer ; the physician, suspecting deceit from the lady's 
 arch look, and observing that the jug was stoppered with a 
 herb which grew in a certain spot, said, while he poured the 
 urine from the poculum to the matula, This belongs to some 
 rustic not of this town, but of the country through such a 
 gate ; and thus astonishing his visitor, he easily got from her 
 an account of the disease, and obtained her great admiration 
 of his skill. 
 
 The glass matula, or male urinal, as distinguished from the 
 scaphum, was the vessel in which the fluid was examined. 
 It is to this that Dr. Gideon Harvey so quaintly describes the 
 physician as "giving the round toss" to make the sediment 
 subside ; it is this which, in the painting of the old Dutch 
 
65 
 
 master, is held against the light by the grave-lookiDg charla- 
 tan, whose fair client, with form expressing her real ailment, 
 stands bashfully by; and this is the urinal through which 
 Speed supposes that all Valentine's symptoms are so trans- 
 parently visible. 
 
 " Val. O, flatter me ; for love delights in praises." 
 Pro. When I was sick you gave me bitter pills ; 
 And I must minister the like to you." Act ii., Scene 4. 
 
 " Pro. Even as one heat another heat expels, or as one nail by 
 strength drives out another." Ibid. 
 
 This notion of one heat driving out another has a parallel 
 in a passage in King John. 
 
 " And falsehood, falsehood cures, as fire cures fire 
 Within the scorch'd veins of one new burned." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 The idea appears to be formed upon an old-fashioned 
 custom of approaching a burnb part to the fire, to drive out 
 the fire, as it is said ; a practice certainly not without 
 benefit, acting on the same principle as the application 
 of turpentine and other stimulants to recent burns. 
 
 " The private wound is deepest ; time most accurs'd ! 
 ' Mongst all foes, that a friend should be the worst." 
 
 Act v., Scene 4. 
 
 Probably a reference to the well-known surgical fact that 
 such stabbing wounds as would be given by assassins are of 
 the deepest and most dangerous kind. 
 
66 
 
 MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR. 
 
 The character in this play of " Master Caius, that 
 calls himself doctor of physic," has been supposed to 
 have been intended to represent Sir Theodore Mayerne ; but 
 upon what grounds the opinion has been formed that the 
 learned, noble, and wealthy Frenchman sat for this cari- 
 cature does not appear, beyond the fact that both pos- 
 sessed a common calling and country. Dr. Caius, whom 
 Dame Quickly designates a combination " of fool and 
 physician," plays no medical role. The mischievous host 
 does, indeed, refer to him as practising his profession. 
 
 " Shall I lose my doctor ? no ; he gives me the potions, and the 
 motions." Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 But in truth he is merely a comic counterpart to the Welsh 
 parson, the two being made to murder the Queen's English 
 in different jargons. 
 
 Falstaff, in his coarse love-making to Mistress Ford, makes 
 a reference not only to the herbalism of those days, but to the 
 place where the herbs were sold, as he might now refer to 
 Covent Garden. 
 
 " Come, I cannot cog, and say thou art this and that, like many 
 of these lisping hawthorn buds, that come like women in men's 
 apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 After Falstaff has been packed in the bucking basket, Mrs. 
 Page plots more tricks upon him, expressing her opinion that 
 
 " His dissolute disease will scarce obey this medicine." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
67 
 
 Sir John, however, who has been cooled with his bucking and 
 his ducking, calls for the appropriate antidote. 
 
 " Fal. Come let me pour some sack to the Thames water ; for 
 my belly's as cold as if I had swallowed snow-halls for pills to cool 
 the reins." Act iii., Scene 5. 
 
 Falstaff in the forest with the two merry wives invokes 
 
 the virtues of aphrodisiacs. 
 
 " Let the sky rain potatoes ; let it thunder to the tune of green- 
 sleeves ; hail kissing-eomfits #,nd snow eringoes ; let there be a 
 tempest of provocation, I will shelter me here." Act v., Scene 5. 
 
 This potatoe must not be supposed to mean the now 
 common esculent. Dr. Paris, in the work before quoted, 
 comments upon this speech of Falstaff's with the remark* 
 that " our potatoe (solanum tuberosum) when it was first 
 imported into England by the colonists in the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth, gained its appellation from its supposed resemblance 
 to an esculent vegetable at that time in common use, under 
 the name of the sweet polatoe (convolvulus battatus), and 
 which like eringo root had the reputation to be able to restore 
 decayed vigour." Gerard in his Herbal, 1597, denominates it 
 (our potatoe) by way of distinction, from the potatoe of 
 Virginia, and recommends it to be eaten as a delicate dish, 
 not as common food. The eringo, or sea holly, according to 
 Salmon, " is very white, and is commonly made into confects 
 and candies." It is enumerated among the remedies given 
 by Dr. Hall to his wife. 
 
 " Nym. I will incense Ford to deal with poison : I will possess 
 him with yellowness, for the revolt of mien is dangerous." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 Reference here appears to be made to jaundice as the effect of 
 
 splenetic humour, an idea more definitely expressed in the 
 
 Merchant of Venice. 
 
 F 1 
 
68 
 
 When the sham duel between Dr. Cams and Evans is 
 the jest of the moment, the host says to the latter, 
 
 " What says my Esculapius ? My Galen ? My heart of elder ? 
 Ah, is he dead, bully Stale ? Is he dead ? " 
 "Thou art a Castilian, king Urinal." 
 "Ah, Monsieur Mock-water." Act ii, Scene 3. 
 
 " Evans. I will knog his urinals about his knave's eostard, when 
 I have good opportunities for the work." Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 The urinal is thus made the frequent subject of coarse 
 jest, probably because the poet saw through the shallow 
 pretension of its medical use. Does Stale here mean urine, 
 as in Anthony and Cleopatra, "Didst drink the stale of 
 horses ? " 
 
 Chaucer mentions the urinals as something medical, in 
 
 mine host's comments upon the tale of the Doctour of Physick. 
 
 " I pray to God to save thy gentle eorce, 
 , And thy urinalles, and thy jordanis, 
 
 Thine ypocras, and eke thy galianis, 
 
 And every boxe of letuarie. 
 
 God blesse 'hem and our Lady Saint Marie." 
 
 MEASURE FOR MEASURE. 
 
 In writing this play, the mental bias of the medical pro- 
 fession to indifference respecting death had certainly no hold 
 upon the poet ; for the various points of view in which death 
 may be contemplated, form the philosophy of the piece. The 
 brutal indifference of Barnardine is exactly like that of 
 a character delineated with great analytic power in 
 " Barnaby Rudge," and in which the able author appears 
 to direct all his force to prove the immense difference of 
 
69 
 
 the same punishment acting on different organizations, and 
 the consequent injustice of inflicting, for the same crime, that 
 which to one man is no punishment whatever, and to another 
 is the most fearful torture. Barnardine, like Barnaby, is 
 
 " A man that apprehends death no more dreadfully, but as a 
 drunken sleep ; careless, reckless, and fearless of what's past, 
 present, or to come ; insensible of mortality, and desperately 
 mortal." Act iv., Scene 2. 
 
 To Claudio, on the other hand, the apprehension of death is 
 fearful torture. The active fancy, which might have made 
 him brave in the battle-field, lacerates him with horrible 
 thoughts in the condemned cell ; and it is to no purpose that 
 his self-centred sister encourages him to believe that, 
 
 " The sense of death is most in apprehension ; 
 And the poor beetle, that we tread upon 
 In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great 
 As when a giant dies." Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 This physiological opinion would scarcely be supported by 
 modern science, which teaches that the corporeal sufferings of 
 death must be great or small in proportion to the develop- 
 ment of the sentient centre of the system, this develop- 
 ment being great or small in proportion to the rank of the 
 animal. Size has little to do with pain, compared with the 
 influence of a high degree of cerebral organization. 
 
 Claudio's agony, however, arises, not from fear of the 
 pain of death, but from that of the conditions of the future 
 existence ; seizing upon the thought that he may be among 
 those " that lawless and uncertain thoughts imagine howl- 
 ing," fear debases him into abject meanness. He would 
 readily sacrifice his sister's honour to avoid this terror and 
 it is, therefore, not surprising that he derives little comfort 
 from the Duke's picture of the miseries of life. It is not 
 
70 
 
 the present life which he clings to, but the unknown horrors 
 of the future which he dreads. The Duke's description 
 of life is, perhaps, the most sombre picture in all the Plays ; 
 deeper in its shades than those of ' Hamlet ' or ' Jaques,' 
 more general than those of ' Lear ;' it indicates moreover 
 a peculiar medical and physiological tendency of thought, 
 and as such we shall quote it. 
 
 " Duke. So, then you hope of pardon from lord Angelo ? 
 
 Claud. The miserable have no other medicine, 
 But only hope : 
 I have hope to live, and am prepar'd to die. 
 
 Duke. Be absolute for death ; either death, or life, 
 Shall thereby he the sweeter. Reason thus with life : — 
 If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing 
 That none but fools would keep : a breath thou art, 
 (Servile to all the skiey influences,) 
 That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, 
 Hourly afflict : merely, thou art death's fool ; 
 For him thou labour' st by thy flight to shun, 
 And yet runn'st toward him still : Thou art not noble ; 
 For all the accommodations that thou hear'st, 
 Are nurs'd by baseness : thou art by no means valiant ; 
 For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork 
 Of a poor worm : Thy best of rest is sleep, 
 And that thou oft provok'st ; yet grossly fear'st 
 Thy death, which is no more. Thou art not thyself; 
 For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains 
 That issue out of dust : Happy thou art not ; 
 For what thou hast not still thou striv'st to get ; 
 And what thou hast, forget'st : Thou art not certain ; 
 For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, 
 After the moon : if thou art rich, thou art poor ; 
 For, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, 
 Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, 
 And death unloads thee : Friend hast thou none : 
 For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, 
 The mere effusion of thy proper loins, 
 Do curse the gout, serpigo, and the rheum, 
 For ending thee no sooner : Thou hast no youth, nor age ; 
 But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, 
 Dreaming on both ; for all thy blessed youth 
 Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms 
 Of palsied eld ; and when thou art old, and rich, 
 
71 
 
 Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, 
 
 To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in this, 
 
 That bears the name of life ? Yet in this life 
 
 Lie hid more thousand deaths ; yet death we fear, 
 
 That makes these odds all even." Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 The afflictions of the body produced by the influences of 
 the weather and climate — the baseness of the functions of 
 animal life — the contemptible means by which it is often 
 destroyed — the similitude of death to sleep — the dependence 
 of life upon food issuing from the dust — the uncertainty of 
 temperament — the desires of indigent youth — and the apathy 
 of palsied eld when riches are abundant — indicate a turn 
 of thought to which the physiological infirmities of man 
 were a familiar subject. 
 
 " The gout, serpigo, and the rheum," form a singular 
 trio, as diseases peculiarly fatal to age. The three words 
 fall well into the cadence of the line, which is, perhaps, 
 all that Shakespeare thought of when he strung them to- 
 gether. It must, however, be remarked that neither one of 
 them represents a form of disease generally supposed to be 
 fatal. The serpigo, a skin disease, is indeed never fatal. 
 The rheum, in Shakespeare's time, sometimes meant mere 
 humours from the nose and eyes ; sometimes the more 
 serious symptoms of watery expectoration, common enough 
 from the emphasematous lungs of old men, and there- 
 fore often a fatal symptom. Gout is not usually supposed 
 to be a fatal disorder. " Gout in the spring, is physick for 
 a king," says the old proverb. Insurance societies, how- 
 ever, tell a different tale. Still Shakespeare's learned 
 contemporary ' Montaigne,' whose works he is known to have 
 availed himself of, thus refers to gout as a disease not mortal. 
 " All ills that carry no other danger along with them, but 
 
72 
 
 simply the evils themselves, we despise as things of no 
 danger." " The tooth-ache or the gout, painful as they are, 
 yet being not reputed mortal, who reckons them in the 
 catalogue of diseases ?" 
 
 In the early part of the play, Act i. Scene 2, is a conver- 
 sation between some licentious young men, in which allusion 
 is made, either to piles (hcemorrhoids), or to baldness produced 
 by lues venerea ; also to a venereal disease of the bones, and 
 to a French crown, which from the context is evidently a 
 quibbling reference to some form of disease. In the fine 
 quarto edition of the plays, Oxford, 1744, I find two notes on 
 this passage, 1st, that the 3000 dollars is a quibble upon the 
 word dolours, and 2nd, that a French crown " alludes to the 
 venereal scab upon the head, called corona veneris." 
 
 " 1st Gent. And thou the velvet : thou art good velvet : thou 
 art a three-piled piece, I warrant thee : I had as lief be a list of an 
 English kersey, as be piled, as thou art piled, for a French velvet. 
 Do I speak feelingly now ? 
 
 Lucio. I think thou dost ; and, indeed, with most painful feel- 
 ing of thy speech : I will, out of thine own confession, learn to 
 begin thy health ; but, whilst I live, forget to drink after thee. 
 
 1st Gent. I think I have done myself wrong, have I not ? 
 
 2nd Gent. Yes, that thou hast ; whether thou art tainted, or 
 free. 
 
 Lucio. Behold, behold, where Madam Mitigation comes ! I 
 have purchased as many diseases under her roof, as come to — ■ 
 
 2nd Gent. To what, I pray ? 
 
 1st Gent. Judge. 
 
 2nd Gent. To three thousand dollars a year. 
 
 1st Gent. Ay, and more. 
 
 Lucio. A French crown more. 
 
 1st Gent, Thou art always figuring diseases in me : But thou 
 art full of error ; I am sound. 
 
 Lucio. Nay, not as one would say, healthy ; but so sound as 
 things that are hollow : thy bones are hollow ; impiety has made 
 a feast of thee. 
 
 SJEnter Bawd. 
 
 1st Gent. How now ? Which of your hips has the most pro- 
 found sciatica ? " Act i., Scene 2, 
 
73 
 
 The treatment of the venereal disease by diet is referred 
 to further on in this play, and also in Timon of Athens, 
 under the name of "the tub diet." 
 
 " Clown. Why very well : I telling you then, if you be remem- 
 bered, that such an one, and such an one, were past cure of the 
 thing you wot of, unless they kept very good diet, as I told you." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 A surgeon would make the following distinction — 
 
 " Let us be keen, and rather cut a Uttle, 
 Than fall, and bruise to death." Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 When Isabel applies to the hypocrite Angelo for pardon, 
 she argues that the fault which appears so great in her brother 
 might be overlooked in those yielding authority to punish ; an 
 opinion she illustrates by a medical simile, like that which 
 Hamlet uses to his mother when he warns her against ex- 
 cuses, which would but " skin and film the ulcerous place " of 
 her soul. 
 
 " Ang. Why do you put these sayings upon me ? 
 
 Isa. Because authority, though it err like others, 
 Hath yet a kind of medicine in itself, 
 That skins the vice o' the top." Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 The flow of the blood is very distinctly recognized in the 
 
 following : 
 
 " Lord Angelo is precise ; 
 Stands at a guard with envy ; scarce confesses 
 That his blood flows, or that his appetite 
 Is more to bread than stone — " Act i., Scene 4. 
 
 In the next scene this supposed absence of all desire is not 
 only referred to coldness of the blood and to torpidity of sense, 
 but the best means by which it may be acquired, are stated 
 with more than scientific brevity. 
 
74 
 
 " A man whose blood 
 Is very snow-broth ; one who never feels 
 The wanton stings and motions of the sense ; 
 But doth rebate and blunt his natural edge 
 With profits of the mind, study and fast." Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 Angelo's soliloquy, when he contemplates the seduction of 
 Isabel, or rather the base sale of his mercy for her honour, 
 contains a wonderful example of physiological insight. 
 
 " Ang. O heavens ! 
 
 Why does my blood thus muster to my heart, 
 Making both it unable for itself, 
 And dispossessing all my other parts 
 Of necessary fitness ? 
 
 So play the foolish throngs with one that swoons ; 
 Come all to help him, and so stop the air 
 By which he should revive : and even so 
 The general, subject to a well-wish'd king, 
 Quit their own part, and in obsequious fondness 
 Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love 
 Must needs appear offence." Act ii., Scene 4. 
 
 This mustering of the blood to the heart is referred to by 
 Warwick, in describing the death of John of Gaunt ; it is 
 perfectly in accordance with modern physiological science, and 
 when it is remembered that in Shakespeare's time the circu- 
 lation of the blood, and even the relation of the heart to the 
 blood, was yet undiscovered, the passage is in every way 
 remarkable. The first simile of the oppressed heart to one 
 that swoons, surrounded by an anxious crowd, excluding the 
 vivifying air, is one which, however true to nature and to fact, 
 would scarcely suggest itself, except to a mind imbued with 
 medical thought. The second simile, likening the heart 
 to a king, and the blood to his subjects, is somewhat more 
 strained, yet fairly consistent with fact. 
 
75 
 
 COMEDY OF ERRORS. 
 
 One can only surmise whether, in the following passage, 
 
 Mgeon refers to the faintness which attends the period of 
 
 quickening, or to the exhaustion of parturition. If to the 
 
 former, it is remarkable that the time mentioned, 'not six 
 
 months', is made to correspond with the proper time for the 
 
 physiological event. 
 
 " Drew me from kind embracements of my spouse : 
 From whom my absence was not six months old, 
 Before herself (almost at fainting under 
 The pleasing punishment that women bear,) 
 Had made provision for her following me, 
 And soon, and safe, arrived where I was. 
 There she had not been long, but she became 
 A joyful mother of two goodly sons." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 Are the articles mentioned by Dromio of Syracuse part of 
 
 the medical stores of the ship which is "in her trim," and 
 
 ready to sail 1 
 
 " Our fraughtage, Sir, 
 I have convey'd aboard ; and I have bought 
 The oil, the balsamum, and aqua-vitae." Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 The following use of the word 'illusion,' as applied to a 
 
 deception of the senses, in which one thing is mistaken for 
 
 another, is strictly in accordance with its modern scientific 
 
 use. Shakespeare, however, does not use the words ' delusion' 
 
 and ' hallucination' by which the narrow sense of ' illusion ' 
 
 is now complemented. 
 
 " Antvpholus S. The fellow is distract, and so am I ; 
 And here we wander in illusions." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 The facial expression of mania, sharp-featured, fiery-eyed, 
 
76 
 
 pale and haggard, is correctly touched on, even by the con- 
 juror and the courtezan. 
 
 " Luciano,. Alas, how fiery and how sharp he looks ! 
 Cour. Mark, how he trembles in his extasy ! 
 Pinch. Give me your hand, and let me feel your pulse." 
 
 " Pinch. Mistress, both man and master is possess'd ; 
 I know it by their pale and deadly looks : 
 They must be bound, and laid in some dark room." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 The excellent account of the causation of melancholia by 
 domestic trouble, given by the Abbess, could scarcely be im- 
 proved upon even by the science of the present day. Dis- 
 comfort, disturbed meals, indigestion, loss of recreation, loss 
 of sleep followed by active disease, present a picture of medi- 
 cal etiology drawn with more knowledge than most members 
 even of the profession of medicine could themselves display, 
 and indicating that which is sufficiently apparent from many 
 other passages in his works, that Shakespeare had paid es- 
 pecial attention to the physiology of mental diseases. 
 
 " Abbess. And therefore came it, that the man was mad : 
 The venom clamours of a jealous woman 
 Poison more deadly than a mad dog's tooth. 
 It seems, his sleeps were hinder'd by thy railing : 
 And thereof comes it, that his head is light. 
 Thou say'st, his meat was sauc'd with thy upbraidings : 
 Unquiet meals make ill digestions, 
 Thereof the raging fire of fever bred ; 
 And what's a fever hut a fit of madness ? 
 Thou say'st, his sports were hinder'd by thy brawls : 
 Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue 
 But moody and dull melancholy, 
 Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair, 
 And, at her heels, a huge infectious troop 
 Of pale distemperatures, and foes to life ? 
 In food, in sport, in life-preserving rest 
 To be disturb'd, would mad or man or beast : 
 The consequence is then, thy jealous fits 
 Have scar'd thy husband from the use of wits." Act v., Sc. 1. 
 
 This medical and most commendable Abbess not only traces 
 
77 
 
 the causation of disease, but undertakes its cure. Adriana 
 demands permission to nurse her husband and "diet his sick- 
 ness ;" but the dear old Abbess keeps the jealous wife where 
 she ought to be, out of tongue shot, and promises more active 
 measures than diet. She promises prayers also ; but in the 
 spirit of the injunction to "trust in the Lord and keep your 
 powder dry," she prefaces their use with that of syrups and 
 drugs. The monkish physic of the middle ages was practised 
 by religious orders of both sexes : indeed, it seems primarily 
 to have belonged to the women, in the times when every 
 educated lady was a leech. 
 
 " Abb. Be patient ; for I will not let him stir, 
 Till I have us'd the approv'd means I have, 
 With wholesome syrups, drugs, and holy prayers 
 To make of him a formal man again : 
 It is a hranch and parcel of mine oath, 
 A charitable duty of my order : 
 Therefore depart, and leave him here with me." 
 
 Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 iEgeon's account of the infirmities of feebleness — age a 
 
 second time cracking the tone of voice, the hair grey from 
 
 the want of sap, the ears deaf from the dullness of sense — 
 
 contains yet another reference to the flow of the blood. The 
 
 " conduits of the blood froze up," is a kind of physiological 
 
 poetry which we may look in vain for elsewhere. 
 
 " Mgeon. Not know my voice ! 0, time's extremity ! 
 Hast thou so crack'd and splitted my poor tongue, 
 In seven short years, that here my only son 
 Knows not my feeble key of untun'd cares ? 
 Though now this grained face of mine be hid 
 In sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow, 
 And all the conduits of my blood froze up ; 
 Yet hath my night of life some memory, 
 My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left, 
 My dull deaf ears a little use to hear : 
 All these old witnesses (I cannot err,) 
 Tell me, thou art my son Antipholus." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
78 
 
 LOVE'S LABOUR LOST. 
 
 The first medical passage in this play is a prescription of 
 
 phlebotomy. 
 
 " Rosaline. Is the fool sick ? 
 Biron. Sick at the heart. 
 Ros. Alack, let it blood. 
 Biron. Would that do it good ? 
 Ros. My physic says, ay. 
 Biron. Will you prick't with your eye ? 
 Ros. No poynt, with my knife. Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 A quibble on the French negative. The next quotation also 
 which belongs to our subject is a quibble on another French 
 word not quite so intelligible. The prescription of a plantain 
 for a broken shin is also given in Romeo and Juliet, in which 
 "your plantain leaf" is pronounced excellent "for your broken 
 shin," Plantain water was a remedy in common use with 
 the old surgeons. [Woodall's Surgeon's Mate, p. 42, 184.] 
 
 " Moth. A wonder, master ; here's a Costard broken in a shin. 
 Arinado. Some enigma, some riddle : come, thy V envoy ; begin. 
 Cost. No egma, no riddle, no V envoy ; no salve in them all, 
 Sir : Sir, plantain, a plain plantain ; no V envoy, no V envoy, no 
 salve, Sir, but a plantain ! 
 
 Arm. By virtue, thou enforcest laughter ; thy silly thought, 
 my spleen ; the heaving of my lungs provokes me to ridiculous 
 smiling : pardon me, my stars ! Doth the inconsiderate take 
 salve for V envoy, and the word Venvoy for a salve ?" Act iii., Sc. 1. 
 
 The following quotation is anatomical, referring mental 
 operations not merely to the brain, but to special parts of it 
 which are indicated by technical terms. Rabelais frequently 
 refers thought not to the brain at large, but to the ventricles 
 
79 
 
 of the brain. Here is the old opinion definitely expressed. 
 " It was believed that the three principal faculties of the 
 mind, the understanding, the imagination, and the memory, 
 resided in the different ventricles of the brain ; the imagina- 
 tion having its seat in the fore part, the memory in the hinder 
 cell, and the judgment or understanding in the middle." 
 — Hakewill. 
 
 Shakespeare, in at least two other passages, places the pia 
 mater for the whole brain ; a part for the whole, as one 
 would speak of a ship as 'a sail.' 
 
 The pia mater is no part of the brain substance, but 
 the vascular membrane by which the brain proper is closely 
 invested, and from which it is mainly nourished. That part of 
 the brain especially, which modern science indicates as the 
 organ of thought, namely, the grey substance of the cerebral 
 convolutions, is in immediate contact with the pia mater, 
 and deiives all its nourishment therefrom. 
 
 The pia mater, therefore, is in very much the same anato- 
 mical relation to that portion of the brain in which thought 
 is located, as the womb is to the embryo, and Shakespeare's 
 assertion that the pia mater is the womb which nourishes 
 thought is therefore in strict accordance with modern phy- 
 siology. It is only, however, within a quite recent date that 
 these views, localising thought in the grey substance of the 
 convolutions, have been established or indeed suggested, and 
 therefore the full truth of this remarkable expression must be 
 accepted only as a happy accident. 
 
 " Holof ernes. This is a gift that I have, simple, simple; a foolish 
 extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, ap- 
 prehensions, motions, revolutions : these are begot in the ventricle 
 of memory nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered 
 upon Hie mellowing of occasion." Act iv., Scene 2. 
 
80 
 
 The foldings of the brain are used in the same general 
 sense for the brain itself even by modern poets ; thus Shelley 
 says of conscience 
 
 " They say that sleep, most healing dew of Heaven, 
 Steeps not in balm the foldings of the brain 
 "Which thinks thee an impostor." 
 
 In the same scene, Holofernes makes use of a technical 
 term of pharmacy, 
 
 " Twice sod simplicity, bis coctus." 
 
 If thought is generated within the foldings of the pia 
 
 mater, one, at least, of the passions also, is in the following 
 
 passage, supposed to make its way through the brain to 
 
 the other organs of the body. Some looseness of expression 
 
 in the use of the word ' power,' is here observable, as if there 
 
 were a function of a power. In other passages Shakespeare 
 
 uses the proper word ' organ,' which he has missed here, with 
 
 scientific strictness. 
 
 " But love, first learned in a lady's eyes, 
 Lives not alone immured in the brain ; 
 But with the motion of all elements, 
 Courses as swift as thought in every power ; 
 And gives to every power a double power, 
 Above their functions and their offices." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 When Biron and Boyet are making ridiculous comparisons 
 on the countenance of Holofernes, which he asserts he will 
 not be put out of; the one suggests that it should be put in 
 " a brooch of lead." Biron adds, " Aye, and worn in the 
 cap of a tooth-drawer." This appears to refer to some old 
 dentist practice of which we now have not the key. 
 
 The mind of the dramatist seems rather to have run 
 upon blood-letting in this play ; for in the following quotation 
 he expresses, not only the humoral pathology of fever, and 
 
81 
 
 prescribes its antiphlogistic treatment, but alludes to a custom 
 of the phlebotomists of the old time. 
 
 " Dimiain. I would forget her ; but a fever she 
 Reigns in my blood, and will remember'd be. 
 
 Biron. A fever in your blood ! why, then incision 
 Would let her out in saucers : Sweet misprision !" Act iv., Sc. 3. 
 
 Here is a passage from the works of a surgeon contem- 
 porary with the poet, fully illustrating the custom and 
 its ratioTUile of letting out blood in saucers, or, as they are 
 here called, porringers. 
 
 " Of the Blood Porringers. Blood Porringers are necessary at 
 sea, to be more certaine of the quantity of blood which is let ; for 
 since the blood of man is so precious, it is to be well weighed what 
 quantitie is taken. The German surgeons do always let blood in a 
 bason, yet I hold it not good for the Surgeon's mate to imitate 
 at first, except he be of good judgment indeed, to judge of the 
 quantity. The Blood Porringers which are made for that purpose 
 being full, hold just three ounces, and somewhat more. Por my 
 owne practise I hold this course ; if one chance to come to me of 
 himselfe, or by advice of a Physician to be let blood, though he 
 have a strong body I never take from him more than two porringers 
 and a halfe, but often lesse. If the partie be not strong, except in 
 the case of a pleurisie or some like urgent cause, I take lesse. For 
 in that work except my reason give me good satisfaction to doe the 
 the contrary, I will rather offend in too little, than in too much 
 taking of blood away; for I have seen much hurt to have ensued by 
 great quantity of blood taken away at one time : 7 or 8 ounces, I 
 hold, a strong body may beare to lose, having good nourishment to 
 recover it againe, and that without harme : but if you grow to 10 
 ounces you may many waies doe harm in the body, except your 
 warrant be good. I speake this not to discourage young Surgeons 
 from a worke so behovefull, but admonish them to warinesse in a 
 point so dangerous." — WoodalVs Surgeon's Mate, p. 23. 
 
 In numercms passages, Shakespeare refers the cause of 
 
 disease to surfeiting, but in the following he attributes it to 
 
 abstinence, and to the less power of enduring abstinence 
 
 which is possessed by the young. 
 
 " Say, can you fast ? your stomachs are too young ; 
 And abstinence engenders maladies." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 Here is black letter authority quoting still older authority 
 
 for this opinion. 
 
 " Hipocrates saythe, old menne maye susteyne fastynge easyly, 
 nexte unto theym, menne of myddeil age, yonge menne maye wars 
 beare it, chylderne warst of all, specially they that be lustye, not 
 withstandynge here G-alene corrected Hipocrates, sayenge, that he 
 shulde have excepted menne very olde, who. as experyence declareth, 
 muste eate often and lyttelle." — Gastell of Helihe, p. 55. 
 
 In the same speech of Biron's the following remarkable 
 passage occurs, which leaves no doubt that, although Shakes- 
 peare may, with the intuition of genius, have guessed very near 
 the truth respecting the circulation of the blood, he was 
 also well acquainted with the old false theory. " The nimble 
 spirits in the arteries" expresses, with an exactness which can- 
 not be questioned, the medical theory which prevailed before 
 Harvey's time, and which maintained that the arteries were not 
 the conduits of the blood, but of the vital spirits ; and hence 
 the name ' artery' from ayp,' air,' and rripeiv, ' to preserve,' a 
 receptacle of air. These vessels were supposed to contain air, 
 because they were found empty of blood after death. The 
 windpipe was called mieria aspera, from the roughness of its 
 rings. 
 
 " Why, universal plodding prisons up 
 The nimble spirits in the arteries ; 
 As motion, and long-during action, tires 
 The sinewy vigour of the traveller." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 When Hamlet breaks away from Horatio to follow the 
 
 ghost, he exclaims, 
 
 " My fate cries out, 
 And makes each petty artery in this body 
 As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve." 
 
 Here the function attributed to the arteries, though not so 
 fully expressed as in the former quotation, is, no doubt, 
 
83 
 
 that of the old theory, that they contain the vital spirits, and 
 are inflated in a state of excitement. See also Falstaff 's re- 
 flections on Prince John in the second part of Henry IV. 
 Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 The concluding quotation from this comedy must be a 
 pleasing one to medical men, for it gives them the poet's 
 express authority to be merry, even in their most anxious 
 duties. As a class, doctors certainly are jocose — men of a 
 cheerful countenance, oftentimes "with the skin of their bellies 
 a long way from their kidneys," as Rabelais says ; and some of 
 the ablest and most humane of them have been notorious as 
 punsters and jesters ; and when Rosaline sentences her lover 
 to a twelve months' service in a hospital, it is not to break his 
 spirit, but to render his jesting temper more humane in its 
 exercise, and to teach him to do that which a cheery phy- 
 sician constantly attempts to do, " enforce the pained impo- 
 tent to smile." 
 
 " Bos. To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, 
 And, therewithal, to win me, if you please, 
 (Without the which I am not to he won,) 
 You shall this twelvemonth term from day to day 
 Visit the speechless sick, and still converse 
 With groaning wretches ; and your task shall be, 
 With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, 
 To enforce the pained impotent to smile. 
 
 Eiron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death ? 
 It cannot be ; it is impossible : 
 Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. 
 
 Bos. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, 
 Whose influence is begot of that loose grace 
 Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools : 
 A jest's prosperity lies in the ear 
 Of him that hears it, never in the tongue 
 Of him that makes it : then, if sickly ears, 
 Deaf 'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, 
 Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, 
 And I will have you, and that fault withal ; 
 But, if they wiH not, throw away that spirit, 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 And I shall find you empty of that fault, 
 Eight joyful of your reformation. 
 
 Biron. A twelvemonth ? well, befal what will befal, 
 I'll jest a twelvemonth in a hospital." Act v., Scene 2. 
 
 It is to be hoped that Biron was cured of his wounding 
 flouts, but not of that bright and merry temper, which is good 
 for both subject and object of jest. The Dr. Merryman, 
 quoted at page 27, must have his brassplate in the heart of 
 the patient, but a kindly jest from the actual doctor will 
 sometimes do more good than physic. There is a tale, I 
 think in Dr. John Brown's clever book, Horce Subsecivce, 
 of a poor lady who was at the point of death from an 
 inaccessible abscess in the throat, which entirely prevented 
 her from swallowing ; all remedies had been tried in vain, 
 and her Scotch doctor, standing at the bedside in hopeless 
 anxiety, at last cried " Try her wi' a compliment ! " with a 
 grimace of comical despair, as if it were his conviction that 
 a compliment was the very last thing a lady could refuse 
 to swallow. The idea tickled the humorous faculty of the 
 patient, and the involuntary convulsion of laughter broke 
 the abscess and she was cured. 
 
 TAMING OF THE SHREW. 
 
 The separation a toro, between the mock Duke and his 
 
 mock wife, is urged on medical reasons. 
 
 " For your physicians have expressly charg'd, 
 In peril to incur your former malady, 
 That I should yet absent me from your bed . " Induction . 
 
85 
 
 The excuse for the play is also medico-psychological, and 
 soundly reasoned, though on false premises. 
 
 " For so your doctors hold it very meet : 
 Seeing too much sadness hath congeal'd your blood, 
 And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy : 
 Therefore, they thought it good you hear a play, 
 And frame your mind to mirth and merriment, 
 Which bars a thousand harms, and lengthens life." Ibid. 
 
 The description of the infirmities and diseases of Petru- 
 chio's horse affords an amusing insight into Shakespeare's 
 knowledge of ' veterinary.' Eminent medical men have fre- 
 quently been ardent veterinarians ; Sir Astley Cooper for 
 instance. The alliance, therefore, between human and veteri- 
 nary medicine is sufficiently intimate to justify the inclusion 
 of this passage as part of our subject. 
 
 Petruchio is described coming to his wedding fantastically 
 apparelled, and mounted upon a steed which is 
 
 " Possessed with the glanders, and like to mourn in the chine, ; 
 troubled with the lampass, infected with the fashions, full of wind- 
 galls, sped with spavins, raied with the yellows, past cure of the 
 fives, stark spoiled with the staggers, begnawn with the bots ; 
 swayed in the back, and shoulder-shotten ; near-legg'd before." 
 
 Act iii., Scene .2 
 
 The terms of this description are singularly preserved in 
 the veterinary art to the present day. " Possessed with the 
 glanders" is a term still appropriate to that infectious and 
 fatal disease. Farsin, or farcy, and glanders, are, according 
 to Mr. Youatt, different types or stages of the same disease ; 
 they are both infectious, and therefore the horse is rightly 
 described as "infected with the farcin." "Lampas" or 
 "lumpas" is still a term of veterinary art, indicating a 
 swelling of the upper palate which interferes with masti- 
 cation ; a comparatively slight affection, which is properly 
 
86 
 
 designated as merely troublesome. " Full of wind galls" is 
 also appropriate, since these enlargements are apt to occur 
 in numbers on the legs of a hard-worked hack. " Sped with 
 spavins" indicates ruin from a well-known cause of unsound- 
 ness. "Raied" or dirtied "with the yellows" describes the 
 prominent symptom of jaundice, a discoloration of eye or 
 skin ; Mr. Youatt says, that jaundice is ' commonly called the 
 yellows.' The word ' staggers' is used to designate apoplexy 
 in the horse, a fatal disease which would prevent him from 
 being mounted ; but there are also what are called ' half 
 attacks of staggers,' and ' sleepy staggers,' the indications of 
 slight cerebral congestion, which would not prevent Petruchio 
 from making use of his bundle of equine imperfections, al- 
 though the animal would indeed be 'stark spoiled,' and 
 perhaps rendered blind by them. To be " be-gnawn with the 
 bots," or the magot of the horse gadfly, may have been thought 
 a more serious affair in the olden time than it is now, for 
 Youatt says, that the horse may enjoy perfect health, while 
 his stomach (to the lining membrane of which they adhere) 
 is filled with their larvas. The carrier, in the first part of 
 Henry IV , complains that 
 
 " Pease and beans are as dank here, as a dog, and this is the next 
 way to give the poor jades the bots." Act ii., Scene 1, 
 
 "Shoulder shotten" appears an old term for shoulder lame- 
 ness. " Near legged before" is merely a mode of designating 
 an awkward canter. 
 
 In the New Farrier's Guide, by W. Gibson, (A.D. 1727,) 
 that symptom of glanders which is called ' Mourning in the 
 Chine,' is discussed at some length. Quoting from Snape, the 
 author says : "From this alteration of the colour (of the dis- 
 charges of the glandered horse) I do believe they give the 
 
87 
 
 disease this proper and distinguishing name of ' mourning of 
 the chine,' whereas it is only a greater degree of one and the 
 same disease" (Glanders). — p. 100. The origin of the term 
 'mourning of the chine,' he explains to have been an old false 
 notion that the glanders proceeded from a wasting of the brain, 
 and that at last this wasting reached the spinal marrow or 
 chine. The phrase in the drama, " possessed with the glan- 
 ders, and like to mourn in the chine," exactly corresponds 
 with this explanation. The horse was decidedly possessed 
 with the disease, and ' like to' have its last and worst form, 
 but it could not have been described as actually suffering 
 from this, or it would not have been rideable. The ' fives,' we 
 learn from the same authority, are " a swelling of the parotid 
 glands, which has a near affinity to the strangles," but differs 
 in this, that the strangles happen to young horses at grass, 
 while " the fives will happen to a horse at any time, and is 
 more particularly seated in the glands or kernels under the 
 ears." — p. 115. 
 
 On another point mentioned in this passage, this author 
 says : " A swayed back is a pain and weakness of the reins 
 caused by a fall. By ' a swaying of the back' is properly to be 
 understood a stretching and relaxation of the muscles and 
 ligaments of those parts." — p. 225. 
 
 Gibson does not use the word " shoulder-shotten," but he 
 has a chapter on different forms of injury to the shoulder by 
 blows or sprains, under the terms " of a shoulder- wrench, 
 shoulder-pight, shoulder-splait." 
 
 Petruchio's objection to the burnt meat is founded on the 
 notions which prevailed among the old physicians, that certain 
 meats and the modes of cooking them were choleric or phleg- 
 matic. 
 
" Pet. I tell thee, Kate, 'twas burnt and dried away ; 
 And I expressly am forbid to touch it, 
 For it engenders choler, planteth anger, 
 And better 'twere that both of us did fast, 
 Since, of ourselves, ourselves are choleric, 
 Than feed it with such over-roasted flesh." Act iv., Scene 1 
 
 The statements of Petruchio in the following act, that 
 neat's-foot is " too phlegmatic a meat," and that " fat tripe 
 finely boiled is choleric," are founded upon the same old medi- 
 cal notion, respecting the hot or cold tendency of diets, and 
 their adaptation to the supposed choleric or phlegmatic 
 temperaments of the sick. 
 
 Sir Thomas Elyot's Castell of Helthe, (a.d. 1541,) is mainly 
 occupied with precepts on the choleric and phlegmatic, or 
 hot and cold, moist and dry qualities of diet. Here are his 
 opinions on one of the articles of diet rejected by Petruchio. 
 
 " Galene commendeth the feete of Swyne, but I have proved that 
 the feete of a yonge Bullocke, tenderly sodden, and laid in sowse 
 two days or thre, and eaten colde in the evenynge, have brought a 
 cholerycke stomake into a good digestion and sleape, and therewith 
 also expelled salt fleume and choler." — p. 32. 
 
 The sixteenth and seventeenth chapters of his "thyrde 
 boke " are " on the diete of colerike persons," and " on the 
 diete of fleumatic persons." 
 
89 
 
 MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. 
 
 The general contagiousness of disease was a prevalent 
 opinion in the old time. 
 
 " Sickness is catching ; O, were favour so." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 The passage quoted from Measure for Measure, giving a 
 double entendre to the ' French crown,' has been supposed to 
 refer to a venereal scab, probably rupia ; but in the retort 
 which Quince makes upon Bottom's catalogue of beards, the 
 loss of hair from the crown of the head, also a symptom of 
 the morbus Qallicus, appears to be referred to. 
 
 " Quince. Some of your French crowns have no hair at all, and 
 then you will play bare-faced." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Titania varies her description of floods from the rainfall 
 of " contagious fogs," as they affect the face of the country, 
 with a touch of their influence upon the health of men. 
 
 " Therefore, the moon, the governess of floods, 
 Pale in her anger, washes all the air, 
 That rheumatic diseases do abound." Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 The constant references to the effects of surfeit scattered 
 throughout the plays, would indicate that this form of indis- 
 position had come peculiarly under the poet's notice, and that 
 Abernethey's quaint remedy of a muzzle might have been fre- 
 quently adopted with great advantage. 
 
 " For, as a surfeit of the sweetest things 
 The deepest loathing to the stomach brings." Act ii., Sc. 3. 
 
90 
 
 Here is a reference to domestic surgery, good of its kind, 
 like the "flax and whites of eggs" prescribed for Gloster's 
 bleeding orbits in King Lear. Cobwebs are still used to 
 staunch the bleeding from small wounds. 
 
 " Bottom. I shall desire you of more acquaintance, good master 
 Cobweb : If I cut my finger, I shall make bold with you." 
 
 Act hi., Scene 1. 
 
 The increased intensity of one sense compensating for inac- 
 tivity of another is expounded thus. 
 
 " Dark night, that from the eye his function takes, 
 The ear more quick of apprehension makes ; 
 Wherein it doth impair the seeing sense, 
 It pays the hearing double recompense." Act hi., Scene 2. 
 
 " ' Tis a physic that's bitter to sweet end," m Measure for 
 Measure, qualifies the nauseousness of the dose ; but here 
 the repulsiveness of medicine is stated without reserve. 
 
 " Out, loathed medicine ! hated poison, hence ! " 
 
 Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 Here is reference to one of the most constant symptoms of 
 sickness. 
 
 " But, like in sickness, did I loath this food ; 
 But, as in health, come to my natural taste, 
 Now do I wish it, love it, long for it, 
 And will for evermore be true to it." Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 Here is another singular reference to the physiology of 
 vision. By an effort of will, the axes of the two eyes can be 
 parted, or held from converging, so as to produce the effect 
 described. 
 
 " Methinks I see these things with parted eye, 
 When everything seems double." Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 The exposition of the pranks of fantasy contained in the 
 
91 
 
 very remarkable speech of Theseus is more psychological than 
 physiological. 
 
 " Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, 
 Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend 
 More than cool reason ever comprehends. 
 The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, 
 Are of imagination all compact ; 
 One sees more devils than vast hell can hold — 
 That is the madman:" &c. Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 Here imagination is referred to "seething brains," but 
 
 in the song in the Merchant of Venice the question of its 
 
 cerebral source is involved. 
 
 " Tell me where is^fancy bred, 
 Or in the heart, or in the head ? 
 How begot, how nourished ? " Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 Every one of course knows on which side the heart beats, 
 
 but here is authority : 
 
 " The pap of Pyramus : 
 Ay, that left pap 
 Where heart doth hop." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 Mother's marks and congenital deformities are deprecated 
 by Oberon from the issue of the happy lovers. 
 
 " And the blots of nature's hand 
 Shall not in their issue stand ; 
 Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar, 
 Nor mark prodigious, such as are 
 Despised in nativity, 
 Shall upon their children be." Act v., Scene 2. 
 
92 
 
 MERCHANT OF VENICE. 
 
 In the following passage the intimate connexion between 
 mind and body is sketched with exact physiological truth. 
 Perhaps the most curious and undoubted instance of the mind's 
 influence in the production of bodily disease, is jaundice caused 
 by depressing emotion. It is not always 'crept' into, since bad 
 news has frequently been known to cause jaundice in a few 
 hours. In Dr. Copland's great and learned Dictionary of 
 Medicine, it is stated, that "The most common exciting causes 
 of jaundice are the more violent mental emotions," and in the 
 list of these emotions, which he adds, he specially includes 
 " peevishness." In Dr. Watson's Lectures on Physic, that able 
 physician states, that among the causes of jaundice "the 
 pathemata mentis play their assigned part ; fits of anger and 
 fear and alarm have been presently followed by jaundice." 
 He mentions the instance of a friend of his who became 
 jaundiced from needless anxiety about an approaching exami- 
 nation, and adds, " there are scores of instances on record to 
 the same effect." This curious medical fact is sketched with 
 exact fidelity in the following passage. The effect of wine 
 on the temperature of the liver, and despondency on that 
 of the heart, are also unquestionably medical thoughts. 
 
 " With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come ; 
 And let my liver rather heat with wine, 
 Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. 
 Why should a man whose blood is warm within 
 Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster ? 
 Sleep when he wakes ? and creep into the jaundice 
 By being peevish ? Act i., Scene 1. 
 
93 
 
 The very same medical idea is more tersely expressed in 
 Trqilus and Cressida. 
 
 " What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks ?" 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 The bad effect on the health of the two extremes of diet, 
 abstinence and excess, are here marked. 
 
 "JVerissa. For aught I see, they are as sick that surfeit with too 
 much, as they that starve with nothing : It is no small happiness, 
 therefore, to be seated in the mean ; superfluity comes sooner by 
 white hairs, but competency lives longer." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 The tyranny of desire over reason is here stated physio- 
 logically : the blood in this sense being always used poetically 
 for the promptings of animal passion. A better knowledge 
 has indeed exploded the theory, and attributed both reason 
 and passion to the brain, though to different parts of it. 
 
 " Portia. The brain may devise laws for the blood ; but a hot 
 temper leaps o'er a cold decree : such a hare is madness the youth, 
 to skip o'er the meshes of good counsel the cripple." Act i., Sc. 2. 
 
 I have not met with an explanation of the term sand-blind, 
 Sand may be a cause of blindness, as in Egypt, but this 
 guess will scarcely help. The term was probably one in 
 vulgar use- 
 
 " Launcelot. O heavens, this is my true-begotten father ! who, 
 being more than sand-blind, high-gravel blind, knows me not." 
 
 " Gobho. Alack, sir, I am sand-blind, I know you not." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 The common nature of man is argued medically and phy- 
 siologically in Shylock's speech ; the use of the word 'organs,' 
 being almost technical. 
 
 " Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands, organs, 
 dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? fed with the same food, 
 
94 
 
 hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed 
 by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and 
 summer, as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ? if 
 you tickle us, do we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? 
 and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge ?" Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 A flesh wound across the muscle fibre bleeding a man to 
 death is here in the thought : 
 
 " Basscmio. Here is a letter, lady ; 
 The paper as the body of my friend, 
 And every word in it a gaping wound, 
 Issuing life-blood." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 Shylock's exposition of antipathies might possibly have 
 found its examples from Shakespeare's own observation of 
 these curious phenomena. The only one of the three which 
 is common is that to a cat. 
 
 " Some men there are love not a gaping pig ; 
 Some, that are mad if they behold a cat ; 
 And others, when the bagpipe sings i' the nose, 
 Cannot contain their urine ; for affection, 
 Master of passion, sways it to the mood 
 Of what it likes, or loaths." Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 The following has reference to the practices of the old 
 herbalists, who attributed peculiar virtues to plants gathered 
 during particular phases of the moon and hours of the night. 
 
 " Jessica. In such a night, 
 
 Medea gather' d the enchanted herbs 
 That did renew old Mson." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 
 
 The very plot of this drama may be said to be medical. 
 The orphan daughter of a physician cures the king of a 
 fistula by means of a secret remedy left to her as Vgreat 
 treasure by her father. The royal reward is the choice of a 
 husband among the nobles of the court, and " thereby hangs 
 the tale." The story is copied from Boccaccio. Giletta 
 (Helena) had heard news that the King of France had a 
 fistula, which had been left by a tumour in the chest, for 
 which he had been badly treated ; and that, among all those 
 who had tried, he had not been able to find a physician 
 who could effect a cure, all of them, indeed, having made 
 him worse ; on which account, the King despaired of him- 
 self, and would have no further advice or assistance. This 
 greatly pleased the young lady, who thought that it would 
 afford her a legitimate excuse for making a journey to 
 Paris, and that if she could readily cure this disease, as she 
 believed she could, she might procure Bertram for her hus- 
 band. Wherefore having made a powder of a certain herb 
 useful in this disease, in the manner which she had been 
 taught by her father, she mounted her horse and went to 
 Paris. She obtained an audience of the king, and asked 
 permission to see the diseased part, which the king, charmed 
 with her youth and beauty, could not deny. When she had 
 seen the part affected, she said, Monseigneur, I trust in God 
 to be able to cure you of this disease within eight days, with- 
 out subjecting you to any pain or fatigue. The king laughed 
 
96 
 
 at the proposition, and said he was resolved to take no more 
 remedies ; she persisted, and argued — You despise my skill 
 because I am young and a woman, but bear in mind that 
 I do not assume the r61e of a physician on account of 
 any knowledge of my own, but by the aid of God, and 
 the science of Master Gerard of Narbon, who was my 
 father, and who in his life- time enjoyed a great reputation 
 as a physician. She offered to be burnt alive if she did 
 not effect a cure, on condition that, if she succeeded, the 
 king promised to give her the husband whom she should 
 demand, his sons and the princes of the blood excepted. 
 The king having acquiesced in this proposition, Helena 
 commenced her treatment, and his majesty was entirely 
 cured before the term prescribed, to the great astonish- 
 ment of his physicians. 
 
 It is to be observed that Shakespeare only refers to the 
 king having a fistula, whereas Boccaccio refers to the cause 
 and nature of it. The passage, which in the original Italian 
 describes the disease, runs as follows, 
 
 " Al Re di Francia per una nascienza che avuta avea nel petto, 
 et era male stata curata, gli era rimasa una fistola, la quale di 
 grandissima noja, e di grandissima angoscia gli era, ne s'cra ancor 
 potuto trovar Medico, come che molti se ne fossero esperimentati, 
 che di cio l'avesse potuto guerire, ma tutti l'avean peggiorato : 
 per la qual cosa il Re disperatosene, piu d'alcun non voleva ne 
 consiglio, ne ajuto. 
 
 A fistula at the present day means an abscess external 
 to the rectum, but in Shakespeare's day it was used in the 
 more general signification for a burrowing abscess in any 
 situation. 
 
 The following passages will shew how Shakespeare de- 
 velopes Boccaccio's sketch. 
 
97 
 
 ™ Countess. What hope is there of his majesty's amendment ? . 
 
 Lafeu. He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under 
 whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope, and finds 
 no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope and 
 time. 
 
 Count. This young gentlewoman had a father, (O, that had! 
 how sad a passage 'tis) whose skill was almost as great as his 
 honesty ; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, 
 and death should have play for lack of work. 'Would, for the 
 king's sake, he were living ! I think it would be the death of the 
 king's disease. 
 
 Lafeu. How called you the man you speak of, madam ? 
 
 Count. He was famous, sir, in his profession^ and it was his 
 great right to be so : Gerard de Narbon. 
 
 Lafeu. He was excellent, indeed, madam; the king very 
 lately spoke of him admiringly and mourningly ; he was skilful 
 enough to have lived still, if knowledge could be set up against 
 mortality. 
 
 Bertram. What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of? 
 
 Lafeu. A fistula, my lord. 
 
 Bertram. I heard not of it before. 
 
 Lafeu. I would it were not notorious. — Was this gentlewoman 
 the daughter of Gerard de Narbon ? " Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 In The Secretes of the Reverend Maister Alexis, of 
 Piemont, imprinted at London for John Wight, (A.D. 1580,) 
 the old signification of the term fistula is denoted in a receipt 
 which he gives " To make oyle of Brimstone, to heale all 
 manner of cankers, diseases, or sores, whiche come of a 
 putrified humour, and runne continually, commonly called 
 Fistules."— p. 11. 
 
 In the dialogue in which Lafeu prefaces his introduction of 
 Helena to the King, the epithets given to her, and the playful 
 misuse of the pronouns, "I have seen a medicine," "What 
 her is this?" "Why doctor she," seem intended as quizzical 
 allusions to the sex of the fair practitioner. This feeling, as 
 we have seen, did not always exist, but Shakespeare fixes the 
 incidents of this story as having occurred at a time when 
 there was a "congregated college" of physicians, and when 
 
98 
 
 the art of healing was considered the monopoly of " learned 
 and authentic fellows." 
 
 " Lafeu. But, my good lord, 'tis thus ; 
 Will you be cur'd of your infirmity ? 
 
 Xing. No. 
 
 Laf. O, will you eat no grapes, my royal fox ? 
 Yes, but you will my noble grapes, an if 
 My royal fox could reach, them : I have seen a medicine 
 That's able to breathe life into a stone." Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 Helena's commendation of her secret remedy, and the 
 king's reason for rejecting it, give an excellent idea of the 
 state of opinion with regard to the practice of physic in 
 Shakespeare's time. " Our most learned doctors " of " the 
 congregated college " would, no doubt, be most unanimously 
 of opinion that the king had stained his judgment by sub- 
 mitting a disease, which they had pronounced incurable, to 
 the treatment of any one not of their body, and therefore an 
 empiric. It would not so much be the nature of the re- 
 medy, as the irregularity of its source and application, which 
 would constitute the offence against law and decency. Helena, 
 in fact, would find herself in much the same position as poor 
 Margaret Kennbc, whose "curing of diseases and wounds 
 by means of certain simples," neither Walsingham nor his 
 despotic mistress could effectually defend against " the congre- 
 gated college." (See page 32.) Secret remedies, as we have 
 seen, were held with tenacity in Shakespeare's time by the 
 surgeons as a rule, and by some physicians against rule : 
 they are now justly regarded as the attribute of quacks ; 
 and singularly enough they are most in vogue for the relief 
 of " past-cure maladies." 
 
 " King. Now, fair one, does your business follow us ? 
 Selena. Ay, my good lord, Gerard de Narbon was 
 My father : in what he did profess, well found. 
 
99 
 
 King. I knew him. 
 
 Hel. The rather will I spare my praises towards him ; 
 Knowing him is enough. On his bed of death, 
 Many receipts he gave me ; chiefly one, 
 Which, as the dearest issue of his practice, 
 And of his old experience the only darling, 
 He bad me store up, as a triple eye, 
 Safer than mine own two, more dear ; I have so : 
 And, hearing your high majesty is touch'd 
 With that malignant cause wherein the honour 
 Of my dear father's gift stands chief in power 
 I come to tender it, and my appliance, 
 With all bound humbleness. 
 
 King. We thank you, maiden : 
 
 But may not be so credulous of cure, — 
 When our most learned doctors leave us ; and 
 The congregated college have concluded 
 That labouring art can never ransom nature 
 From her inaidable estate, — I say we must not 
 So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope, 
 To prostitute our past-cure malady 
 To empirics ; or to dissever so 
 Our great self and our credit, to esteem 
 A senseless help, when help past sense we deem." Act ii., 8c. 1. 
 
 Before the fair " she medicine" arrives at court, the king 
 
 asks Bertram, 
 
 " King. How long is't, count, 
 
 Since the physician at your father's died P 
 He was much fam'd. 
 
 Bertram. Some six months, my lord. 
 
 King. If he were living I would try him yet ;- — 
 Lend me an arm ;— the rest have worn me out 
 With several applications : — nature and sickness 
 Debate it at their leisure." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 In the following passage Helena explains to the countess, 
 the widow of her father's patron, and her own protectress, her 
 intention to visit Paris to offer her aid to the king. 
 
 " Selena. You know my father left me some prescriptions 
 Of rare and prov'd effects, such as his reading 
 And manifest experience had collected 
 For general sovereignty ; and that he will'd me 
 In heedfullest reservation to bestow them, 
 
 H 2 
 
100 
 
 As notes, whose faculties inclusive were, 
 
 More than they were in note : amongst the rest, 
 
 There is a remedy, approv'd, set down, 
 
 To cure the desperate languishings whereof 
 
 The king is render' d lost. 
 
 ^F gp qp 3F ■W 
 
 Countess. But think you, Helen, 
 If you should tender your supposed aid, 
 He would receive it ? He and his physicians 
 Are of a mind ; he, that they cannot help him, 
 They, that they cannot help : How shall they credit 
 A poor unlearned virgin, when the schools, 
 Embowell'd of their doctrine, have left off 
 The danger to itself? " Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 For once, our sympathies are enlisted against the doctrine 
 of the schools, and in favour of the selfish quackery of secret 
 specific remedies. The following are the quaint but sound 
 reasons assigned by Don Alexis of Piemont, for disclosing his 
 Secrets. 
 
 " Now it chanced these fewe daies past, beyng in Milan in the 
 fowerscore and twoo yere and seven monethes of myne age, that a 
 poore artificer was marveilous tormented with the stone and had 
 beene twoo daies without making his urine. The Ohirurgeon that 
 dressed him knowying well that I had many secretes and singularly 
 for the stone, came to me, and requested me, that I would teach him 
 the receite redie, or at least give hym the medicine composed and 
 made for the healthe of the Pacient. But I perceivyng that he would 
 use other mennes thinges, for his owne profite and honoure, refused 
 to give it him, but willed hym to hryng me unto the sicke manne, 
 and that I myself would minister the Medicine unto hym gratis. 
 The Physician, either fearing blame if it should be knowne that he 
 had recourse to the aide of an other manne, havyng boasted that he 
 had the secret himself, or els in the meane tyme, still to make his 
 profite in dissemblyng the matter, and deferryng it yet twoo daies 
 more with diverse excuses and colours, until he brought me to the 
 Pacient, who at my commyng I founde so nigh his ende, that after 
 he had a little lifted up his eyes, castyng them piteouslie towards 
 me, passed from this into a better fife. Not having any neede, 
 neither of my Secrete, nor any other Receipt to recover his healthe. 
 
 " With this case I was moved to suche a compassion and sorowe, 
 that not onely I wished myself evil, but also I desired to dye, 
 seeing my ambition and vainglorie, to have been the cause that this 
 poore man was not succoured, with the remedie and gift that G-od the 
 
101 
 
 Father, and Lorde of us had given me. "Wherefore, so greate was 
 the remorse of conscience in me, that desiryng to sequestrate my- 
 self from the worlde, and not finding myself of suche a disposition 
 of minde that I could live in a Monasterie among Religious men 
 better edified than I, I was at the laste fullie resolved with myself, 
 to chuse a place separate from any Towne, where I have a little 
 Lande, some Bookes, and a studie, for to avoide idlenesse. Here I 
 live a life which I call a Monkes life, with one servante, which goeth 
 to the towne, not to begge, but to buie my provision, and other 
 thynges necessarie, for to sustain his poore life and myne, as long as 
 it shall please God. 
 
 " But not yet havyng the power to put out of my fantasie, but 
 that I was verie homicide and murderer, for refusing to the 
 Phisition, the receite and remedie for the healyng of this poore man, 
 I have determined to communicate and publishe to the worlde all 
 that I haue, beyng assured that few other men have so many as I. 
 And mindyng to set forth none, but suche as bee moste true and 
 proved." 
 
 The king at length submits himself to Helena's treatment, 
 who promises him a cure in a much shorter time than 
 Boccaccio thought needful, namely, in two days instead of 
 eight ; in that time she promises, 
 
 " What is infirm from your sound parts shall fly, 
 Health shall live free, and sickness freely die." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The cure is effected in a manner which appears miraculous ; 
 the account of it is amusingly given in the following dialogue. 
 
 " Lafeu. They say, miracles are past ; and we have our philo- 
 sophical persons, to make modem and familiar things supernatural 
 and causeless. Hence it is, that we make trifles of terrors ; enscon- 
 cing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit 
 ourselves to an unknown fear. 
 
 Parolles. Why, 'tis the rarest argument of wonder that hath 
 shot out in our latter times. 
 
 Bertram. And so 'tis. 
 
 Laf. To be relinquish' d of the artists, 
 
 Par. So say I ; both of Galen and Paracelsus. 
 
 Laf. Of all the learned and authentic fellows, 
 
 Par. Eight, so say I. 
 
 Laf. That gave him out incurable, 
 
 Par. Why, there 'tis ; so say I too. 
 
102 
 
 Laf. Not to be helped, 
 
 Par. Eight : as 'twere a man assured of an 
 
 Laf. Uncertain life, and sure death. 
 
 Par. Just, you say well ; so would I have said. 
 
 Laf. I may truly say, it is a novelty to the world." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 To be "relinquished of the artists," "both of Galen and 
 Paracelsus," means to be relinquished of the physicians who 
 practised their art according to the doctrines of Galen or of 
 Paracelsus. This passage is very remarkable when considered 
 in relation to the history of medicine ; we have seen, page 
 52, that Turquet de Mayerne was ignominiously expelled by 
 the College of Physicians of Paris, ' lawfully congregated,' in 
 1603, for maintaining the doctrines of Paracelsus; and that 
 William Butler, who died in 1621, "was the first Englishman 
 who quickened Galenical physic with a touch of Paracelsus ;" 
 and in Shakespeare's time, whether in France or in England, 
 those physicians who would be spoken of as "our most learned 
 doctors" of " the congregated college," or still more pointedly 
 designated " the learned and authentic fellows," would not be 
 the disciples " both of Galen and Paracelsus," but of the former 
 only. This appears to be quite consistent with the manner in 
 which the two names are mentioned, which, indeed, can only 
 be taken to indicate that Shakespeare was acquainted with 
 the existence of the two rival schools. The appropriate, and 
 indeed, technical use of the term " congregated college" is 
 worthy of note. The term " artists," as applied to medical 
 men, was also consistent with the custom of the time ; thus 
 Clowes appeals to his professional brethren as "all good 
 artists." 
 
 The restored and grateful king reappears before his court 
 with the following speech, which indicates that his disease had 
 
103 
 
 in some way affected the nervous sensibility ; but how this 
 happened is not more clear than how the miraculous cure was 
 effected. 
 
 " King. Go, call before me all the lords in court. — 
 Sit, my preserver, by thy patient's side ; 
 And with this healthful hand, whose banish'd sense 
 Thou hast repeal' d, a second time receive 
 The confirmation of my promis'd gift, 
 Which but attends thy naming." Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 Helena chooses for her fee, the hand of Count Bertram 
 with whom she is in love, who disdainfully rejects the proffered 
 felicity because she is "a poor physician's daughter," and thus 
 brings the king to her rescue, who asserts the all- worthiness 
 of merit, and that worldly position without virtue " is a drop- 
 sical honour." Enforced by the king, Bertram marries the 
 poor she-doctor, who finds the barren union no remedy for 
 her own love sickness, since her husband immediately deserts 
 her for the wars, to which she follows him, and thus de- 
 velopes the plot of the comedy. 
 
 The two first items in the clown's comic list of things fit 
 for each other have a legal and a medical reference. 
 
 " Countess. Will your answer serve fit to all questions ? 
 Clown. As fit as ten groats is for the hand of an attorney, as 
 your French crown for your taffata punk." Act ii.-, Scene 2. 
 
 The French crown has already been explained as the cant 
 term for venereal scab ; taffeta punk is a prostitute in coarse 
 clothing, and the fitness of one to the other is obvious. 
 
 Here is the quibble on apothecaries' weight, which occurs 
 in Shakespeare again 'and again. 
 
 " Pwrolles. I have not, my lord, deserved it. 
 Lafeu. Yes, good faith, every dram of it ; and I will not bate 
 thee a scruple." Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
104 
 
 The French lord, speaking of the war in Italy, refers to 
 the idea so repeatedly expressed of disease from surfeit. 
 
 " I am sure the younger of our nation, 
 That surfeit on their ease, will day by day 
 Come here for pbysick." • Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 In the conversation between Lafeu and the clown, Shakes- 
 peare's herbalist knowledge appears, though here it is not 
 medicinal, as he merely distinguishes between nose-herbs and 
 salad-herbs. 
 
 " Lafeu. 'Twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady ; we may pick a 
 thousand salads, ere we light on such another herb. 
 
 Clown. Indeed, sir, she was the sweet-marjoram of the salad, 
 or rather, the herb of grace. 
 
 Lqf. They are not salad-herbs, you knave, they are nose- 
 herbs." Act iv. Seene 5. 
 
 When the cowardice and treachery of Parolles are dis- 
 covered, Bertram refers to that antipathy to cats which 
 Shylock remarks, and which is one of the most unquestionable 
 and curious of these emotions of repulsion. There are per- 
 sons who feel sick and faint when there is a cat near to them, 
 though they have no knowledge of the fact except from the 
 peculiar sensation.] Ambrose Pare* quotes such cases from 
 Mathiolus, and maintains that cats " send forth pestiferous 
 airs and exhalations." 
 
 " I could endure any thing before but a cat, and now he's a 
 cat to me." 
 
 " He's more and more a cat." " He's a cat still." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 The following has reference to the old belief that gold 
 is one of the most efficacious of medicines. 
 
 " King. Plutus himself, 
 
 That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine, 
 Hath not in nature's mystery more science, 
 Than I have in this ring." Act v., Scene 3. 
 
105 
 
 A more distinct reference to the medicinal use of gold is 
 found in the Second Part of Henry IV. 
 
 " Other, less fine in carat, is more precious ; 
 Preserving life in medicine potable." Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 Chaucer refers to this medicinal property of gold in his 
 sarcastic excuse for the doctour's avarice. 
 
 " And yet he was but esy of despence : 
 He kept that he wan in the pestilence. 
 For gold in physic is a cordial ; 
 Therefore he loved it in special." 
 
 It was assumed by all the old writers that gold must be a 
 medicine of wonderful efficacy, but the difficulty was how to 
 give it, as they do not appear to have possessed the knowledge 
 of its solubility in the mixed acids. 
 
 In John Wight's translation of the Secretes of Alexis, 
 is a receipt " To dissolve and reducte golde into a potable 
 licour, whiche conserveth the youth and healthe of a man, 
 and will heale every disease that is thought incurable, in 
 the space of seven daies at the furthest." The receipt is 
 a complicated one, the gold being acted upon by juice of 
 lemons, honey, common salt, and aqva vitce, and distillation 
 frequently repeated from " an urinall of glasse." " For the 
 oftener it is distilled, the better it is. Thus doyng, ye shall 
 have a right naturall, and perfecte potable golde, whereof 
 somewhat taken alone every monthe once or twice, or at 
 least with the said licour, whereof we have spoken in the 
 second chapter of this boke, is verie excellent to preserve 
 a man's youthe and healthe, and to heale in fewe daies any 
 disease rooted in a man, and thought incurable. The said 
 gold will be also good and profitable for diverse other 
 
106 
 
 operations and effectes : as good wittes and diligent searchers 
 of the secreetes of nature may easily judge." — p. 7. 
 
 In Sir Kenelm Digby's Receipts, (a.d. 1674,) is a compli- 
 cated one for " an excellent tincture of gold ;" the gold is to be 
 calcined with three salts, ground with flowers of sulphur, and 
 burnt in a reverbatory furnace with sulphur twelve times, then 
 digested with spirit of wine " which will be tincted very 
 yellow, of which, few drops for a dose in a fit vehicle hath 
 wrought great effects." Great is the power of faith. In the 
 olden times there were remedies especially appropriated for 
 rich people, and for middling people, and for poor people. 
 There was even a separate Pharmacopceia Pauperum; while 
 Sir Kenelm' s tincture of gold might have suited Miss Kill- 
 mansegg. Maister Alexis has ''remedies to purge the ayre, 
 that are of the smallest pryce, for men of small habilitie "; 
 and "a so ver eigne pouder against the venyme of the plague 
 for ryche men and princes." — p. 46. 
 
107 
 
 AS YOU LIKE IT. 
 
 Old Adam gives the following good medical reason for the 
 
 haleness of his years, — he had been temperate and chaste 
 
 in youth. 
 
 " Though I look old, yet I am strong and lusty : 
 For in my youth I never did apply 
 Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood ; 
 Nor did I with unbashful forehead woo 
 The means of weakness and debility ; 
 Therefore my age is as a lusty winter, 
 Frosty, but kindly. Let me go with you." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 When Adam is suffering from starvation in the forest, 
 Orlando leaves him to seek for food, with an exhortation, 
 proving that Shakespeare well knew the power of the mind 
 to sustain for a while the fading functions of life. 
 
 " Orlando. Why, how now, Adam ! no greater heart in thee ? 
 Live a little ; comfort a little ; cheer thyself a little : If this 
 uncouth forest yield any thing savage, I will either be food for it, 
 or bring it for food to thee. Thy conceit is nearer death than thy 
 powers. For my sake, be comfortable ; hold death awhile at the 
 arm's end : I will be here with thee presently ; and if I bring thee 
 not something to eat, I'll give thee leave to die ; but if thou diest 
 before I come, thou art a mocker of my labour. Well said ! thou 
 look'st cheerily." Act ii., Scene 6. 
 
 Touchstone's moralizing upon life repeated by Jaques, ex- 
 presses the gradual maturing of the body, and its gradual 
 decay after the point of perfect growth and organization has 
 been turned. 
 
 " And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, 
 And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot, 
 And thereby hangs a tale." Act ii. Scene 7. 
 
108 
 
 When Jaques expresses in medical form of thought and 
 phrase his desire to reform the moral evils of the world, 
 the class of disease to which the half- technical phrase of 
 ' cleansing the foul hody' appears to refer to, is that which by- 
 its novelty and prevalence engrossed so much attention at 
 that time. The reply of the duke makes this certain, " the 
 embossed sores and headed evils" of the libertine referring 
 without doubt to venereal rupia, a sore which is embossed by 
 its dried secretions until the scab assumes the form of limpet 
 shells adherent to the skin. The moral meaning is no doubt a 
 denunciation of coarsemindedness and pruriency disseminated 
 under the specious disguise of advice and warning ; a 
 mischievous foul sin which impure minds, acting as con- 
 fessors and conscience directors, are certain to commit. 
 
 " Jaques. Invest me in my motley ; give me leave 
 To speak my mind, and I will through and through 
 Cleanse the foul body of the infected world, 
 If they will patiently receive my medicine. 
 
 Duke Senior. Fie on thee ! I can tell what thou wouldst do. 
 
 Jaques. What, for a counter, would I do but good ? 
 
 Duke S. Most mischievous foul sin, in chiding sin : 
 For thou thyself hast been a libertine, 
 As sensual as the brutish sting itself ; 
 And all the embossed sores and headed evils, 
 That thou with license of free foot hast caught, 
 Wouldst thou disgorge into the general world." Act ii., Scene 7. 
 
 In Jaques' description of the seven stages of life, the second 
 change of the voice in advancing age is noted. 
 
 " And his big manly voice, 
 Turning again towards childish treble, pipes 
 And whistles in his sound." Ibid. 
 
 The first physiological change of the voice is noted by Portia, 
 when she and Nerissa propose to assume the manners and 
 habits of young men. 
 
109 
 
 " And speak between the change of man and boy 
 With a reed voice." Merchant of Venice. 
 
 For the second change of voice, see also iEgeon's speech 
 in The Comedy of Errors. 
 
 The contention, respecting court and country manners be- 
 tween Oorin and Touchstone, shews Shakespeare's knowledge 
 of the disgusting source of a favourite medicine in those 
 times, used also as a perfume. The point in debate is, the 
 cleanliness of kissing hands. 
 
 " Oorin. And they [the shepherd's hands] are often tarred over 
 with the surgery of our sheep ; and would you have us kiss tar ? 
 The courtier's hands are perfumed with civet. 
 
 Touchstone. Most shallow man ! Thou worms'-meat, in re- 
 spect of a good piece of flesh : Indeed ! — Learn of the wise, and 
 perpend : Civet is of a baser birth than tar ; the very uncleanly 
 flux of a cat." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 Rosalind describing those "whom time ambles withal," 
 indicates persons who enjoy quiet of mind and repose of 
 body, and indirectly refers gout to the luxury of wealth. 
 
 " With a priest that lacks Latin, and a rich man that hath not 
 the gout ; for the one sleeps easily, because he cannot study ; and 
 the other lives merrily, because he feels no pain." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 Orlando, seeking a remedy for his love-sickness, obtains 
 from Rosalind the reply, 
 
 " No ; I will not cast away my physic, but on those that are 
 sick. There is a man haunts the forest, that abuses our young 
 plants with carving Eosalind on their barks ; hangs odes upon 
 hawthorns, and elegies on brambles ; all, forsooth, deifying the 
 name of Eosalind: if I could meet with that fancy-monger, I 
 would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the 
 qtwtidian of love upon him. 
 
 Orlando. I am he that is so love-shaked ; I pray you, tell me 
 your remedy." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 Rosalind's theory of the nature and treatment of this 
 amatory qiiotidian is, that 
 
110 
 
 " Love is merely a madness : and, I tell you, deserves as well a 
 dark house and a whip as madmen do : and the reason why they 
 are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so ordinary 
 that the whippers are in love too : Yet I profess curing it by 
 counsel." 
 
 " I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love, to a living 
 humour of madness ; which was, to forswear the full stream of the 
 world, and to live in a nook merely monastic : And thus I cured 
 him ; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean 
 as a soimd sheep's heart, that there shall not he one spot of love in't." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 In this last passage, surely the words heart and liver should 
 be transposed, since the text is evidently an inversion of the 
 true meaning. Love is generally said to dwell in the heart ; 
 while, on the other hand, unsound sheep are not known by 
 the condition of this organ, but by that of the liver ; the well- 
 known peculiarity of sheep disease being flukes or hydatids of 
 the liver, which give that organ the spotted appearance to 
 which Rosalind refers. Every one who has had to deal with 
 printers knows that there is no error so common, or so 
 easily overlooked, as transposition of words having nearly 
 the same sense. 
 
 ' To reek,' means, to smoke or cast forth vapour or stench 
 or mist. Juliet speaks of " dead men's reeky shanks." In 
 the following passage, ' a great reeking ' probably means the 
 smoke and vapour of fire in a room without outlet, which is 
 well-known to be noisome and even fatal. 
 
 " Touchstone. "When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor 
 a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, understanding, 
 it strikes a man more dead than a great reeking in a little room." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 Phoebe tells her lover 
 
 " That eyes, — that are the frail' st and softest things, 
 Who shut their coward gates on atomies," 
 
1J1 
 
 cannot inflict wounds, and thus pettishly challenges him to 
 prove his injuries. 
 
 " Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee. 
 Scratch thee with but a pin, and there remains 
 Some scar of it ; lean upon a rush, 
 The cicatrice and capable impressure, 
 Thy palm some moment keeps." Act iii., Scene 5. 
 
 Oliver describes his rescue from the lioness by Orlando, 
 
 " "Who led me instantly unto his cave, 
 There stripp'd himself, and here upon his arm 
 The lioness had torn some flesh away, 
 Which all this while had bled ; and now he fainted, 
 And cried, in fainting, upon Rosalind. 
 Brief, I recover' d him ; bound up his wound : 
 And, after some small space, being strong at heart, 
 He sent me hither," &c. Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 Oliver shews the napkin dyed in his brother's blood, where- 
 upon Rosalind faints, and elicits the remark. 
 
 " Many will swoon when they do look on blood." Ibid. 
 
 A man does recover from fainting by becoming once more 
 " strong of heart," but in this place it seems probable that 
 the most appropriate term of common parlance only acci- 
 dentally concurs with physiological truth.. 
 
112 
 
 MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. 
 
 The contagiousness of pestilence, and one of its symptoms, 
 are thus alluded to by Beatrice. 
 
 " Beatrice. O Lord ! he will hang upon him like a disease : he is 
 sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs presently 
 mad. Grod help the noble Olaudio ! if he have caught the Benedick, 
 it will cost him a thousand pound ere he be cured." 
 
 Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 To recognize love's grief or wound by the complexion, and 
 to salve it or apply remedies, seems the thought in Claudio's 
 speech, though it must be owned that the meaning is a little 
 obscure — 
 
 " How sweetly do you minister to love, 
 That know love's grief by his complexion ! 
 But lest my liking might too sudden seem, 
 I would have salv'd it with a longer treatise." 
 
 Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 Sadness dependent upon disposition is truly stated to be 
 more radical and less curable than that which can be referred 
 to a definite outward cause. The would-be physician recom- 
 mends reason as an anodyne, but the patient repudiates the 
 moral treatment. 
 
 " Comrade. What the goujere, my lord ! why are you thus out 
 of measure sad ? 
 
 D. John. There is no measure in the occasion that breeds it, 
 therefore the sadness is without limit. 
 
 Con. You should hear reason. 
 
 D. John. And when I have heard it, what blessing bringeth it ? 
 
 Con. If not a present remedy, yet a patient sufferance. 
 
 D. John. I wonder that thou, being (as thou say'st thou art) 
 born under Saturn, goest about to apply a moral medicine to a 
 mortifying mischief." Act i., Scene 3. 
 
113 
 
 The ' goujere' has been said to mean venereal disease, 
 though I know not on what authority. Mr. Collier and Mr. 
 Knight substitute ' good year,' meaning ' bad year,' the year 
 of pestilence : lucus a non. The word l-ecurs in Lear, " The 
 goujeres shall devour them." 
 
 Heart-burn referred to acidity is good medical doctrine. 
 
 " Beatrice. How tartly that gentleman looks ! I never can see 
 him but I am heart-burned an hour after." Act ii. Scene 1. 
 
 The causes to which tooth-ache is attrir \rt^di n the following 
 passage appear at first sight but a gratuitous piece of non- 
 sense ; but the singular fact that John of Gatisden, one of our 
 oldest medical authors, attributes decay of the teeth to these 
 very causes, '' a humour or a worm," should teach us that 
 Shakespeare seldom or never threw down even the most 
 trifling or careless opinion without grounds for it. So far as I 
 can discover no translation into English has ever been made 
 of John of Gatisden's works. Fuller records " that lately 
 his works have been printed in Italy in a folio, no small 
 honour, seeing that in physick the Italians account all tramon- 
 tain doctours but apothecaries in comparison of themselves ;" 
 so that although " this John flourished in the year of our 
 Lord 1320," it would appear from this recent edition of his 
 works, that even in Fuller's time, 1650, his works were by no 
 means out of date. The edition from which I quote was 
 published in the midst of Shakespeare's working years. 
 
 " Benedick. I have the tooth-ache. 
 D. Pedro. Draw it. 
 Bene. Hang it ! 
 
 Claud. You must hang it first, and draw it afterwards. 
 D. Pedro. What ? sigh for the tooth-ache ? 
 Leon. Where is hut a humour, or a worm ? 
 Bene. Well, every one qan master a grief, but he that has it." 
 
 Act iiL, Scene 2. 
 
114 
 
 The following is the remarkable passage of Gatisdens 
 Rosa Anglica, which gives our poet good medical authority 
 for the above curious pathological notion. 
 
 De Corrosione Dentium, 
 
 " Coitosio dentium causatur ab humore putrido inviscato radici 
 dentis. 
 
 " 1. Curatio consistit in tribus. Prima, est evacuatio Jiimidi- 
 tatum putridarum cum turpeto, agarico, foliis sense, catbolico. 
 
 "2. Secunda, est solutio ipsarum ex ipsis dentibus, cum aceto 
 decoctionis nigellse, aut cum aceto decoctionis capparum, zinzib aut 
 similium : aut nigella trita cum cinamomo, linita super dentem. 
 
 " 3. Tertia, est prohibitio corrosionis cum iis, quibus dens corrosus 
 impletur, aut linitur, ut est galla, cyperus ; Galla sola prohibet 
 dentis corrosionem, et mastix, cyperus, et collutio oris cum aceto. 
 Itemrepletio dentis cum campbora, est ultimum remedium in pro- 
 hibitione corrosionis dentis. Replere dentem cum zinzibere, decocto 
 in melle vel aceto, optimum est. Item, asafcetida quae cum cera 
 bullierit, vebemens est: Similiter castoreum et lusquiamus, simul 
 mixta valent; Replere dentem corrosum cum corallis tritis, probibet 
 corrosionem : Myrrha optima est, et castoreum, et opium, piper tor- 
 refactum, assafoetida, storax calamita, zinziber, semen lusquiami : 
 quodlibet istorum vaiet per se, cum melle, aut pice, radice dentis 
 «• . fricata. Si vermes sint in dentibus, R> semen porri, seu 
 
 • t . -i lusquiami contere et misce cum cera, pone super car- 
 bones, et fumus recipiatur per embotum, quoniam sanat. 
 Solum etiam semen lusquiami valet cbctum in aqua calida, supra 
 quam aquam patiens palatum apertum si tenuerit, cadent vermes 
 evidenter vel in illam aquam, vel in aliam quse ibi fuerit posita. De 
 myrrha et aloe ponantur in dentem, ubi est vermis : semen caulis, 
 et absinthium, per se vermes interficit." — Mosa Anglica, Liber 
 secundus, "De Febribus," p. 923. Edit. 1595. 
 
 It is curious to observe that our old quackeries are still new, 
 in that remarkable country where folly and wisdom are alike 
 stereotyped. In Pictures of the Chinese, drawn by them- 
 selves, by the Eev. R. H. Cobbold, 
 
 " The first portrait is that of the quack doctress, who pretends 
 to cure tooth-ache by extracting a maggot — the cause of the 
 disorder. This is done — or rather pretended to be done — by 
 simply placing a bright steel pin on the part affected, and tapping 
 the pin with a piece of wood. Mr. Cobbold compares the opera- 
 
115 
 
 tion to procuring worms for fishing, by working a spade backwards 
 and forwards in the ground. He and a friend submitted to the 
 process, but in a very short time compelled the doctress to desist, 
 by the excessive precautions they took against imposition." — Athe- 
 nceum, Jan. 28th, 1860. 
 
 The following passage is one of the few in which Shakes- 
 peare mentions a drug by name. It is done here by way of 
 quibble on the name of the sick lady's lover Benediek. 
 
 " Beatrice. I am stuffed, cousin, I cannot smell. 
 
 Margaret. A maid, and stuffed ! there's goodly catching of cold. 
 
 Beat. 0, God help me ! God help me ! How long have you 
 profess'd apprehension ? 
 
 Marg. Ever since you left it : doth not my wit become me 
 rarely ? 
 
 Beat. It is not seen enough, you should wear it in your cap. — 
 By my troth I am sick. 
 
 Marg. Get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus, and 
 lay it to your heart : it is the only thiog for a qualm. 
 
 Hero. There thou prick'st her with a thistle. 
 
 Beat. Benedictus ! Why Benedictus ? You have some moral 
 in this Benedictus. 
 
 Marg. Moral ? No, by my troth, I have no moral meaning ; I 
 meant, plain holy-thistle." Act hi., Scene 5. 
 
 Woodall, (a.d. 1639,) in his chapter on Medicines and 
 their Uses, says, " Carduus benedictus water doth ease 
 the paine of the head, conformeth the memory, cureth a 
 quartane, provoketh sweat, and comforteth the vitall spirits." 
 ^-p. 40. 
 
 The Garden of Health, by William Langham, practitioner 
 of physicke, (2nd Edition, A.D. 1633) enumerates the medical 
 virtues of the blessed thistle under sixty-six heads. 
 
 Salmon, (A.D. 1693,) in his Seplasium, or Druggist Shop 
 opened, p. 1095, records fifteen preparations of the carduus 
 benedictus, or holy thistle, in use among medical men ; and 
 reports that "it is excellent against pleurisie, obstructions, 
 
116 
 
 malign humours, vertigo, worms, agues, plague, cures green 
 wounds, and is good against the biting of mad dogs or any 
 other venomous creatures." In truth it was a medicine in 
 great repute in Shakespeare's time and long afterwards. 
 
 The friar's advice to Leonato contains a thought which 
 must often present itself to the reflecting mind of a physician 
 facing any great new difficulty. 
 
 " Leon. Being that I flow in grief, 
 The smallest twine may lead me. 
 
 Friar. "lis well consented : presently away ; 
 For to strange sores strangely they strain the cure." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 The passage is evidently copied from the sixth aphorism of 
 Hippocrates, sec. 2. " For extreme diseases, extreme methods 
 of cure as to restriction are most suitable." Galen and other 
 commentators, says Dr. Adams, understood these extreme 
 methods to apply to regimen only, but Heurnius understands 
 them to mean, that in any dangerous diseases the physician 
 is warranted in using " diseta quam tenuissima, pharmacia ex- 
 quisita, et crudeli chirurgia." Cicero adopts the maxim, 
 though without referring to the authority. "In adeundis 
 periculis consuetudo imitanda medicorum est, qui leviter segro- 
 tantes leniter curant : gravioribus autem morbis periculosas 
 curationes et ancipites adhibere coguntur." — De Officiis, i., 24. 
 
 Dr. Adams remarks that our earlier modern authorities in 
 surgery also adopted this interpretation. (Hippocrates, of 
 Sydenham Society.) I have not, however-, met with the doctrine 
 in the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and therefore 
 am inclined to think that he derived it from some work on 
 the original. 
 
 Leonato, however, is not so easily led as he thinks, for 
 he resists " moral medicine" against anger, as thoroughly as 
 
Don John refuses its aid against sadness. The two passages 
 are remarkable in these days when the moral treatment of 
 mental affections is supposed to be a great novelty ; days, 
 however, in which we are proud to have succeeded in that 
 which would have appeared impossible and absurd to our 
 forefathers ; for, although " preceptial medicine" may still be 
 as inefficient as ever to influence frenzy, we do not now use 
 even silken threads to restrain strong madness, any more than 
 we use " a dark house and a whip" according to Rosalind's 
 recipe for the treatment of lunatics. 
 
 " Their counsel turns to passion, which before 
 Would give preceptial medicine to rage, 
 Fetter strong madness in a silken thread, 
 Charm ache with air, and agony with words." 
 
 " I pray thee, peace ; I will be flesh and blood ; 
 For there was never yet philosopher 
 That could endure the tooth-ache patiently." Act v., So. 1. 
 
 The merry taunt of Beatrice, that she takes pity on her 
 lover because she heard he was "in a consumption," is the 
 only place where Shakespeare uses this word apparently in 
 its modern sense. Timon's use of it, " Consumptions sow in 
 hollow bones of men," is less appropriate, and Lear's " Con- 
 sumption catch thee ! " is less definite. Beatrice, it appears, 
 thought ' consumption curable.' Falstaff, however, speaks of 
 a consumption of the purse as an incurable, though linger- 
 ing, disease : — Henry IV., 2nd Part ; Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 " Beat. I would not deny you ; but, by this good day, I yield 
 upon great persuasion ; and, partly, to save your life, for I was told 
 you were in a consumption." Act v.. Scene ±. 
 
118 
 
 TWELFTH NIGHT. 
 
 The opinion, that the poison of pestilence dwells in the air, 
 is again expressed here. 
 
 " Oh, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, 
 Methought she purg'd the air of pestilence." 
 
 Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 The " liver, brain, and heart" are described as the " three 
 
 sovereign thrones" of the body — the centres of organic vitality. 
 
 Cymbeline uses the thought as a simile to the men who had 
 
 gained victory for him — " to you the liver, heart, and brain of 
 
 Britain." 
 
 " How will she love, when the rich golden shaft 
 
 Hath kill'd the flock of all affections else 
 
 That live in her ! when liver, brain, and heart, 
 
 Three sovereign thrones, are all supplied, and fill'd, 
 
 (Her sweet perfections,) with one self king." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 The word ' passage ' is a term often used by medical men, 
 as when they speak of the ' digestive passages.' Shakespeare 
 also has " the hollow passage of my voice." — Henry VI. 
 
 " I'll drink to her as long as there is a passage in my throat, 
 and drink in Illyria." Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 Disordered digestion affects the sense of taste. 
 
 " You are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distem- 
 pered appetite." Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 The pia mater is again mentioned here. It is used for the 
 brain at large, as one might speak of ' a petticoat ' in place of 
 ' a woman,' an old form of periphrasis, but now-a-days more 
 
119 
 
 appropriate than ever. Pia mater is used in the same sense 
 in Troilus and Gressida. 
 
 " Clown. Thou hast spoke for us, madonna, as if thy eldest son 
 should he a fool : whose skull Jove cram with brains ! for here 
 comes, one of thy kin, has a most weak pia mater." 
 
 Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 Lunar influences, it appears, affect women as well as luna- 
 tics ; and surely the time of the moon when Olivia was 
 playful must have been when it was "a gracious moon." 
 
 " 'Tis not that time of moon with me, to make one in so skipping 
 a dialogue." Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 The "invisible and subtle stealth," of Viola's perfections 
 is almost a technical term, transferred from the idea which 
 precedes, the infection of the plague. 
 
 " How now ? 
 Even so quickly may one catch the plague ? 
 Methinks, I feel this youth's perfections, 
 With an invisible and subtle stealth, 
 To creep in at mine eyes." Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 The idea of infection has now become unpopular, at least 
 in this country, partly because it has been exaggerated, partly 
 because it often leads to inhumanity, but mostly perhaps, 
 because in the operation of the quarantine laws it has been 
 anti-commercial. A voice, which deserves to be listened 
 to like that of a ministering spirit of life, has recently said : 
 " Does not the popular idea of " infection " involve that 
 people should take greater care of themselves than of the 
 patient ? that, for instance, it is safer not to be too much with 
 the patient, not to attend too much to his wants ? Perhaps 
 the best illustration of the utter absurdity of this view of 
 attending on " infectious " diseases is afforded by what 
 
120 
 
 was very recently the practice, if it is not so even now, in 
 some of the European lazarets — in which the plague-patient 
 used to be condemned to the horrors of filth, over-crowding, 
 and want of ventilation, while the medical attendant was 
 ordered to examine the patient's tongue through an opera- 
 glass, and to toss him a lancet to open his abscesses with !" 
 Notes on Nursing, by Florence Nightingale, p. 20. 
 
 Whether Sir Toby Belch's ' diluculo surgere' was, or 
 was not, derived from a medical prescription, there can be 
 no doubt that his theory of the composition of our lives of 
 the four elements, was adopted from the medical opinions of 
 Shakespeare's day. 
 
 " Sir Toby. Approach, Sir Andrew ; not to be a-bed after mid- 
 night — is to be up betimes ; and diluculo surgere, thou know'st. 
 
 Sir Andrew. Nay, by my troth, I know not : but I know, to 
 be up late is to be up late. 
 
 Sir To. A false conclusion : I hate it as an unfilled can : to be up 
 after midnight, and to go to bed then, is early ; so that, to go to 
 bed after midnight, is to go to bed betimes. Do not our lives con- 
 sist of the four elements ? 
 
 Sir And. 'Faith, so they say ; but, I think, it rather consists of 
 eating and drinking. 
 
 Sir To. Thou art a scholar ; let us therefore eat and drink. — 
 Marian, I say ! — a stoop of wine ! " Act ii. Scene 3. 
 
 That our bodies consist of the four elements — fire, air, earth, 
 and water, and that all diseases arise from derangement in 
 the due proportion of these elements, was the pathological 
 hypothesis of Plato. He maintained that if the element of 
 fire was in excess, continual fever was the result ; if air, pre- 
 dominated, quotidians ; if water, tertians ; and if earth, quar- 
 tans were the result. — Le Clerc's History of Medicine. 
 
 The opinion of Hippocrates on this subject was somewhat 
 more elaborated. He " expressed them not by the names of 
 substances, but by proper qualities, saying hot, cold, moist, 
 
121 
 
 and drie, because some one of these qualities is inherent in 
 every element — thus fire, hot and drie ; aire, moist and hot ; 
 water, cold and moist ; earth, cold and drie." — Ambrose Pare - . 
 
 These curious opinions were substantially adopted by Galen, 
 and embraced, on his authority, by the middle age physicians, 
 by whom his teaching was as implicitly received as that of 
 Aristotle by the schoolmen. 
 
 The opinion is set forth at large, in its connection with 
 physic, in The Arcadia of Sir Philip Sydney. 
 
 " elements, by whose (men say) contention, 
 Our bodies be in living power maintained, 
 Was this man's death the fruit of your dissension ? 
 O physic's power, which (some say) hath restrained 
 Approach of death, alas, thou helpest meagerly, 
 When once one is for Atropos distrained. 
 Great be physicians' brags, but aide is beggarly, 
 When rooted moisture failes, or groweth drie, 
 They leave off all, and say, death comes too eagerly. 
 They are but words therefore that men doe buy 
 Of any, since god Esculapius ceased." 
 
 The following twisted thought involves the idea that con- 
 tagion is bound up with something appealing to the sense 
 of smell ; a mellifluous voice being miscalled contagious ; 
 unless one could apply one organ to the functions of another, 
 and thus admit contagion, not through its usual portal, the 
 nose. 
 
 " Sir Andrew. A mellifluous voice, as I am true knight. 
 
 Sir Toby. A contagious breath. 
 
 Sir And. Very sweet and contagious, i'faith. 
 
 Sir Toby. To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 Maria's mischief is to be the physic of Malvolio's pride. 
 " I know my physic will work with him." Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
122 
 
 The liver is referred to as the seat of animal desire and 
 of passion founded upon it, the heart as that of affection, 
 and the brain of intellect. While in this sense the Duke 
 maintains that the liver, heart, and brain are the three 
 sovereign thrones of love ; rightly or wrongly, he locates the 
 love of man in the liver, and that of woman in the palate, 
 as a matter of mere taste. The word appetite seems here 
 rather loosely used for inclination depending upon taste. 
 
 " Duke. There is no woman's sides, 
 Can bide the beating of so strong a passion 
 As love doth give my heart : no woman's heart 
 So big, to hold so much ; they lack retention . 
 Alas, their love may be called appetite, — 
 No motion of the hver, but the palate, — 
 That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt ; 
 But mine is all as hungry as the sea, 
 And can digest as much." Act ii., Scene 4. 
 
 The cause and main symptoms of chlorosis or green-sick- 
 ness, the febris amatoria, as it has been called by medical 
 authors, are. here quaintly and touchingly described. Chlorosis 
 under its vulgar name of green-sickness is referred to in 
 several places. " Troubled with the green-sickness." — An- 
 thony and Cleopatra. "Pox upon her green-sickness for 
 me." — Pericles. " You green-sickness carrion." — Romeo and 
 Juliet. In Henry 1 V., (2nd Part,) the word is used in a 
 manner which shewed Shakespeare's knowledge that it was 
 a disease of women, since he distinguishes a particular in- 
 stance as being the contrary. " A kind of male green-sickness." 
 
 " She never told her love, 
 But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, 
 Feed on her damask cheek : she pin'd in thought : 
 And, with a green and yellow melancholy, 
 She sat, like patience on a monument, 
 Smiling at grief." Act ii., Scene 4. 
 
123 
 
 Sir Toby speaking of Maria, " that wittiest piece of Eve's 
 flesh in all Illyria," who is procuring mad excitement for him 
 and his boon companions, says, 
 
 " Here comes the little villain ; How now, my nettle 
 of India ? " Act ii., Scene 5. 
 
 The nettle of India is the Cannabis Indica, or Indian 
 hemp, from which the natives of that country, from time 
 immemorial, have prepared bang and various other stimulating 
 narcotics, which produce in them a state of excitement 
 more wild than that of the opium eater. Its use is fre- 
 quently referred to in that old collection of Eastern tales, 
 the Arabian Nights. The cannabis appears to have been 
 freely used as a medicine, when Salmon wrote his Seplasium 
 in 1693, in which the medicinal uses of the various parts 
 of the plant are described. In Goodman's Fall of Man, ex- 
 ception is taken to the use of Indian drugs. " In fetching this, 
 physick, these Indian drugs, thousands do yearly endanger 
 their lives ; ****** instead of 
 
 natural, we make ourselves artificial stomachs, when our 
 English bodies must prove the storehouses of Indian drugs." 
 There was, therefore, an extensive use of Indian drugs at 
 this time. I must, however, admit that such an interpre- 
 tation of this passage would seem overstrained, and that 
 the reading of the folio edition, " metal of India," which is 
 gold — although less appropriate,' is also more probable. 
 
 The absence of blood in the liver was the supposed property 
 of a coward. " The liver white and pale" is Falstaff s patho- 
 logical "badge of pusillanimity and cowardice." The old 
 theory of the circulation of the blood gave rise to this opinion, 
 which explains Sir Toby's remark on his dupe. 
 
124 
 
 " Sir loby. For Andrew, if he were opened, and you find so 
 much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the 
 rest of the anatomy." Act iii. Scene 2. 
 
 Obstruction to the flow of blood by pressure on the veins 
 is thus referred at. 
 
 " This does make some obstruction in the blood, this cross- 
 gartering." Act iii., Scene 4. 
 
 When Malvolio is definitely pronounced to be mad, Fabian 
 says, " Carry his water to the wise woman ; " and when he 
 argues with the clown that he is not mad, the latter replies 
 with pathological point, 
 
 " Nay, I'll ne'er believe a madman, till I see his brains." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 2. 
 
 When Sebastian has broken Sir Toby's head, he cannot get 
 it plaistered, for a reason not very complimentary to one 
 branch of the profession. The olden times were truly early 
 times, unless, indeed, Dick Surgeon had debauched the night 
 through, and was thus enabled to be up early, diluculo 
 surgere, in Sir Toby's fashion. 
 
 " Sir Toby. That's all one ; he has hurt me, and there's the end 
 on't. — Sot, did'st see Dick surgeon, sot ? 
 
 " Clown. Oh ! he's drunk, Sir Toby, an hour agone ; his eyes 
 were set at eight i' the morning." Act v. Scene 1, 
 
125 
 
 WINTER'S TALE. 
 
 The effect of narcotics on the judgment, by obscuring the 
 senses, and thus closing the inlets of knowledge, is here 
 stated. 
 
 " Archidamus. We will give you sleepy drinks, that your senses, 
 unintelligent of our insufficience, may, though they cannot, praise 
 us, as little accuse us." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 Leontes, exclaiming against what he takes to be the certain 
 
 signs of his wife's unfaithfulness, makes use of a Latin term 
 
 of medicine. 
 
 " Too hot, too hot : 
 To mingle friendship far, is mingling bloods. 
 I have tremor cordis on me ; — my heart dances ; 
 But not for joy — not joy." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 He speaks of his jealousy as " the infection of my brains," 
 
 and refers the cause of his wife's supposed faithlessness to 
 
 disease produced by the predominance of a planet, thus giving 
 
 a passing allusion to astronomical medicine, once so widely 
 
 received. 
 
 " Physic for't there's none ; 
 lb is a bawdy planet, that will strike 
 Where 'tis predominant : 
 
 ^F W TP * * 
 
 Many thousand of us 
 Have the disease, and feel't not. 
 
 Have not you seen, Camillo, 
 (But that's past doubt : you have ; or your eye-glass 
 Is thicker than a cuckold's horn)." Act. i., Scene 2. 
 
 Is not the eye-glass referred to as opaque, like horn, the 
 cornea, which in disease becomes so ? 
 
12<> 
 
 Leontes, describing his wife's desire for opportunities of 
 indulging her supposed wickedness, makes her wish that 
 possible witnesses may be blind, and blind of a certain dis- 
 ease, the name for which is now quite obsolete. In the 
 statute of the 34 & 35 of Henry VIII., quoted at page 20, 
 'a pin and web in the eye' is recited among the "custom- 
 able diseases" which honest persons, not being surgeons, 
 might treat with ' herbs, roots, and waters,' with the know- 
 ledge of whose nature God had endowed them. In King 
 Lear, Act iii. Scene 4, Edgar says of "the foul fiend Flibberti- 
 gibbet," " he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and 
 makes the hare-lip." Mr. Knight has the following note 
 on this passage. " Florio, in his New World of Words, thus 
 interprets the Italian catardtta — a dimness of sight occa- 
 sioned by humours hardened in the eyes, called a cataract, 
 or a pin and a web." 
 
 " All eyes Hind 
 With the pin and web, but theirs, theirs only, 
 That would unseen be wicked ? " Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 The jealous king thinks the very life of his queen a disease, 
 which in a bodily organ would be fatal. 
 
 " Were my wife's liver 
 Infected as her life, she would not live 
 The running of one glass." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 His invitation to Camillo to poison his hated rival, is 
 answered by an allusion to the use of slow and secret poison, 
 
 " Xing. Might'st bespice a cup, 
 
 To give mine enemy a lasting wink ; 
 Which draught to me were cordial. 
 
 Camillo. Sir, my lord, 
 
 I could do this ; and that with no rash potion, 
 But with a ling'ring dram, that should not work 
 Maliciously, like poison." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
127 
 
 Polixenes, surprised and wounded by the threatening aspect 
 of his jealous friend, asks the reason of the change, which 
 Camillo, in medical periphrasis, indicates to be jealousy. 
 
 " There is a sickness 
 Which puts some of us in distemper : but 
 I cannot name the disease ; and it is caught 
 Of you that yet are well." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Polixenes, on learning that his friend accuses him of having 
 " touched his queen forbiddenly," imprecates upon himself, if 
 he is guilty, a pathological punishment. The connection 
 between infection and bad smells is here more distinctly 
 stated than in Twelfth Night. 
 
 " O, then my best blood turn 
 To an infected jelly : and my name 
 Be yok'd with his that did betray tbe Best ! 
 Turn, then, my freshest reputation to 
 A savour that may strike the dullest nostril 
 Where I arrive ; and my approach be shunn'd, — 
 Nay, hated too, worse than the great'st infection 
 That e'er was heard or read ! " Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 By the old medical writers, spiders, like toads, were sup- 
 posed to be poisonous. Ambrose Pare says, " The ancients 
 have thought the bitings of spiders to be venomous. Now 
 their poison is, therefore, thought to be cold, because the 
 symptoms thence arising are winde in the belly, refrigerations 
 of the extreme parts of the body, numbnesse in the bitten 
 part, with sense of cold and shaking." The following pas- 
 sage would seem to call in question the truth of the old 
 opinion ; or at least to express the power of the fancy in 
 the production of such phenomena. 
 
 " There may be in the cup 
 A spider steep'd, and one may drink ; depart, 
 
128 
 
 And yet partake no venom : for his knowledge 
 Is not infected ; but if one present 
 The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known 
 How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, 
 With violent hefts :— I have drunk, and seen the spider." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The following is half medical, half legal, and beautifully 
 expresses the merciful theory of the English law, that an un- 
 born child is innocent of the guilt of its mother ; a theory 
 carried out to the reprieve of a person condemned to death if 
 she be found pregnant, until parturition, " the law and process 
 of great nature," has separated the innocent from the guilty 
 life. The accused queen has been brought to be bed in prison, 
 and Paulina claims the infant from the gaoler, who demurs to 
 let it pass. 
 
 " Paulina. You need not fear it, sir ; 
 
 The child was prisoner to the womb ; and is, 
 By law and process of great nature, thence 
 Free'd and enfranchis'd : — not a party to 
 The anger of the king, nor guilty of, 
 If any be, the trespass of the queen." Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 When Joan of Arc is condemned to the stake as a sorceress, 
 she claims the privilege of reprieve on this ground. 
 
 " Pucelle. Will nothing turn your unrelenting hearts ? — 
 Then, Joan, discover thine infirmity ; 
 That warranteth by law to be thy privilege. — 
 I am with child, ye bloody homicides : 
 Murder not, then, the fruit within my womb, 
 Although ye hale me to a violent death." 
 
 First Part of Henry VI., Act v., Scene 4. 
 
 Leontes' description of the sickness of the young prince, 
 occasioned by grief at the shame of his mother, gives exactly 
 the symptoms to be expected in such a case of nervous dis- 
 turbance in a child, arising from grief and shame. 
 
129 
 
 *' Leontes. How does the boy ? 
 
 Attendant. He took good rest to night ; 
 
 Tis hop'd his sickness is discharg'd. 
 
 Leon. To see, his nobleness ! 
 
 Conceiving the dishonour of his mother, 
 He straight declin'd, droop'd, took it deeply ; 
 Fasten'd and fix'd the shame on't in himself; 
 Threw off his spirit, his appetite, his sleep, 
 And downright languished." Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 Miss Nightingale, in her Kotes on Nursing, shews how 
 those slight noises which excite attention, are far more 
 destructive to the repose of the patient than much louder 
 noises which are decided and undisguised. 
 
 "I have often been surprised at the thoughtlessness, 
 (resulting in cruelty, quite unintentionally) of friends or 
 of doctors who will hold a long conversation just in the 
 room or passage adjoining to the room of the patient, who 
 is either every moment expecting them to come in, or who 
 has just seen them, and knows they are talking about him. 
 If he is an amiable patient, he will try to occupy his attention 
 elsewhere, and not to listen — and this makes matters worse — 
 for the strain upon his attention and the effort he makes 
 are so great, that it is well if he is not worse for hours after. 
 If it is a whispered conversation in the same room, then it is 
 absolutely cruel, for it is impossible that the patient's atten- 
 tion should not be involuntarily strained to hear. Walking 
 on tip-toe, doing anything in the room very slowly, are 
 injurious for exactly the same reasons." — p. 26. 
 
 These remarks, which would appear as novel as they are 
 
 excellent, have, however, been anticipated by Shakespeare in 
 
 a passage which shews that he was keenly alive to the 
 
 disturbance which these muffled sounds occasion to a restless 
 
 patient. The scene is in the sick chamber of Leontes., 
 K 
 
130 
 
 " Attendant. Madam, he hath not slept to night ; commanded 
 None should come at him. 
 
 Paulina. Not so hot, good Sir ; 
 
 I come to bring him sleep. 'Tis such as you, — 
 That creep like shadows by him, and do sigh 
 At each his needless heavings, — such as you 
 Nourish the cause of his awaking : I 
 Do come with words as med'cinal as true ; 
 Honest as either : to purge him of that humour 
 That presses him from sleep." Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 Hermione complains at her trial of the bitter ill-usage 
 
 she has received. From her child she says " I am barred like 
 
 one infectious," and 
 
 " Myself, on every post, 
 Proclaim'd a strumpet ! with immodest hatred, 
 The child-bed privilege denied, which ' longs 
 To women of all fashion, hastily hurried 
 Here to this place, i' the open air, before 
 I have got strength of limit." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 The word ' hastily' is a reading which I venture to suggest 
 in the place of "lastly hurried," which breaks the con- 
 struction and sense of the passage, it being evident that 
 the denial of child-bed privilege is one and the same offence 
 against decency and humanity, as the poor woman's exposure 
 in open court while still suffeiing from parturient debility. 
 
 The poor queen faints when she hears the death of her 
 
 son announced, and the king, who believes " she will recover " 
 
 because " her heart is but overcharged," calls for the use 
 
 of restoratives. 
 
 " 'Beseech you, tenderly apply to her 
 
 Some remedies for life." Ibid. 
 
 Paulina returns to the court with an exclamation which 
 shews that Shakespeare knew the effects of tight lacing. 
 
 " Paulina. Woe the while ! 
 
 O, cut my lace ; lest my heart, cracking it, 
 Break too '." J bid. 
 
131 
 
 She maintains that the queen is dead, and gives four signs 
 of death, which, if they existed, would go a long way to 
 enforce her opinion, although it is confessedly a difficult 
 medical problem to fix upon certain signs of the recent 
 cessation of life. The signs she gives are the pallor, the 
 lustreless eye, the cessation of breath, and the loss of animal 
 heat. 
 
 " Paulina. I say, she's dead ; I'll swear't ; if word, nor oath, 
 Prevail not, go and see : if you can bring 
 Tincture, or lustre, in her lip, her eye, 
 Heat outwardly, or breath within." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 The refusal of Polixenes to grant the request of Camillo to 
 return to Sicilia is thus expressed, " ' Tis a sickness to deny 
 thee anything, a death to grant this." 
 
 The clown describing the death of Antigonus, says " to see 
 how the bear tore out his shoulder bona" When Autolycus 
 feigns to have been injured by thieves, he says to the clown, 
 " good sir, softly good sir, I fear my shoulder-blade is out." 
 The shoulder-blade, however, cannot be dislocated. 
 
 The malady referred to in the following passage is, no 
 doubt, consumption, a malady to which persons of the age 
 and sex indicated are peculiarly liable. The lines are in 
 Perdita's beautiful description of flowers. 
 
 " Pale primroses, 
 That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
 Bright Phcebus in his strength — a malady 
 Most incident to maids." Act iv,, Scene 3. 
 
 The enquiry of the disguised Polixenes, respecting his own 
 condition to judge of and be present at the nuptials of his 
 son, embraces most of the points of mental capacity which 
 an alienist physician would raise. 
 
 K 2 
 
132 
 
 " Is not your father grown incapable 
 
 Of reasonable affairs ? Is he not stupid 
 
 With age, and altering rheums ? — Can he speak ? hear ? 
 
 Know man from man ? dispute his own estate ? 
 
 Lies he not bed-rid ? And again does nothing, 
 
 But what he did being childish ? " Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 When Autolycus attempts to frighten the clown by a 
 description of the tortures he is to endure, he confounds aqua 
 vitce with hot infusions ; a form of speech in accordance with 
 a character who spake no more truth than what was needful 
 to pass deception current, and was only honest by accident. 
 
 " He has a son, who shall be flayed alive ; then, 'nointed over 
 with honey, set on the head of a wasp's nest ; then stand, till 
 he be three quarters and a dram dead : then recovered again with 
 aqua-vitse, or some other hot infusion." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 KING JOHN. 
 
 The pulsation of the blood in the temporal arteries and the 
 life of the blood are referred to as follows : 
 
 "How comes it then, that thou art called a king, 
 When living blood doth in these temples beat, 
 Which owe the crown that thou o'ermasterest ? " 
 
 Act ii. Scene 1. 
 
 Pandulph also speaks of the life of the blood in the veins. 
 
 " That whiles warm life plays in that infant's veins." 
 
 Act iii. Scene 4. 
 
133 
 
 The idea of life residing in the blood is again and still 
 more pointedly referred to by Prince Henry, when describing 
 the effects of poison on the wretched king. 
 
 " The life of all his blood 
 Is touch'd corruptibly." Act v. Scene 7. 
 
 The theory of 'the life of the blood' is older than Hippo- 
 crates, for it is found in the writings of Moses : " the life of 
 the flesh is in the blood." — Levit. xvii. 11. 
 
 The notion that the blood may be thickened, turned to 
 jelly, by emotional influences, is stated by Polixenes. The 
 expression, that the blood runs trickling up and down the 
 veins, seems to point to the thought that there is a flux 
 and reflux of the current. It is in John's temptation of 
 Hubert to murder Arthur. 
 
 " Or if that surly spirit, melancholy, 
 Had bak'd thy blood, and made it heavy, thick, 
 (Which, else, runs trickling up and down the veins, , 
 Making that idiot, laughter, keep men's eyes, 
 And strain their cheeks to idle merriment, 
 A passion hateful to my purposes.) " Act iii. Scene 3. 
 
 Congenital defects are catalogued by Constance, as idiocy, 
 deformity, and as the marks prodigious despised in nativity, 
 which are named by Oberon. 
 
 " Constance. If thou, that bid'st me be content, wert grim, 
 Ugly, and sland'rous to thy mother's womb, 
 Full of unpleasing blots, and sightless stains, 
 Lame, foolish, crooked, swart, prodigious, 
 Patch'd with foul moles and eye-offending marks, 
 I would not care, I then would be content ; 
 For then I should not love thee ; no, nor thou 
 Become thy great birth, nor deserve a crown." 
 
 Act iii. Scene 1. 
 
 The transition in Constance of passionate excitement 
 
J 34 
 
 into acute mania has been traced in the Psychology of 
 Shakespeare, and the only remarks needful in this place 
 are, that this tempest of passion prevailed in a sickly 
 body, 
 
 " For I am sick, and capable of fears." Act iii. Scene 1. 
 
 And that the acute mania which succeeded is represented 
 to have been fatal. 
 
 " The Lady Constance in a frenzy died." Act iv. Scene 2. 
 
 This passage unquestionably refers to the medical doctrine 
 
 of crises which was universally prevalent in Shakespeare's 
 
 time. 
 
 " Pandulpli. Before the curing of a strong disease, 
 Even in the instant of repair and health, 
 The fit is strongest ; evils, that take leave, 
 On their departure most of all shew evil." Act iii. Scene 4. 
 
 When Hubert communicates to Arthur his horrible com- 
 mission to burn out both his eyes, Arthur pleads the exquisite 
 sensitiveness of the organ : 
 
 " Have you the heart ? When your head did but ache, 
 
 1 knit my hand-kercher about your brows. 
 ###### 
 
 Is there no remedy ? 
 
 Hubert. None, but to lose your eyes. 
 
 Arthur. O Heaven ! that there were but a mote in yours, 
 A grain, a dust, a gnat, a wandering hair, — 
 Any annoyance in that precious sense ! 
 Then, feeling what small things are boist'rous there, 
 Your vile intent must needs seem horrible." Act iv. Scene 1. 
 
 When the peers accuse King John of the Prince's death, 
 he says, 
 
 " Why do you bend such solemn brows on me ? 
 Think you, I bear the solemn shears of destiny ? 
 Have I commandment of the pulse of life ? " 
 
 Act iv. Scene 2. 
 
135 
 
 The maturation and discharge of an abscess appear to be 
 the basis of the simile here employed. 
 
 " Salisbury. His passion is so ripe it needs must break. 
 
 Pembroke. And when it breaks, I fear, will issue thence 
 The foul corruption of a sweet child's death." 
 
 Act iv. Scene 2. 
 
 The confusion of the brain-functions, in the first moments 
 of drowning, seems referred to by John. 
 
 " Bear with me, cousin ; for I was amaz'd 
 Under the tide : but now I breathe again 
 Aloft the flood." Act iv. Scene 2. 
 
 John thus appeals to Pandulph for aid when his discontent- 
 ed Barons league themselves against him with the enemy. 
 
 " This inundation of mistemper'd humour 
 Rests by you only to be qualified. 
 Then pause not ; for the present time's so sick, 
 That present medicine must be minister'd, 
 Or overthrow incurable ensues." Act v. Scene 1, 
 
 The same medical form of illustration is adopted by 
 Salisbury, one of the revolted peers. 
 
 " I am not glad that such a sore of time 
 Should seek a plaster by contemn'd revolt, 
 And heal the inveterate canker of one wound 
 By making many. * * * 
 
 But such is the infection of the time, 
 That, for the health and physic of our right, 
 We cannot deal but with the very hand 
 Of stern injustice and confused wrong." Act v. Scene 2. 
 
 King John is driven from the field of battle by illness, 
 possibly by the accession of a fit of ague superinduced only 
 by the breath of the Lincolnshire fens ; since the fever, a 
 common term for ague, has troubled him long. 
 
 " K. John. This fever, that hath troubled me so long, 
 Lies heavy on me ; O, my heart is sick ! * * 
 
J 36 
 
 Ah, me ! this tyrant fever burns me up, 
 
 And will not let me welcome this good news. — 
 
 Set on toward Swinstead : to my litter straight ; 
 
 "Weakness possesseth me, and I am faint." Act v. Scene 3. 
 
 The description of death from haemorrhage is quaintly 
 given by the wounded Melun. 
 
 " Have I not hideous death within my view, 
 Retaining but a quantity of life, 
 Which bleeds away, even as a form of wax 
 Resolveth from his figure 'gainst the fire ? " 
 
 Act v. Scene 4. 
 
 He did not, however, die thus, if Salisbury's observation 
 were correct. The eye would become dim under the ex- 
 haustion of hoemorrhage, while it would be bright under 
 " cruel pangs." 
 
 " For I do see the cruel pangs of death 
 Bright in thine eye." Act v. Scene 4i. 
 
 The whole of the poison scene is very remarkable. The 
 Bastard exhorts Hubert to tell him the horrible news without 
 delay or disguise. 
 
 " Show me the very wound of this ill news ; 
 I am no woman, I'll not swoon at it. 
 
 Hubert. The king, I fear, is poison'd by a monk : 
 I left him almost speechless. * * * 
 
 Bastard. How did he take it ? Who did taste to him ? 
 
 Sub. A monk, I tell you ; a resolved villain, 
 Whose bowels suddenly burst out : the king 
 Yet speaks, and peradventure may recover." Act v. Scene 6. 
 
 In the olden days, the fear of poison was so prevalent that 
 great men had all their food tasted by persons who were 
 supposed to have made themselves acquainted with its whole- 
 someness. This plan, however, could not afford security when 
 the taster was ready to sacrifice his own life. The ideas which 
 
137 
 
 prevailed in Shakespeare's time on the subject of poisons, both 
 among the ignorant and learned, were strangely chimerical ; 
 the description of this death by poison is, however, as accurate 
 as it is fearful ; the only point of error being in Hubert's 
 description of the poison upon the monk " whose bowels 
 suddenly burst out." No poison known to modern science 
 would produce such an effect. It is, however, quite con- 
 sistent with the old opinion, both medical and general, which 
 attributed to poison, swelling and bursting of the body, as one 
 of its effects. 
 
 " P. Henry. It is too late ; the life of all his blood 
 Is touch' d corruptibly ; and his pure brain 
 (Which some suppose the soul's frail dwelling house,) 
 Doth, by the idle comments that it makes, 
 Foretell the ending of mortality. 
 
 Pembroke. His highness yet doth speak ; and holds belief, 
 That, being brought into the open air, 
 It would allay the burning quality 
 Of that fell poison which assaileth him. 
 
 P. Henry. Let him be brought into the orchard here. — 
 Doth he still rage ? 
 
 Pern. He is more patient 
 
 Than when you left him ; even now he sung. 
 
 P. Henry. 0, vanity of sickness ! fierce extremes, 
 In their continuance, will not feel themselves. 
 Death, having prey'd upon the outward parts, 
 Leaves them insensible : and his siege is now 
 Against the mind, the which he pricks and wounds 
 With many legions of strange fantasies ; 
 Which, in their throng and press to that last hold, 
 Confound themselves. 'Tis strange, that death should sing." 
 
 Act v. Scene 7. 
 
 The observations and theories included in the above quo- 
 tation are remarkable. The life of the blood, the cerebral 
 localization of the mental functions, the cessation of bodily 
 pain at a certain stage of the operation of corrosive poison, 
 when death, "having preyed upon the outward parts, leaves 
 
138 
 
 them insensible," the confused throng of ' thoughts which 
 characterize some forms of delirium, all these points of physi- 
 ological observation are wonderfully conceived and expressed. 
 
 The supervention of delirium, upon the cessation of pain 
 in the outward parts, was noted and expressed by Hippo- 
 crates in the sixth aphorism, section 2, " Persons who have 
 a painful affection of any part of the body, and are in a 
 great measure insensible of pain, are disordered in intellect." 
 
 When John is brought into the orchard, the throng and 
 press of strange fantasies have ceased to confound themselves. 
 He does not rage as he has done before, but expresses himself 
 again sensible of suffering, in similes of terrible power. 
 
 It would perhaps, however, have been more consistent 
 with the strict probability of the course of events, if the 
 cessation of what may be called traumatic delirium, and the 
 restoration of painful sensation, had not been represented ; 
 for when death, having preyed upon the outward parts, 
 lays his siege against the mind, the delirium generally 
 continues to the end. 
 
 " King John. Ay, marry, now my soul hatli elbow room ; 
 It would not out at windows, nor at doors. 
 There is so hot a summer in my bosom, 
 That all my bowels crumble up to dust : 
 I am a scribbled form, drawn with a pen 
 Upon a parchment ; and against this fire 
 Do I shrink up. 
 
 Prince Henry. How fares your majesty ? 
 K. John. Poison' d,- — ill-fare ; — dead, forsook, cast off: 
 And none of you will bid the winter come, 
 To thrust his icy fingers in my maw ; 
 Nor let my kingdom's rivers take their course 
 Through my burn'd bosom ; nor entreat the north 
 To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips, 
 And comfort me with cold : — I do not ask yon much ; 
 I beg cold comfort ; and you are so strait, 
 And so ungrateful, you deny me that. 
 
139 
 
 P. Henry. O, that there were some virtue in my tears, 
 That might relieve you ! 
 
 K. John. The salt in them is hot. — 
 Within me is a hell ; and there the poison 
 Is, as a fiend, confin'd to tyrannize 
 On unreprievable condemned blood. 
 
 [Mnter the Bastaed. 
 
 Bast. O, I am scalded with my violent motion, 
 And spleen of speed to see your majesty. 
 
 _2T. John. cousin, thou art come to set mine eye : 
 The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burnt ; 
 And all the shrouds, wherewith my life should sail, 
 Are turned to one thread, one little hair : 
 My heart hath one poor string to stay it by, 
 Which holds but till thy news be utter'd : 
 And then all this thou see'st, is but a clod, 
 And module of confounded royalty." Act v. Scene 7. 
 
 Where elsewhere is to be found a description so terrible, 
 and yet so graphic, of the agonies of death from corrosive 
 poison ! 
 
 KING RICHARD II. 
 
 In the following passage the quibble upon the two senses 
 of the word choler, viz., anger and bile, is followed up by a 
 reference to its medical treatment, by blood-letting, and to 
 the too deep incision which it was possible to make in the 
 operation. The times of the year, too, for bleeding are 
 referred to ; the old doctors thinking it sanatory to bleed in 
 the spring and fall, but avoiding the lancet during the inter- 
 mediate months. 
 
140 
 
 " K. Richard. Wrath -kindled gentlemen, be rul'd by me ; 
 Let's purge this choler without letting blood : 
 This we prescribe, though no physician ; 
 Deep malice makes too deep incision ; 
 Forget, forgive ; conclude, and be agreed : 
 Our doctors say, this is no month to bleed." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 The forty-seventh aphorism of Hippocrates, section 6, is 
 that " Persons who are benefited by venesection or purging 
 should be bled or purged in the spring." 
 
 Here also is authority for the opinion from one of 
 Shakespeare's century, though rather before his time. 
 
 " Concernynge lettynge of bloudde, these thynges folowynge, 
 wolde be had in contynuall remembraunce, and be afore thought 
 on. — The tyme of the yere must be speciallye marked. For in the 
 begynnynge of sprynge tyme, it is beste lettynge of bloudde, as 
 Oribasius saythe, and so doth continue, after the opinyon of Arnolde, 
 unto the eyght calendes of June. ^Etius affirmeth, that in wynter, 
 or in a colde countrey, or where the persone is of a very colde 
 nature, the veynes shuld not be opened." — The Oastell of Helthe, 
 of Syr Thomas Elyot, Knyght, a.d., 1541, page 62. 
 
 In Homer's surgery, the rust of the spear which inflicted 
 the wound was thought its appropriate remedy. See also 
 the more distinct statement of the opinion in Henry VI., 
 Second Part. 
 
 " I am disgrac'd, impeach' d, and baffled here ; 
 Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd spear, 
 The which no balm can cure, but his heart-blood 
 Which breath'd this poison." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 A medical truth, known to many a man with a weak 
 stomach, is that 
 
 " Things sweet to taste prove in digestion sour." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 Gaunt's persuasion to contentment in exile, again records 
 the atmospheric theory of pestilence, and refers to the cus- 
 
141 
 
 torn, then prevalent, of persons attempting to avoid the 
 
 pestilence, by forsaking infected localities. Let those who 
 
 would wish to know the extent to which this desertion was 
 
 carried, read the introduction to the Decameron, which 
 
 describes a great city thus converted into a desert. 
 
 " Suppose 
 Devouring pestilence hangs in our air, 
 And thou art flying to a fresher clime." Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 Here is a surgical passage again recognizing the important 
 difference between a clean cut wound, and one in which the 
 tissues are bruised and lacerated. 
 
 " Fell sorrow's tooth doth never rankle more, 
 Than when it bites but lanceth not the sore." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 The interview between the king and aged Gaunt, "grievous 
 sick," " suddenly taken," is scarcely medical, although Gaunt 
 plays upon medical similes : thus he reminds the king, 
 
 " 111 in myself to see, and in thee seeing ill. 
 Thy death-bed is no lesser than the land, 
 Wherein thou liest in reputation sick ; 
 And thou, too careless patient as thou art, 
 Oommit'st thy anointed body to the cure 
 Of those physicians that first wounded thee." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The petulant king scarcely accords the privilege to the 
 dying man of permission to speak the unwelcome truth. 
 
 " K. Richard. And thou a lunatic lean-witted fool, 
 Presuming on an ague's privilege, 
 Dar'st with thy frozen admonition 
 Make pale our cheek." Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 York, to dissuade the king from pardoning an offender, 
 employs a simile which would scarcely have been either 
 thought of, or understood, by a person who had not some 
 knowledge of the science of surgery. 
 
142 
 
 " This fester'd joint cut off, the rest rests sound ; 
 This, let alone, will all the rest confound." 
 
 Act v., Scene 3. 
 
 It at once suggests the thought of some joint injured by 
 gun-shot wound, or by some accident, and undergoing those 
 suppurative changes, which would prove fatal unless ampu- 
 tation were resorted to. 
 
 A transposition of lines in the following passage would 
 reunite the different parts of each simile, and make the 
 reading far more simple and emphatic. Surely it stands in 
 its present confusion by the printer's error. The inheritance 
 of blood was, of old, the universal faith ; but science now 
 points to the far more important inheritance of nerve. 
 
 " One vial full of Edward's sacred blood, — 
 One flourishing branch of his most royal root, — 
 Is crack'd, and all the precious liquor spilt ; 
 Is hack'd down, and his summer leaves all vaded." 
 
 Read instead, — 
 
 " One vial full of Edward's sacred blood, — 
 Is crack'd, and all the precious liquor spilt ; 
 One flourishing branch of his most royal root, — 
 Is hack'd down, and his summer leaves all vaded." 
 
 Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 The decent habits of the table which prevail in our time 
 afford few examples of an accident to which men, from whom 
 the restraints of decency are removed, are greatly liable. 
 Thus in lunatic asylums, the accident referred to is of 
 frequent occurrence, and when its effects are aggravated by 
 paralysis, it is not unfrequently fatal. 
 
 " With eager feeding, food doth choke the feeder." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The cordon sanitaire of the quarantine laws appears to be 
 
143 
 
 referred to as one of the advantages attributed to the insular 
 position of this country. 
 
 " This fortress, built by nature for herself, 
 Against infection from the hand of war." Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The mystical connection between the soul and the brain is 
 of a kind which demands the aid of allegory, that the idea 
 may in any way be grasped, and, perhaps, it has never been 
 better put than in the following passage. It will be remarked, 
 however, that the soul divides with the material organ the 
 honour of being the source of thought, and that it is 
 represented as something distinct from thought. 
 
 " My brain I'll prove the female to my soul ; 
 My soul, the father : and these two beget 
 A generation of still-breeding thoughts." Act v., Scene 5. 
 
 This passage is interesting in connexion with the employ- 
 ment of music to effect the restoration of Lear from his 
 madness, and the old belief, not yet quite exploded, that the 
 regulated succession of sweet sounds is a powerful agent in 
 the induction of a well-regulated succession of ideas. 
 
 " This music mads me — let it sound no more ; 
 For, though it have holpe madmen to their wits, 
 In me it seems it will make wise men mad." 
 
 Act v., Scene 5. 
 
14-4 
 
 KING HENRY IV. First Part. 
 
 Hotspur's half-humourous, half-splenetic, description of the 
 fop who demanded his Scotch prisoners, contains several 
 points of medical interest. The description of his own state, 
 when the fight was done, is of this nature : 
 
 " "When I was dry with rage and extreme toil, 
 Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword, 
 
 I then, all smarting, with my wounds being cold." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 The absence of pain from wounds received in battle so long 
 as the excitement continues, is a well known fact ; but when 
 the excitement ceases, the pain is felt, and the condition here 
 described occurs. 
 
 The source of the material for the courtly messenger's 
 
 recipe, 
 
 " The sovereign'st thing on earth 
 Was parmaceti for an inward bruise," Act i. Scene 3. 
 
 seems to have been rather a mystery. Dr. Salmon says of 
 spermaceti, or parmacety, that it is found in Egypt, and in 
 the river Nilus ; " what it is, is scarcely determined ; some 
 think it a kind of bitumen made of a sulphurous earth and 
 salt ; others say it is the seed of the whale, or, at least, taken 
 out of some part of the whale," which latter opinion he be- 
 lieves to be probably true, as gentlemen had told him that 
 they had taken it out of the head of the whale ; an assertion, 
 we now know to be more than probably true. Among its 
 effects, Salmon says, " it is said to be anodyne, and some phy- 
 
U5 
 
 sicians affirm that it resolves coagulated blood ;" hence its 
 supposed efficacy on an inward bruise. 
 
 Woodall, in the work before quoted, affirms this especial 
 virtue, almost in the words of Shakespeare. " Sperma 
 Ceti, or Spuma Maris, or the spawne of the whale, is 
 sowre in taste, spongie and white in shew, unsavoury in 
 smell, and weighty, having a sharp quality : It is of a cold 
 faculty, cleanseth and digesteth, and is sometimes used of 
 women to cleare the skin from spots and morphew [ring- 
 worm] : It is good also agavnst hruises inwardly, taken with 
 the former, namely Mummia, and also outwardly warme, to 
 anoint the parts contused therewith, and a Paracelsus em- 
 plaister, or of Pix Grcecum, put thereon." 
 
 The sweet-smelling ambassador did not make so good a 
 shot in his assertion, that saltpetre was digged " out of the 
 bowels of the harmless earth." 
 
 This gentleman's foppish habits afford occasion for a 
 reference to the remarkable narcotic newly introduced iu 
 Shakespeare's time. 
 
 " 'Twixt his finger and his thumb he held 
 A pouncet-box, which ever and anon 
 He gave his nose, and took't away again ; 
 Who, therewith angry, when it next came there, 
 Took it in snuff." Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 It is singular that this is the only allusion, (if indeed it be 
 one,) made to tobacco throughout the plays. A contemporary 
 poet calls it divine tobacco, "whether it divine tobacco were," 
 and describes the application of its juice to a wound. — Fairia 
 Queen, Book hi., Chapter 5. 
 
 A reasonable theory of earthquakes is thus illustrated by a 
 medical simile. 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 " Diseased nature oftentimes breaks forth 
 In strange eruptions : oft the teeming earth 
 Is with a kind of cholic pinch'd and vex'd 
 By the imprisoning of unruly wind 
 Within her womb ; which, for enlargement striving, 
 Shakes the old beldame earth, and topples down 
 Steeples, and moss-grown towers." Actin. Scene 1. 
 
 The healing influence of good deeds to the chronic ulcer of 
 
 a dissolute life is thus invoked : 
 
 " The which if He be pleas'd I shall perform, 
 I do beseech your majesty, may salve 
 The long-grown wounds of my intemperance." 
 
 Act iii. Scene 2. 
 
 Hotspur's interruption to Vernon's praises of Prince Henry 
 conveys a medical fact, which, in these anti-aguish days of 
 agricultural improvement, would scarce be thought of, in 
 opposition to the proverbial value of a peck of March dust. 
 
 " Hotspur. No more, no more ; worse than the sun in March, 
 This praise doth nourish agues." Act iv. Scene 1. 
 
 The main exigencies of military surgery are referred to as 
 the setting of bones and the removal of the pain of wounds. 
 
 " Honour pricks me on. Yes, but how if honour prick me off 
 when I come on ? How then ? Can honour set to a leg ? No. 
 Or an arm Y No. Or take away the grief of a wound ? No. 
 Honour hath no skill in surgery, then ? No." Act v. Scene 1. 
 
 The following passage indicates the most ready test of 
 hallucination, namely, an appeal to the testimony of an- 
 other sense. Fancy may deceive the sight, but will 
 scarcely play pranks, at the same time, upon other senses. 
 Banquo, seen only by Macbeth, is silent ; it is an halluci- 
 nation. The ghosts of Hamlet's father and of Julius Csesar 
 appear to eye and ear, and are recognized as the repre- 
 sentatives of the old ghost faith, not as errors of sense. 
 
147 
 
 " Art thou alive ? or is it phantasy 
 That plays upon our eye-sight ? I pr'ythee, speak ;" 
 We will not trust our eyes without our ears : 
 Thou art not what thou seem'st." Act v. Scene 4. 
 
 The science of becoming lean could scarcely be embodied 
 in a more pithy and practical resolution, than 
 
 " If I do grow great, I'll grow less ; for I'll purge, and leave 
 sack, and live cleanly, as a nobleman should do." Act v. Scene 4. 
 
 One would almost think that Shakespeare was also ac- 
 quainted with the anatomy of obesity, and that he had seen 
 the midriff pressed upwards by the fat-laden organs of 
 the abdomen, and encroaching upon that cavity in which 
 the heart beats, and in which old opinions located the 
 nobler attributes of man. 
 
 " Sirrah, there's no room for faith, truth, nor honesty, in this 
 bosom of thine ; it is all filled up with guts and midriff." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 L" 
 
148 
 
 KING HENRY IV. Second Part. 
 
 Northumberland, whom illness has prevented from taking 
 part in Shrewsbury fight, when he hears from Mortimer the 
 news of his son's death and the defeat of his army, com- 
 mences his reply with the medical axiom, ubi virus ibi 
 vertus, and describes the effect of delirium in restoring 
 temporary strength to a fever-weakened patient. 
 
 " In poison there is physic ; and these news, 
 Having been well that would have made me sick, 
 Being sick, have in some measure made me well : 
 And as the wretch, whose fever-weaken'd joints, 
 Like strengthless hinges, buckle under life, 
 Impatient of his fit, breaks like a fire 
 Out of his keeper's arms ; even so my limbs, 
 Weaken'd with grief, being now enrag'd with grief, 
 Are thrice themselves." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 His friends exhort him to check this "stormy passion," 
 which, if indulged, must destroy his health. 
 
 " Morton. The lives of all your loving 'complices 
 Lean on your health ; the which, if you give o'er 
 To stormy passion, must perforce decay." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 Mortimer accounts for the defeat of the rebel army, by 
 the want of good-will to their cause among the soldiers. 
 Queasiness, ' a tendency to nausea,' constrained by the will, 
 is the most fitting expression which could be found, for 
 the sense of disgusted taste caused by medicine. 
 
 " And they did fight with queasiness, constrain'd, 
 As men drink potions." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 Laughter-loving and laughter-moving Sir John appears to 
 
149 
 
 have suffered a little in health by the Shrewsbury campaign. 
 He enquires of that " whoreson mandrake " of a page, whom 
 the Prince hath given him as a foil, 
 
 " Falstaff. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my water ? 
 
 Page. He said, sir, the water itself was a good healthy water : 
 but, for the party that owed it, he might have more diseases than 
 he knew for." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 A good honest opinion this, though quite at variance with 
 the doctrines of the old water-doctors, who pretended to recog- 
 nise all diseases from the aspects of this excrement. Sir John 
 has fallen upon evil times, his tailor will not trust him and 
 demands security, " I had as lief they put rat's-bane in my 
 mouth, as offer to stop it with security." He is in ill health, 
 and in ill credit, " can get no remedy against this consump- 
 tion of the purse, borrowing only lingers and lingers it out, 
 but the disease is incurable." In this frame of mind, he 
 encounters the chief justice, who has good cause and ample 
 power to crush him, but Gascoyne, who had the courage to 
 imprison the Prince of Wales, was magnanimously slow to 
 take offence. Falstaff evidently knows this well, and has 
 taken accurate guage of his man ; he pretends to sympathise 
 with his lordship on his supposed illness : " I am glad to see 
 your lordship abroad ; I heard say your lordship was sick ; I 
 hope your lordship goes abroad by advice ; I most humbly 
 beseech your lordship to have a reverend care of your 
 health." This put-off to the subject of the chief justice's 
 enquiry, the night's exploit on Gadshill, not answering its 
 purpose, Falstaff struggles hard to divert attention to the 
 king's illness, which he describes as an apoplexy, and cor- 
 rectly refers to some of its causes and earlier symptoms, 
 lethargic feelings, tingling sensations, deafness. 
 
150 
 
 " Fal. And I hear, moreover, his highness is fallen into this 
 whoreson apoplexy." 
 
 " This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy ; a kind of 
 sleeping in the hlood, a whoreson tingling." 
 
 "It hath its original from much grief; from study, and pertur- 
 bation of the brain : I have read the cause of his effects in Galen ; 
 it is a kind of deafness." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 A wilful deafness on Sir John's part, for which the chief 
 justice proposes to be his physician. The patient, however, 
 objects : 
 
 "Your lordship may minister the potion of imprisonment to 
 me, in respect to poverty ; hut how I should he your patient to 
 follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, 
 or indeed a scruple itself." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 The chief justice, ''loath to gall a new healed wound," lets 
 the fat reprobate off very easily. But when he assumes the 
 privileges of youth, and attributes to his opponent the harsh- 
 ness of age, "you measure the heat of our livers with the 
 bitterness of your galls," the reverend man of law shews 
 that he can play a good stick in the duello of controversy ; 
 and thus holds a glass up to the hoary debauchee, in which 
 he may contemplate the physical defects of age. 
 
 " Chief Justice. Do you set down your name in the scroll of 
 youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age ? 
 Have you not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white 
 beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly ? Is not your voice 
 broken ? your wind short ? your chin double ? your wit single ? 
 and every part about you blasted with antiquity ? and will you yet 
 call yourself young ? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Falstaff exclaims against fighting on a hot day, and wishes 
 h© may " never spit white again," should it so happen. The 
 colour of the spittle was, with the medical men of olden times, 
 an important point of diagnosis, especially of temperaments. 
 
151 
 
 With admirable effrontery, Falstaff concludes the war of 
 
 words by asking the great law lord to lend him a thousand 
 
 pounds, and he comments on the refusal as an old physician 
 
 might do. 
 
 " A man can no more separate age and covetousness, than he can 
 part young limbs and lechery ; bxit the gout galls the one, and the 
 pox pinches the other ; and so both the degrees prevent my curses." 
 
 Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Sir John indeed speaks feelingly on this point. 
 
 " A pox of this gout ! or, a gout of this pox ! — for the one or the 
 other plays the rogue with my great toe. It is no matter, if I do 
 halt ; I have the wars for my colour, and my pension shall seem the 
 more reasonable. A good wit will make use of any thing ; I will 
 turn diseases to commodity." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 The force of imagination in madness is referred to by Lord 
 
 Bardolpb, in his account of Hotspur's defeat, who 
 
 "With great imagination, 
 Proper to madmen, led his powers to death, 
 And, winking, leap'd into destruction." Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 The archbishop's bitter reproach on the fickleness of 
 
 popular favour alludes to surfeit from greedy feeding, and 
 
 to vomiting wilfully provoked, as by tickling the fauces, to 
 
 relieve the overloaded stomach. 
 
 " The commonwealth is sick of their own choice ; 
 Their over-greedy love hath surfeited : — 
 An habitation giddy and unsure 
 Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart. 
 O, thou fond many ; with what loud applause 
 Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke, 
 Before he was what thou wouldst have him be ! 
 And being now trimm'd in thine own desires, 
 Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him, 
 That thou provok'st thyself to cast him up. 
 So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge 
 Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard ; 
 And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
152 
 
 The fat hostess, of the immortal Boar's Head, has sundry 
 medical opinions. When she reminds Sir John of his oath, 
 sworn " upon a parcel gilt goblet," she endeavours to help his 
 recollection by the association of the idea with his head at 
 that time broken, and with gossip Quickly's dish of prawns, 
 which " were ill for a green wound." 
 
 Further on, she 'affects to nod' even in the technical 
 language of the profession, though she uses the terms most 
 malapropriately. Doll Tear- sheet is'suffering, probably from 
 the effects of a debauch, when the sympathising hostess at- 
 tempts to console and cheer her, feeling her pulse, and 
 pronouncing on the symptoms. 
 
 " Hostess. I'faith, sweetheart, methinks now you are in an ex- 
 cellent good temperality : your pulsidge beats as extraordinarily as 
 heart would desire ; and your colour, I ^arrant you, is as red as 
 any rose. But, you have drunk too much canaries ; and that's 
 a marvellous searching wine, and it perfumes the blood ere one can 
 say, What's this ? How do you now ? 
 
 Doll Tearsheet. Better than I was. Hem ! 
 
 Host. Why, that's well said ; a good heart's worth gold. 
 Look, here comes Sir John. 
 
 Fal. When Arthur first in court — Empty the Jordan — And 
 was a worthy king. How now, Mistress Doll / 
 
 Most. Sick of a calm - r yea, good sooth." Act ii., Scene 4. 
 
 ' Temperality,' no doubt, means ' temperature,' and pulsidge 
 of course, means pulse, but how canaries ' perfumes' the blood 
 is not quite so evident. The probable meaning is that it 
 "inflames" the blood. The 'calm' of which Doll was sick 
 was, evidently, a qualm, though Falstaff wilfully misunder- 
 stands it in the quieter sense. The word 'Jordan,' which 
 occurs twice in this play, reminds one that Chaucer distin- 
 guishes it from the urinal. 
 
 Prince Henry gives the best simile of Falstaff of which 
 
158 
 
 medicine is capable ; namely a wen, a monstrous fatty 
 tumour. 
 
 " I do allow this wen to be as familiar with me as my dog." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 This is far better than the one he applies to the same 
 person in the First part of Henry TV., "Thou swollen 
 parcel of dropsies," which evidently cannot hold water as 
 a simile, and is a mere vituperative untruth. 
 
 The distinction between rank and dangerous diseases, and 
 slighter indispositions, is freely drawn in the dialogue between 
 the king and Warwick. The 'good advice,' which in the 
 mere distemperature of the body may render much medicine 
 needless, would appear to mean what modern physicians call 
 ' regimen.' 
 
 " K. Henry. Have you read o'er the letters that I sent you ? 
 
 Warwick. We have, my liege. 
 
 K. Sen. Then you perceive, the body of our kingdom 
 How foul it is ; what rank diseases grow, 
 And with what danger, near the heart of it. 
 
 War. It is but as a body yet distemper' d ; 
 Which to his former strength may be restor'd, 
 With good advice, and little medicine : — 
 My lord Northumberland will soon be cool'd." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 Is the formation of abscess referred to in Richard's 
 prophecy ? 
 
 " The time will come, that foul sin, gathering head, 
 Shall break into corruption." Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 The archbishop's reasons for joining the insurrection are 
 couched in purely medical forms of thought. The state of 
 the times is as a burning fever brought on by surfeiting ; in- 
 fectious also, and to be cured only by loss of blood. This is 
 the prescription ; but the hand of the ecclesiastic is not ready 
 
154 
 
 to carry it into effect, even under the figurative character of 
 national physician. Ecclesia abhorret a sanguine, and there- 
 fore the priest comforts himself with the idea that he joins- 
 the rebels only for the purpose of dieting the rankness and 
 of purging the obstructions of the social state. Though the 
 argument may be illogical, the distinction drawn is very 
 curious from our point of view. 
 
 " Archbishop. Wherefore do I this ? so the questioa stands. 
 Briefly to this end. We are all diseas'd ; 
 And, with our surfeiting, and wanton hours, 
 Have brought ourselves into a burning fever, 
 And we must bleed for it : of which disease 
 Our late king, Richard, being infected, died. 
 But, my most noble lord of Westmoreland, 
 I take not on me here as a physician ; 
 Nor do I, as an enemy to peace, 
 Troop in the throngs of military men : 
 But rather shew a while like fearful war, 
 To diet rank minds, sick of happiness ; 
 And purge the obstructions, which begin to stop 
 Our very veins of life ! " Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 In the following passage the same speaker refers to the 
 surgical fact, that a broken bone after union becomes stronger 
 than before. 
 
 " Archbishop. 'Tis very true : — 
 
 And therefore be assur'd, my good lord marshal, 
 If we do now make our atonement well, 
 Our peace will, like a broken limb united, 
 Grow stronger for the breaking." Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 Falstaff's physiological essay on the character of Prince 
 John is as replete with old medical theory as it is with wit. 
 
 " Thlstqff. Good faith, this same young sober-blooded boy doth 
 not love me : nor a man cannot make him laugh ; — but that's no 
 marvel, he drinks no wine. There's never any of these demure boys 
 come to any proof ; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood, and 
 
155 
 
 making many fish-meals, that they fall into a hind of male green 
 sickness ; and then, when they marry, they get wenches : they are 
 generally fools and cowards ; — which some of us should he too, hut 
 for inflammation. A good sherris-sack hath a two-fold operation in 
 it. It ascends me into the brain ; dries me there all the foolish and 
 dull and crudy vapours which environ it : makes it apprehensive, 
 quick, forgetive, full of nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes ; which 
 deliver'd o'er to the voice (the tongue), which is the birth, becomes 
 excellent wit. The second property of your excellent sherris is, — 
 the warming of the blood ; which, before cold and settled, left the 
 liver white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity and 
 cowardice : but the sherris warms it, and makes it course from the 
 inwards to the parts extreme. It illumineth the face ; which as a 
 beacon gives warning to all the rest of this little kingdom, man, to 
 arm : and then the ' vital commoners, and inland petty spirits, 
 muster me all to their captain, the heart ; who, great and puffed 
 up with his retinue, doth any deed of courage ; and this valour 
 comes of sherris : So that skill in the weapon is nothing without 
 sack ; for that sets it a-work : and learning, a mere hoard of gold 
 kept by a devil, till sack commences it, and sets ib in act and use. 
 Hereof comes it, that Prince Harry is valiant : for the cold blood 
 he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile, and 
 bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled, with excellent endeavour 
 of drinking good, and good store of fertile sherris ; that he is 
 become very hot and valiant. If I had a thousand sons, the first 
 principle I would teach them, should be, — to forswear thin potations, 
 and addict themselves to sack." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 Thin drink and fish meals over-cool the blood, and occasion 
 ' a kind of male green sickness'. The physiology of this 
 opinion is unquestionably sound, for a low diet would, above 
 all things, tend to impoverish the blood. The phrase ' a kind 
 of male green sickness' obviously indicates that Shakespeare 
 knew that green sickness, chlorosis, was a disease almost pe- 
 culiar to women. He refers to its ordinary form in that most 
 poetic passage of Twelfth Night, as " a green and yellow 
 melancholy," which fed on the damask cheek of the love-sick 
 virgin. 
 
 The remarkable medical word, inflammation, which was 
 coined upon a false theory of the phenomena of that ab- 
 
156 
 
 normal state of nutrition, which still, both in medical and 
 common parlance, are expressed by this term, would appear 
 to have been employed by Shakespeare to designate merely 
 a state of excitement from strong drink. It is, indeed, the 
 only place in which Shakespeare makes use of the word, 
 and I am not aware that others have employed it in a non- 
 medical sense. Milton uses it in the strictly medical sense. 
 
 " Dire inflammation, which no cooling herb, 
 Nor medicinal liquor can assuage." Samson Agonistes. 
 
 The first of the two-fold operations of sack is founded 
 upon a singular theory of Hippocrates, which will be best 
 given in this place, by a quotation from the learned History 
 of Physic, by Daniel Le Clerc, written in Shakespeare's 
 century. 
 
 " Of the Brain. The brain is reckoned by Hippocrates 
 among the glands, because it appeared to him of the same 
 nature, being white, fryable, and spongy, as they were. And 
 he believed, that the brain sucked up the superfluous humours 
 of the body, like the other glands, which being all of a 
 spongy nature, imbibe, says he, moisture easily. 
 
 " But there is this further of the brain ; that the head being 
 hollow and round, draws incessantly, like a sort of cupping- 
 glass, the moisture from the rest of the body, which rises in 
 a vapour ; after which, it being over-charged, it sends it down 
 to the lower parts, especially the glands, from whence come 
 defluxions and catarrhs. 
 
 " Hippocrates, in some other places, makes the brain the 
 seat of wisdom and understanding, although, as we have seen 
 before, he lodges the soul, which is the same thing with the 
 understanding, in the left ventricle of the heart." 
 
157 
 
 The crudy vapours which environ the brain are thus 
 explained as the moisture which rises to this organ " in the 
 form of a vapour," and which being of a watery nature from 
 thin potations, Sir John would, no doubt, think foolish, dull 
 and crude, in comparison with the more stimulating and 
 generous exhalations of a good ' sherris sack.' It will be ob- 
 served that Shakespeare follows Hippocrates in attributing 
 not only this humoral function, but also the intellectual 
 function to the cerebral organ, or rather, in confounding the 
 two together. 
 
 " The second property of your excellent sherris" has refer- 
 ence to another theory of Hippocrates, namely, that the 
 veins, which were thought the only blood-vessels, had their 
 origin in the liver. The Father of Medicine maintained that 
 they come from the liver ; the arteries from the heart. It 
 appears, however, that in different parts of his works he 
 expressed different opinions on the relation existing between 
 the veins and the heart, The origin of the veins, how- 
 ever, in the liver is at least in one place decidedly expressed 
 by him, and was by his successors developed into an article 
 of physiological faith, which continued to be held even to 
 Harvey's times. The following passage, from the biography 
 attached to the Sydenham Society's edition of the Works of 
 Harvey, states this fact very clearly. 
 
 "In ancient times, indeed, the veins were regarded, 
 as they are esteemed by the vulgar at the present hour, 
 as the principal vessels of the body ; they only were once 
 believed to contain true blood ; the arteries were held to 
 contain at best but a little blood, different from that of the 
 veins, and mixed accidentally in some sort with the vital 
 spirits, of which they are the proper conduits. In former 
 
155 
 
 times, farther, — times anterior to Harvey, whether more re- 
 motely or more nearly, — the liver, as the organ of the 
 hsemapoesis, was regarded as the source of all the veins, or 
 of all the proper blood-vessels ; the heart, as the generator of 
 heat and the vital spirits, was viewed as the mere cistern of 
 the blood, whence it was propelled by the act of inspiration, 
 and whither it reverted during the act of expiration, its flow 
 to this part of the body or to that, being mainly determined 
 by certain excitations there inherent or specially set up. By 
 and by, however, the liver was given up as the origin of the 
 venous system generally ; but such anatomists as Jacobus 
 Sylvius, Realdus Columbus, Bartholomseus Eustachius, and 
 Gabriel Fallopius, may be found opposing Vesaiius in regard 
 to the origin of the vena cava, and asserting that it takes its 
 rise from the liver, not from the heart, as the great reformer 
 in modern anatomy had maintained." — The Life of Harvey, 
 p. 54. 
 
 We must not overlook the very distinct terms in which 
 Shakespeare, in this passage, refers to the motion of the 
 blood, "and makes it course from the inwards, to the parts 
 extreme." 
 
 " The vital commoners and inward petty spirits muster me 
 all to their captain, the heart." This hypothesis, that the 
 heart was the head quarters of the vital spirits which per- 
 meated the body through the arteries, adopted from Galen, 
 was held, as Dr. Willis has shewn, even by those anatomists 
 who have been put forward as rivals to the great discoverer 
 of the heart's true function ; thus Servetus, in the much 
 discussed passage of the Restitutio Christianismi, says, " The 
 vital spirit has its origin in the left ventricle, the lungs as- 
 sisting especially in its generation ; it is a subtile spirit. 
 
159 
 
 Also Csesalpinus, whose guesses at the heart's function have 
 been put forward to detract from Harvey's originality, held 
 that "the dilatation of the heart and arteries was due to 
 an effervescence of the spirit." 
 
 The clearest, but most succinct, account which I have met 
 with of the physiological opinions of the sixteenth century, 
 is in that wonderful melange of learning, dirt, and humour, 
 Th$ History of Garagantua and Pantagruel, book iii., 
 chapter 3. Rabelais, who was both a practising physician 
 and a medical author, having translated and published some 
 of the works both of Hippocrates and Galen, here con- 
 descends to place before the general public, and truly in the 
 vernacular of his country, a concise account of the opinions 
 which his brethren held it almost a matter of professional 
 honour to conceal from the vulgar gaze under the cloak of a 
 dead language. So far as I am able to judge, however, 
 this clear sighted exposition is, in many respects, far in ad- 
 vance of the medical doctrines of the period, as might indeed 
 have been expected from the almost miraculous insight of 
 its author, whose disguise of buffoonery scarcely concealed 
 a most unsafe originality of thought, and saved him from 
 the dire penalties which would otherwise inevitably have at- 
 tended it. In another passage which I have quoted under 
 Coriolanus, Rabelais expressses the doctrine of the function 
 of the liver which is implied in Falstaff's disquisition, namely, 
 that the liver conveys blood through the veins for the good 
 of the whole body. 
 
 " The intention of the founder of this microcosm is, to 
 have a soul therein to be entertained, which is lodged there 
 as a guest with its host, that it may live there for a while. 
 Life consisteth in blood ; blood is the seat of the soul ; 
 
160 
 
 wherefore the chiefest work of the microcosm is -to be making 
 blood continually. 
 
 " At this forge are exercised all the members of the body ; 
 none is exempted from labour, each operates apart, and doth 
 its proper office. And such is their hierarchy, that perpetually 
 the one borrows from the other, the one lends the other, and 
 the one is the other's debtor. The stuff and matter conve- 
 nient, which nature giveth to be turned into blood, is bread 
 and wine. All kind of nourishing victuals is understood to 
 be comprehended in these two, and from hence in the Gothish 
 tongue is called companage. To find out this meat and drink, 
 to prepare and boil it, the hands are put to work, the feet to 
 walk and bear up the whole bulk of the corporal mass ; the 
 eyes guide and conduct all ; the appetite in the orifice of the 
 stomach, by means of a little sourish black humour, called 
 melancholy, which is transmitted thereto from the milt, giveth 
 warning to shut in the food. The tongue doth make the 
 first essay, and tastes it ; the teeth do chaw it, and the 
 stomach doth receive, digest, and chilify it. The mesaraic 
 veins suck out of it what is good and fit, leaving behind the 
 excrements, which are, through special conduits for that pur- 
 pose, voided by an expulsive faculty. Thereafter it is carried 
 to the liver, where it being changed again, it by the virtue of 
 that new transmutation becomes blood. What joy conjecture 
 you, will then be found amongst those officers, when they see 
 this rivulet of gold, which is their sole restorative ? No 
 greater is the joy of alchymists, when, after long travail, toil, 
 and expense, they see in their furnaces the transmutation. 
 Then is it that every member doth prepare itself, and 
 strive anew to purify and to refine this treasure. The kid- 
 neys, through the emulgent veins, draw that aquosity from 
 
161 
 
 thence, which you call urine, and there send it away through 
 the ureters to be slipped downwards ; where, in a lower re- 
 ceptacle, and proper for it, to wit, the bladder, it is kept, and 
 stayeth there until an opportunity to void it out in his due 
 time.- The spleen draweth from the blood its terrestrial part, 
 viz., the grounds, lees, or thick subtance settled in the bottom 
 thereof, which you term melancholy. The bottle of the gall 
 subtracts from thence all the superfluous choler, whence it is 
 brought to another shop or work-house to be yet better puri- 
 fied and fined, that is, the heart, which by its agitation of 
 diastolic and systolic motions so neatly subtilizeth and in- 
 flames it, that in the right side ventricle it is brought to 
 perfection, and through the veins is sent to all the members. 
 Each parcel of the body draws it then unto itself, and, after 
 its own fashion, is cherished and alimented by it. Feet, 
 hands, thighs, arms, eyes, ears, back, breasts, yea, all ; and 
 then it is, that who before were lenders, now become debtors. 
 The heart doth, in its left-side ventricle so thinnify the blood, 
 that it thereby obtains the name of spiritual ; which being 
 sent through the arteries to all the members of the body, 
 serveth to warm and winnow the other blood which runneth 
 through the veins. The lights never cease, with its lappets 
 and bellows, to cool and refresh it ; in acknowledgment of 
 which good, the heart, through the arterial vein, imparts unto 
 it the choicest of its blood. At last it is made so fine and 
 subtle within the rete mirabile, that, thereafter, those animal 
 spirits are framed and composed of it ; by means whereof, 
 the imagination, discourse, judgment, resolution, deliberation, 
 ratiocination, and memory, have their rise, actings, and 
 operations." 
 
 This certainly is a nearer approach to Harvey's discovery 
 M 
 
162 
 
 than any I have elsewhere met with in the physiology of the 
 period, and might by a liberal interpretation be taken to 
 imply, that what Shakespeare calls "the nimble spirits in 
 the arteries," and " the vital commoners and inland petty 
 spirits," was really blood which had been spiritualised or 
 aerated in the lungs. 
 
 The origin of the old opinions appears to have been the 
 following passage in Hippocrates' Book on Aliments : "The 
 root of the veins is the liver, and the root of the arteries is 
 the heart ; and from them blood and spirits are carried to all 
 parts, and heat passes with the same." 
 
 In the following passage two similes are mixed with some 
 want of clearness. The " venom of suggestion," or evil 
 insinuations, acting as a ferment, might cause the contents 
 of a closed barrel to expand, so that the vessel would leak 
 but for the strength of its bonds. The supposed power 
 of poison to swell and burst the body is expressed in several 
 other passages. 
 
 "King Henry. Learn this, Thomas, 
 And thou shalt prove a shelter to thy friends ; 
 A hoop of gold, to bind thy brothers in : 
 That the united vessel of their blood, 
 Mingled with venom of suggestion, 
 (As, force perforce, the age will pour it in,) 
 Shall never leak, though it do work as strong 
 As aconitum, or rash gunpowder." Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 When Romeo applies to the apothecary for poison, he asks 
 for " soon speeding gear" which will kill " as violently as 
 hasty powder fir'd." The above passage shows the poison 
 which Shakespeare thought capable of this immediately fatal 
 effect, aconite, which is indubitably one of the most viru- 
 lent poisons with which, even at the present day, we are 
 
163 
 
 acquainted. Pereira says of it, " The root is undoubtedly 
 one of the most fatal indigenous poisons," and of its alkaloid, 
 aconitina, " in one case, one-fifteenth of a grain had nearly 
 proved fatal ; " and his editor, Dr. Taylor, says, " a dose of 
 the tenth of a grain would probably destroy life with great 
 rapidity. It is the most virulent poison known, not except- 
 ing hydrocyanic acid." — p. 695, vol. ii. 
 
 The king's illness is called an apoplexy, a term even now 
 more loosely and vaguely employed by medical men than 
 almost any other. It might be rightly applied to a sudden 
 affection of the brain, caused by "the incessant care and 
 labour of his mind ;" but failing sight and giddiness of the 
 brain might equally arise from failure of the heart's action ; 
 defective supply of blood to the brain, being attended with 
 the same symptoms of its failing function, as interference 
 with its due nutrition from congestion or pressure. The 
 suspension of the respiratory movements so that the ' downy 
 feather' stirred not, though it lay at the gates of breath, 
 would indicate that the sudden illness, supervening on the 
 shock of good news, was faintness and not apoplexy. 
 
 " K. Henry, And wherefore should this good news make me sick ? 
 Will fortune never come with both hands full, 
 But write her fair words still in foulest letters ? 
 She either gives a stomach, and no food, — 
 Such are the poor, in health ; or else a feast, 
 And takes away the stomach, — -such are the rich, 
 That have abundance, and enjoy it not. 
 I should rejoice now at this happy news ; 
 And now my sight fails, and my brain is giddy : 
 O me ! come near me, now I am much ill. [Swoons 
 
 P. Humphrey. Comfort, your majesty !, 
 
 Clarence. O, my royal father ! 
 
 Westmoreland. My sovereign lord, cheer up yourself, look up ! 
 
 Warwieh. Be patient, princes ; you do know, these fits 
 Are with his highness very ordinary. 
 Stand from him, give him air ; he'll straight he well. 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 Ola. No, no ; he cannot long hold out these pangs ; 
 The incessant care and labour of his mind 
 Hath wrought the mure, that should confine it in, 
 So thin, that life looks through, and will break out. 
 
 # # # # # # 
 
 War. Speak lower, princes, for the King recovers. 
 
 P. Humph. This apoplexy will certain be his end. 
 
 K. Henry I pray you, take me up, and bear me hence 
 Into some other chamber : softly, pray. 
 Let there be no noise made my gentle friends 
 Unless some dull and favourable hand 
 Will whisper music to my weary spirit. 
 
 ■9r TT "Sr tP ~r? tt 
 
 Enter Pbince Hettey. 
 P. Henry Heard he the good news yet ? 
 
 Tell it him. 
 P. Humph. He alter'd much upon the hearing it. 
 P. Hen. If he be sick 
 
 With joy, he will recover without physic. 
 
 # # # # # 
 
 By his gates of breath 
 There lies a downy feather which stirs not : 
 Did he suspire, that light and weightless down 
 Perforce must move." Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 The quick recovery of intellectual powers shews that 
 Prince Humphrey miscalled his father's illness in naming it 
 an apoplexy. The whole scene describes the illness as faint- 
 ness from exhaustion. It concludes with an expression of want 
 of power of further speech, power and desire to think being 
 retained; though it must be owned, that no reference had 
 been made to pulmonary disease previous to the assertion 
 that the lungs were wasted. 
 
 " K. Henry. More would I, but my lungs are wasted so, 
 That strength of speech is utterly denied me." Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 In the following passage Prince Henry's excuse for re- 
 moving the crown affords another reference to the " tinct and 
 multiplying medicine," the durum potabile, as it was called 
 
165 
 
 by the old physicians, a term evidently in the poet's thought 
 when he wrote the line in italics. 
 
 " I spake unto the crown as having sense, 
 And thus upbraided it : the care on thee depending, 
 Hath fed upon the body of my father ; 
 Therefore, thou, best of gold, art worst of gold. 
 Other, less fine in carat, is more precious, 
 
 • Preserving life in med' cine potable ; 
 But thou, most fine, most honour'd, most renown' d, 
 Hast eat thy bearer up." Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 KING HENRY V. 
 
 There is no small amount of medical knowledge in Mistress 
 Quickly' s account of Sir John's exit from the stage of life; 
 knowledge, indeed, conveyed in language so quaintly hu- 
 morous that it might easily be overlooked. The hostess; 
 whose medical propensities we have before encountered, thus 
 calls his old comrades to the reprobate knight's sick bed. 
 
 " Quickly. As ever you come of women, come in quickly to Sir 
 John : Ah, poor heart ! he is so shaken of a burning quotidian 
 tertian, that it is most lamentable to behold. Sweet men, come to 
 him." Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The superstition is still prevalent among nurses that death 
 takes place at the turning of the tide. The opinion that the 
 ' parting ' most often takes place after midnight can scarcely 
 be called a superstition, for, if we remember rightly, it has 
 
166 
 
 been fairly backed by statistics. In that fatal physiognomy, 
 the authority of which is recognised by the term fades 
 Hippocratica, the very first sign is that given by Dame 
 Quickly, " his nose was as sharp as a pen." Another of the 
 dame's death signs, fumbling with the sheets and playing 
 with flowers, &c, was given by the Father of Medicine as a 
 symptom that " the man is delirious and will die," and the 
 truth of his observation is still recognised, and his term 
 (cavphologia) is still used ^technically, to designate this 
 action of picking or plucking at small objects. 
 
 " Quickly. Nay, sure, he's not in hell : he's in Arthur's bosom, if 
 ever a man went to Arthur's bosom. 'A made a finer end, and 
 went away, an it had been any christom child : 'a parted even just 
 between twelve and one, e'en at turning o'the tide : for after I saw 
 him fumble with the sheets, and play with flowers, and smile upon 
 his fingers' ends, I knew there was but one way ; for his nose was 
 as sharp as a pen, and 'a babbled of green fields. How now, Sir 
 John ? quoth I : what, man ! be of good cheer. So 'a cried oub 
 — God, God, God ! three or four times : now I, to comfort him, bid 
 him 'a should not think of God ; I hoped there was no need to 
 trouble himself with any such thoughts yet : So, 'a bade me lay 
 more clothes on his feet : I put my hand into the bed, and felt 
 them, and they were as cold as any stone ; then I felt to his knees, 
 and so upward, and upward, and all was cold as any stone." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 " He smiled upon his fingers' ends, babbled of green fields; 
 cried God, God, three or four times ; talked of the whore of 
 Babylon, and bade me lay more clothes on his feet." — What 
 an exact picture is this of the half-conscious delirium of fatal 
 exhaustion, attended with failing circulation until the limbs 
 were " as cold as any stone." It is another of the aphorisms of 
 Hippocrates that " in acute diseases, coldness of the extremi- 
 ties is bad;" and in a note to the Sydenham Society's edition 
 of this author, Dr. Adams remarks : " Shakespeare's descrip- 
 
167 
 
 tion of the death of Falstaff contains images which have 
 always appeared to me to be borrowed (at second hand, no 
 doubt,) from this and other passages of the present work." 
 What a fine touch of nature there is in the reprobate old 
 knight " babbling of green fields" in his last delirium ; the 
 impressions of early years, of innocent happiness flitting 
 through his brain ; the last of life's memories fading into 
 the first, as the twilight of eve sometimes touches that of 
 the morn. It is remarkable, what good sense and exact 
 observation Shakespeare constantly puts into the mouths of 
 his most vulgar characters. 
 
 The hostess acknowledges, indeed, that he raved about sack 
 and women, " but then he was rheumatic, and talked of the 
 whore of Babylon." Rheumatic, here of course, stands for 
 lunatic, the dame being ihe antitype of Mistress Malaprop 
 in the perverse application of words. 
 
 Does not Pistol refer to a fumigating apparatus for the 
 venereal disease, in the powdering tub of infamy, from which 
 Nym was to fetch Doll Tear-sheet; a tub, namely, in which 
 the patient was exposed to fumes from powder of cinnabar, 
 which, thrown upon a hot plate, or chafing-dish, would 
 Volatize and condense in the form of a powder on the body 
 of the patient. 
 
 " O hound of Crete, think'st thou my spouse to get ? 
 
 No ; to the spital go, 
 
 And from the powdering tub of infamy 
 
 Fetch forth the lazar kite of Cressid's kind, 
 
 Doll Tear-sheet she by name, and her espouse." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The surgeons of Shakespeare's time, Clowes, Woodall, and 
 Pare", although they appear to prefer inunction, speak of 
 mercurial fumigation as if it were in common use. Woodall 
 
168 
 
 says, "Sinnabar, which is used in fumes for the pox, is a 
 deadly medicine, half made of quicksilver, and half of brim- 
 stone by art of fire." Clowes describes mercurial fumigation 
 by means " of certain trccheses or perfumes ; the patient 
 being placed under a canapie or pavilion in which the 
 trocheses [composed of cinnabar and gums] are burnt on 
 a chafing dish of coals." Ambrose Pare - says, "some have 
 devised a fourth manner of curing the lues venerea, which 
 is suffitus or fumigations. They put the patient under a 
 tent or canopy made close on every side, lest any thing 
 should expire, and they put in unto him a vessel with hot 
 coals, whereupon they plentifully throw cinnabaris, so that 
 they may on every side enjoy the rising fume." In his 
 chapter on the treatment of caruncules in the uretha, he 
 describes and figures a " barrel fitted to receive the fume in." 
 " You may put the patient naked into the barrel, so that he 
 may sit upon a seate or boarde perforated, thus the patient 
 shall easily receive the fume that exhales and none of it 
 be lost, he covering and venting himself on every side." In 
 Urquhart's translation of Rabelais, Friar John's sword is 
 said to be " more rusty than the key-hole of an old powder- 
 ing tub." — Book iii., c. 23. The original, however, scarce 
 bears this meaning, "H est par ma foy plus roiiiHe", que la 
 claveure d'une vieil charnier." 
 
 Poor Nell also meets with the same disaster as Doll, 
 for Pistol smarting under his cudgelling exclaims, 
 
 " News have I, that my Nell is dead, i' the spital 
 Of malady of France ; Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 The influence of mental satisfaction on the exhausted bodily - 
 organs, inspiring fresh alacrity and vigour into them, is thus 
 maintained by the king. 
 
169 
 
 "-ST. Henry. 'Tis good for men to love their present pains, 
 
 Upon example ; so the spirit is eased : 
 
 And, when the mind is quicken'd, out of doubt, 
 
 The organs, though defunct and dead before, 
 
 Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move 
 
 With casted slough and fresh legerity." Act iv. Scene 1. 
 
 In his comments upon the evils of greatness, the king asks 
 plaintively whether ceremony will cure a fever. 
 
 " What drink'st thou oft, instead of homage sweet, 
 But poison'd flattery ? 0, be sick, great greatness, 
 And bid thy ceremony give thee cure ! 
 Think' st thou, the fiery fever will go out 
 With titles blown from adulation ? 
 Will it give place to flexure and low bending ? 
 Canst thou, when thou command'st the beggar's knee, 
 Command the health of it ? No, thou proud dream ; 
 That play'st so subtly with a king's repose." Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 The king comments on sleep in the spirit of Abernethy, 
 who advised his epicurean patient to live upon six-pence a 
 day and earn it, since he finds it impossible to 
 
 " Sleep so soundly as the wretched slave ; 
 Who, with a body fill'd, and vacant mind, 
 Gets him to rest, cramm'd with distressful bread." 
 
 Act iv. Scene 1. 
 
 The pestiferous breath of the weltering battle field is the 
 first example given by Ambrose Pare - of " the corrupt and 
 venomous air which may kill a man." " The air is infected 
 and corrupted by the admixture of malign vapours arising 
 from the unburied bodies of such as are slain in great 
 conflicts." 
 
 " And those that leave their valiant bones in France, 
 Dying like men, though buried in your dunghills, 
 They shall be fam'd, for there the sun shall greet them, 
 And draw their honours reeking up to heaven ; 
 Leaving their earthly parts to choke your clime, 
 The smell whereof shall breed a plague in France." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
170 
 
 KING HENRY VI. First Part. 
 
 The prayers of the church are still used for the sick, but 
 in the olden time, their efficacy was not merely, as now, 
 thought to be therapeutic, but morbific also. Gloster 
 attributes the death of the king to this influence. 
 
 " The church ! where is it ? Had not churchmen pray'd, 
 His thread of life had not so soon decay'd j 
 None do you like but an effeminate prince, 
 Whom, like a school-boy, you may over-awe." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 The glimmer of strong light as it appears to persons who 
 are blind, but in whom the " thick drop serene " hath not 
 quite quenched the orbs of vision, is finely used to point an 
 argument in the following passage. A large proportion of 
 those who have become blind can recognize the presence of 
 a clear and shining light like that of the sun. I remember 
 hearing a lecture on light, by Jonathan Hearder, the blind 
 chemist, who, after displaying a series of beautiful experi- 
 ments on the different sources of light, produced a blaze from 
 electricity which almost blinded his audience, and of which, 
 he himself said, — I can distinguish this, although the others 
 have been invisible to me. 
 
 " Plantagenent. The truth appears so naked on my side, 
 That any purblind eye may find it out. 
 
 Somerset. And on my side it is so well apparell'd, 
 So clear, so shining, and so evident, 
 That it will glimmer through a blind man's eye." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 4. 
 
 The 'dying Mortimer' enumerates the symptoms of his 
 decay — " the weak defects of age." He compares the con- 
 dition of his limbs from long imprisonment, to those of a 
 
171 
 
 man 'new haled from the rack/ they are strengthless and 
 numb. His senses fail, and his drooping limbs refuse sup- 
 port to the torpid body now scarce more than a ' lump of 
 clay.' 
 
 " Kind keepers of my weak decaying age, 
 Let dying Mortimer here rest himself. — 
 Even like a man new haled from the rack, 
 So fare my limbs with long imprisonment : 
 And these gray locks, the pursuivants of death, 
 Nestor-like aged, in an age of care, 
 Argue the end of Edmund Mortimer. 
 These eyes, like lamps whose wasting oil is spent, 
 Wax dim, as drawing to their exigent : 
 Weak shoulders, overborne with burd'ning grief ; 
 And pithless arms, like to a wither'd vine 
 That droops his sapless branches to the ground : 
 Yet are these feet, whose strengthless clay is numb, 
 Unable to support this lump of clay, 
 Swift- winged with desire to get a grave, 
 As witting I no other comforts have." Act ii., Scene 5. 
 
 Some old superstition seems involved in this thought, 
 
 " Civil dissension is a viperous worm 
 That gnaws the bowels of the commonwealth." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 The description of the gradual destruction of a mortifying 
 limb, a ' festered member,' in Exeter's prophecy of the result 
 of the feud of the Roses, is as true tp medical fact as it is 
 terse and pointed. 
 
 " This late dissension, grown betwixt the peers, 
 Burns under feigned ashes of forg'd love, 
 And will at last break out into a flame : 
 As fester'd members rot but by degrees, 
 Till bones, and flesh, and sinews, fall away, 
 So will this base and. envious discord breed." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 In the following, La Pucelle refers to the medical or 
 surgical application of corrosive substances to eat or burn 
 
172 
 
 away diseased parts, which may not otherwise be remedied, 
 as arsenical preparations are still used by empirics to corrode 
 away cancerous growths, and as surgeons still employ corro- 
 sive acids to remove the surface of intractable ulcers. 
 
 " Care is no cure, but rather corrosive, 
 For things that are not to be remedied." Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 The fighting woman in her appeal to Burgundy's patriotism, 
 
 illustrates her thought by the mesenteric disease, "pining 
 
 malady," of an infant. 
 
 " As looks the mother on her lowly babe, 
 When death doth close his tender dying eyes, 
 See, see, the pining malady of Prance ; 
 Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds, 
 Which thou thyself hast given her woeful breast !" 
 
 Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 A link in the pathological chain is evidently wanting in the 
 
 illustration of the effects of boiling choler, which can only by 
 
 a figure of speech find itself in the hollow passage of the 
 
 voice. 
 
 " York. Speak, Winchester ; for boiling choler chokes 
 The hollow passage of my prison'd voice." Act v., Scene 4. 
 
 The adaptation of the old theories to the pathology of the 
 passions was necessarily difficult. The liver was thought 
 the seat of passion, and superfluity of choler the result of its 
 excitement, and the nerve symptoms arose from the boiling 
 choler. It was the true pathology of passion upside down, 
 the cart beffge the horse. 
 
 The effect of anxiety, alternations of hope and fear, on the 
 general health is plaintively told by the poor king. 
 
 " I feel such sharp dissension in my breast, 
 Such fierce alarums both of hope and fear, 
 As I am sick with working of my thoughts." 
 
 Act v., Scene 5. 
 
173 
 
 KING HENEY VI. Second Part. 
 
 Gloster excuses himself, on the plea of sudden indisposi- 
 tion, from reading throughout the disgraceful treaty, by 
 which English possessions in France are given up to 
 Queen Margaret's father. 
 
 " Pardon me, gracious Lord ; 
 Some sudden qualm hath struck me at the heart, 
 And dimm'd mine eyes, that I can read no farther." 
 
 Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 "When the Protector Gloster makes arrangements for a 
 duel with the cardinal, the latter uses in Latin, the two first 
 words of the Scripture maxim, " Physician heal thyself." — 
 
 " Medice teipsum ; 
 " Protector, see to't well, protect yourself." Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The king is exhorted, in medical phrase, to suppress the 
 Irish rebellion in its early stage. 
 
 " Send succours, lords, and stop the rage betime, 
 Before the wound do grow incurable ; 
 For, being green, there is great hope of help." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 York being intrusted with the command of the forces for 
 this expedition, and purposing to employ them for himself, 
 says, 
 
 " You put sharp weapons in a madman's hands." Ibid. 
 
174 
 
 When the king swoons on hearing of Glosters death, 
 Somerset proposes to recover him by a somewhat rough 
 treatment, and in the position of the body certainly wrong. 
 
 " Rear up his body ; wring him by the nose." Actm., Scene 2 
 
 Margaret appeals to the distressed king with a reference to 
 a loathsome disease then common : 
 
 " What, dost thou turn away, and hide thy face ? 
 I am no loathsome leper, look on me." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 "When Warwick brings the king to "view the body" of 
 Gloster, expressing his conviction that violent hands had been 
 laid on his life, he describes the signs of a violent death, 
 and especially of a death by strangulation, with a particularity 
 which shews that the poet, whatever he might know of 
 "crowner's quest law," was not ignorant of crowner's quest 
 medicine. 
 
 " Warwick. See, how the blood is settled in his face ! 
 Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost, 
 Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless, 
 Being all descended to the labouring heart ; 
 Who, in the conflict that it holds with death, 
 Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy ; 
 Which with the heart there cools, and ne'er returneth 
 To blush and beautify the cheek again. 
 But see, his face is black, and full of blood ; 
 His eye-balls further out than when he liv'd, 
 Staring full ghastly like a strangled man : 
 His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch'd with struggling ; 
 His hands abroad display' d, as one that grasp'd 
 And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdued. 
 Look on the sheets, his hair, you see, is sticking ; 
 His well-proportion'd beard made rough and rugged, 
 Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodg'd. 
 It cannot be but he was murder'd here ; 
 The least of all these signs were probable." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
175 
 
 A reference to any work on medical jurisprudence will shew 
 that the signs here specified are exactly those which must 
 be looked for in death by strangulation, although, indeed, 
 some important signs are omitted, especially marks of violence 
 on the neck. Dr. Taylor says, that in persons strangled, "the 
 face is more commonly livid and swollen, the eyes are con- 
 gested [protruded ?] and the pupils are dilated A 
 
 medical jurist ought to weigh all the circumstances con- 
 nected with the position of the body. . . . The general 
 lividity of the body, contraction of the fingers with clenching 
 of the hands, and swelling and protrusion of the tongue, 
 are the same in strangulation as in hanging." In Shakes- 
 peare's description, all these points have been attended to ; 
 the lividity of the face, the congestion of the eye-balls causing 
 them to protrude, the hands in the condition of one that 
 grasped, the position and condition of the body, the hair 
 sticking to the sheets, and the beard rough and rugged ; these 
 particulai-s, taken together, testify to accurate knowledge 
 of the appearances presented by this kind of violent death. 
 
 The earlier part of the above quotation is still more re- 
 markable, since it expresses a pathological fact, which we 
 should not have expected from Shakespeare, nor even from 
 any medical man of his time. The pallid and pinched features, 
 ' meagre, pale, and bloodless,' of the body after death, from 
 any disease which has existed for some length of time, are 
 referred to the fact that the blood has " descended to the 
 labouring heart," "which with the heart there cools." The com- 
 mon condition of the heart after death filled with coagulated 
 blood must have been known, if not observed, by the writer 
 of this passage. We have seen that Shakespeare held the 
 doctrine, which in his time, indeed, was universally prevalent 
 
176 
 
 among medical men, that the prime function of the heart 
 and the arteries was to act as a reservoir to the vital spirits ; 
 but this theory was by no means inconsistent with the above 
 passage, since Galen, from whom it was adopted, and who had 
 modified it from the teaching of Hippocrates, maintained 
 that the blood did reach the right side of the heart, and came 
 there in contact with the vital spirits which occupied the left 
 side of the heart, through a supposed sieve-like structure of 
 the septum. This passage should be compared with the 
 equally remarkable one in Measure for Measure : " Why 
 does my blood thus muster to my heart," &c. Act iii., Scene 4. 
 Queen Margaret, in parting with Suffolk, refers to the ap- 
 plication of a corrosive substance to a wound of bad character, 
 sphacelating or malignant as it might be, with the same 
 surgical propriety as that used by La Pucelle in the first part. 
 
 " Away ! though parting be a fretful corsive, [corrosive] 
 It is appliant to a deathful wound." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 The terrible description of Cardinal Beaufort's death is a 
 graphic picture of one form of acute delirium. We may well 
 suppose it was brought on by remorse for the murder which 
 he had recently committed ; yet, although the cause of the 
 disease may thus have been moral, the symptoms are those of 
 phrenitis and not those of insanity. The acute nature of the 
 disease, the existence of physical pain, the spectral halluci- 
 nation, and the half consciousness indicated by allusions to 
 his crime, belong to the delirium of phrenitis rather than to 
 mania. The two forms of disease, indeed, do so run into each 
 other, that cases occur, in which it is difficult for the most 
 experienced physician to say whether they belong to the one 
 or the other. For the reasons assigned, however, a diagnosis 
 
177 
 
 of the cardinal's sudden and grievous sickness can be fairly 
 given. The symptoms are terribly true to some of the 
 most painful cases which are brought under the physician's 
 observation. The wretched patient gasps, and stares, and 
 catches the air, blasphemes and curses, suffers the halluci- 
 nation of the presence of his victim, now whispers to his 
 pillow, now cries aloud. All this is in the description of Vaux. 
 
 " Q. Margaret. Whither goes Vaux so fast ; what news, 
 I pry'thee ? 
 Vaux. To signify unto his majesty 
 That Cardinal Beaufort is at point of death : 
 For suddenly a grievous sickness took him, 
 That makes him gasp, and stare, and catch the air, 
 Blaspheming God, and cursing men on earth. 
 Sometime, he talks as if Duke Humphrey's ghost 
 Were by his side : sometime, he calls the king, 
 And whispers to his pillow, as to him, 
 The secrets of his overcharged soul : 
 And I am sent to tell his majesty, 
 That even now he cries aloud for him." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 In this instance, Shakespeare brings the frightful scene 
 before the eyes of his audience, not merely to harrow up the 
 soul, but doubtless also to shew what the death-bed of a 
 murderer may be. In the dying man's first speech, mental 
 horror and physical pain are joined in ghastly union. In his 
 second speech, that half-retention of consciousness which 
 exists in the delirium of phrenitis, but which is lost in that 
 of acute mania, is strongly marked; and, while he displays 
 the most vivid terror of eternal punishment, he defends 
 himself from the supposed accusation of murder. In his 
 agony he is athirst, and cries out, " give me some drink." 
 
 " K. Henry. How fares my lord ? Speak, Beaufort, to thy 
 
 sovereign. 
 Cardinal. If thou be'st death, I'll give thee England's treasure 
 Enough to purchase such another island, 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 So tliou wilt let me live, and feel no pain. 
 
 K. Sen. Ah ! what a sign it is of evil life, 
 When death's approach is seen so terrible ! 
 
 Warwick. Beaufort, it is thy sovereign speaks to thee. 
 
 Car. Bring me unto my trial when you will. 
 Died he not in his bed ? Where should he die ? 
 Can I make men live, whe'r they will or no ? — 
 O ! torture me no more, I will confess. — 
 Alive again ? Then show me where he is ; 
 I'll give a thousand pounds to look upon him. — 
 He hath no eyes, the dust hath blinded them. — 
 Comb down his hair ; look ! look ! it stands upright, 
 Like lime-twigs set to catch my winged soul ! — 
 Give me some drink ; and bid the apothecary 
 Bring the strong poison that I bought of him." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 Warwick, who detests the foul criminal, has coolness to 
 observe and comment upon that horrible symptom of a pain- 
 ful death, which physicians call the ' sardonic grin.' 
 
 " See, how the pangs of death 
 Do make him grin ! " 
 
 " He dies, and makes no sign" of hope on heaven's bliss, 
 and the king orders his attendants to " close up his eyes," 
 which, like those of his victim, would be " staring full 
 ghastly." The dying man's cry for the strong poison which 
 he had bought, suggests that this might have been the cause 
 of his death, and that he had added the guilt of suicide to that 
 of murder. The suddenness of his illness, and the amount of 
 physical agony which he endured, agree with the suppo- 
 sition ; and mental disturbance, as in King John's death 
 scene, would be perfectly consistent with death from acrid 
 or corrosive poison ; but the fierce delirium appears rather 
 that of sthenic inflammation of the brain, and is so accu- 
 rately painted withal, that it is scarcely possible the author 
 could have copied from anything but nature. 
 
179 
 
 The line, "If thou be'st death, I'll give thee England's 
 treasure," appears to have been founded on history or tra- 
 dition. In the diary of John Ward, the medical Vicar of 
 Stratford, is the following: "This Beaufort was the great 
 Cardinal, who was reported to say on his death-bed, ' If all 
 England could save his life, hee was able either by monie or 
 policie to procure itt.' " — p. 177. 
 
 When Jack Cade's ruffians take Lord Say prisoner, 
 comments are made upon the signs of ill health which 
 he presents. 
 
 " Say. Long sitting to determine poor men's causes 
 Hath made me full of sickness and diseases. 
 
 Cade. Ye shall have a hempen caudle then, and the pap of 
 hatchet. 
 
 Dick. Why dost thou quiver, man ? 
 
 Say. The palsy, and not fear, provoketh me.'' Act iv., Scene 7. 
 
 Madness and brain-sickness are repeatedly imputed by the 
 characters in this play to each other, and, in connection with 
 this idea, Bedlam is often referred to ; in one place being 
 repeated in consecutive lines. 
 
 " Oliford. To Bedlam with him ! is the man grown mad ? 
 
 K. Henry. Ay, Clifford ; a Bedlam and ambitious humour 
 Makes him oppose himself against his king." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 The following, of course, refers to Telepbus, whose wound, 
 inflicted by Achilles, was only curable, according to the 
 oracle, by that which made it. Achilles, to obtain the aid 
 of the son of Hercules, in the Trojan war, effected the cure 
 of his wound by applying to it rust, or rather verdigris, 
 (for the weapon was of copper, or brass,) scraped from 
 the head of the spear with which it had been inflicted. 
 
 " York. That gold must round engirt these brows of mine ; 
 Whose smile and frown, like to Achilles' spear, 
 Is able with the change to kill and cure." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 
 
 KING HENRY VI. Third Part. 
 
 The presence of blood in the heart is not dubiously referred 
 
 to by Richard. 
 
 " I cannot rest, 
 Until the white rose that I wear, be dyed 
 Even in the lukewarm blood of Henry's heart." 
 
 Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Richard, on hearing of his father's death, describes his rage 
 and grief, in terms which, with poetic licence, describe the 
 effects of emotion on the bodily functions. The degree of the 
 body's moisture was an important point in old medicine. 
 
 " Richard. I cannot weep ; for all my body's moisture 
 Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart : 
 Nor can my tongue unload my heart's great burden ; 
 For self-same wind, that I should speak withal, 
 Is kindling coals that fire all my breast, 
 And burn me up with flames that tears would quench. 
 To weep is to make less the depth of grief." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 When Clifford, wounded to the death, has dragged himself 
 from the battle, he refers to the mischief produced by the 
 contact of air with the wounded surfaces. 
 
 " The air hath got into my deadly wounds, 
 And much effuse of blood doth make me faint." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 6. 
 
 The Duke of Gloster, alluding to his brother Edward's 
 incontinency, connects therewith its supposed pathological 
 consequences, wasting of the marrow, bones, and all, and 
 expresses the desire that he may become incompetent to 
 beget issue. 
 
181 
 
 " Qloster. Ay, Edward will use women honourably. 
 'Would he were wasted, marrow, bones, and all, 
 That from his loins no hopeful branch may spring, 
 To cross me from the golden time I look for !" 
 
 Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 The influence of a woman's passions on the state of the 
 
 fcetus, is dilated upon by Queen Elizabeth, when she has 
 
 been informed that her husband has been taken prisoner. 
 
 " Q. Mieabeth. Till then, fair hope must hinder life's decay. 
 And I the rather wean me from despair, 
 For love of Edward's offspring in my womb : 
 This is it that makes me bridle passion, 
 And bear with mildness my misfortune's cross. 
 Ay, ay, for this I draw in many a tear, 
 And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs, 
 Lest with my sighs or tears I blast or drown 
 King Edward's fruit, true heir to the English crown." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 Warwick, when mortally wounded, recognizes that his hour 
 is come, by signs which indicate minute observation of such . 
 modes of death. 
 
 " My blood, my want of strength, my sick-heart shows, 
 That I must yield my body to the earth." 
 
 " These eyes, that now are dimm'd with death's black veil." 
 
 " The wrinkles in my brows, now' filled with blood." 
 
 " Thou lov'st me not ; for, brother, if thou didst 
 Thy tears would wash this cold congealed blood 
 That glues my lips, and will not let me speak." 
 
 Act v., Scene 2. 
 
 The account which Gloster gives of his own birth is, that 
 
 there was, what obstetricians call, a foot presentation, an event 
 
 by no means unnatural, though it is here associated with 
 
 another phenomenon, decidedly most improbable — namely, 
 
 that he was born with teeth. The adaptation of his mind 
 
 to the deformity of his body, concurs with Bacon's ill-natured 
 
 theory : " Deformed persons are commonly even with nature ; 
 
182 
 
 for, as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature, 
 
 being 'void of natural affection, and so they have their 
 
 revenge on nature.' " 
 
 " Indeed, 'tis true, that Henry told me of : 
 For I have often heard my mother say 
 I came into the the world with my legs forward ; 
 Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste, 
 And seek their ruin that usurp'd our right ? 
 The midwife wonder'd ; and the women cried, 
 ' O, Jesus bless us, he is born with teeth ! ' 
 And so I was ; which plainly signified 
 That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog. 
 Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so, 
 Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it." 
 
 Act v., Scene 6. 
 
 RICHARD III. 
 
 The wish which Gloster expresses in Henry VI., that his 
 brother Edward were wasted, " marrow, bones, and all," 
 appears to have its fulfilment at the beginning of this drama. 
 The description of the kind of illness from which the king 
 suffers, attended by weakness and melancholy arising from 
 an evil diet, (a term courteously used to express an evil mode 
 of life,) and resulting in his royal person being over-much 
 consumed, comes as near to an admission that it is the 
 result of debauchery, as the reticence of courtly speech will 
 permit. 
 
 " Hastings. The king is sickly, weak, and melancholy, 
 And his physicians fear him mightily. 
 
 Gloster. Now, by Saint Paul, this news is bad indeed. 
 Oh ! he hath kept an evil diet long, 
 
183 
 
 And over-much consum'd his royal person ; 
 
 'Tis very grevious to he thought upon. 
 
 What, is he in his hed ?" Act i., Soene 1. 
 
 When Gloster arrests the funeral of King Henry, to pay 
 
 his unnatural court to Anne, the latter describes a phenomenon 
 
 which old superstition always attributed to the rencontre of 
 
 a murderer with the body of his victim, and which used to 
 
 be made use of as a sign of guilt. 
 
 " O gentlemen, see, see ! dead Henry's wounds 
 Open their congeal'd mouths, and hleed afresh ! 
 Blush, blush, thou lump of foul deformity ; 
 For 'tis thy presence that exhales this blood 
 From cold and empty veins, where no blood dwells ; 
 Thy deed, inhuman and unnatural, 
 Provokes this deluge most unnatural." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Anne, who uses her tongue with as much vehemence as her 
 father did his sword, calls Gloster a ' diffused infection of a 
 man,' meaning, either that his wickedness was diffused 
 throughout his body, or that he diffused it around. To 
 express her hatred more intensely, she spits at him, ex- 
 pressing the old belief in the poison of the toad, and the 
 superstition respecting the basilisk, which Shakespeare refers 
 to in several places. 
 
 " Gloster. Why dost thou spit at me ? 
 Anne. 'Would it were mortal poison, for thy sake ! 
 Glo. Never came poison from so sweet a place. 
 Anne. Never hung poison on a fouler toad. 
 Out of my sight ! thou dost infect mine eyes. 
 
 Glo. Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine. 
 Anne. 'Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead ! " 
 
 Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Stanley excuses his wife's hostility to Gloster on the plea 
 
 that ill health affects her temper. 
 
 * Bear with her weakness, which, I think, proceeds 
 From wayward sickness, and no grounded malice." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
184 
 
 The opinion is sound not to hold argument with an in- 
 sane person. 
 
 " Dorset. Dispute not with her, she is lunatic." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 The tooth of a dog is elsewhere referred to as lacerating, 
 but not lancing, the sore which it inflicts. Queen Margaret, 
 with less knowledge, attributes the festering nature of such a 
 wound to the venom of the tooth. 
 
 " O Buckingham, beware of yonder dog ; 
 Look, when he fawns, he bites ; and, when he bites, 
 His venom tooth will rankle to the death." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 In Clarence's account of his fearful dream, he refers to a 
 
 sensation experienced in drowning. 
 
 " Oh Lord ! methought what pain it was to drown ! 
 What dreadful noise of water in mine ears ! " 
 
 Act i., Scene 4. 
 
 The word cordial is applied appropriately to its derivation 
 
 and its application. 
 
 " K. JEdwa/rd. A pleasing cordial, princely Buckingham, 
 Is this thy vow unto my sickly heart." Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The danger that a wound recently green or raw, and which 
 
 has just been united, should break out or disunite, or at least 
 
 suffer " likelihood of breach," or disunion, is the idea by which 
 
 Buckingham illustrates the danger of traversing the country 
 
 lately disturbed with civil war, with a large retinue. 
 
 " Olivers. Why with some little train, my lord of Buckingham ? 
 Buck. Marry, my lord, lest by a multitude, 
 The new-heal'd wound of malice should break out ; 
 Which would be so much the more dangerous, 
 
 By how much the estate is green, and yet ungovern'd : 
 
 # # # 
 
 Biv. Yet, since it is but green, it should be put 
 To no apparent likelihood of breach, 
 Which, haply, by much company might be urged." Act ii, Scene 2 
 
185 
 
 Gray, being led to the block, says of Richard's minions, 
 
 " A knot you are of damned blood-suckers." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 A blood-sucker is the old medical word for leech, and a knot 
 would be an appropriate term for a number of clustering 
 leeches. In the Second Part of Henry VI., the term of 
 bloodsucker appears to mean the vampire bat, "the blood- 
 sucker of sleeping men." 
 
 Gloster's fiendish plots spared neither the blood nor the 
 honour of his kindred. He commands Buckingham to 
 insinuate imputations against his own mother, by raising the 
 medical question, which has so much puzzled even modern 
 courts of law, of the natural duration of pregnancy. 
 
 " Tell them, when that my mother went with child 
 Of that insatiate Edward, noble York, 
 My princely father, then had wars in France ; 
 And, by just computation of the time, 
 Pound that the issue was not his begot ; 
 Which well appeared in his lineaments, 
 Being nothing like the noble duke my father : 
 Yet touch this sparingly, as 'twere far off; 
 Because, my lord, you know my mother lives." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 5. 
 
 In the following passage, the " scars of infamy " may either 
 mean those left by the branding iron, formerly used so 
 much as a punishment, or the scars of an infamous 
 disease. " Dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion " point to 
 mental disease or decay, dementia. 
 
 " The noble isle doth want her proper limbs ; 
 Her face defac'd with scars of infamy, 
 Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants, 
 And almost shoulder' d in the swallowing gulf 
 Of dark forgetfulness and deep oblivion." 
 
 Act hi., Scene 7. 
 
186 
 
 Queen Elizabeth refers to the effect of tight-lacing on the 
 heart, exactly as Paulina does in The Winter's Tale. 
 
 " Q. Eliz. Ah ! cut niy lace asunder, 
 That my pent heart may have some scope to beat, 
 Or else I swoon with this dead-killing news." 
 
 Act iv. Scene 1. 
 
 The cockatrice and the basilisk are synonyms. Ambrose 
 Pare' gives an engraving and history of the fabulous thing 
 of whose existence he does not appear to doubt. Shakespeare 
 generally uses the word basilisk, but in the following he 
 employs the other term, and states the superstition. 
 
 " O my accursed womb, the bed of death ; 
 A cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world, 
 Whose unavoided eye is murderous ! " Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 It is doubtful whether Shakespeare intended in the follow- 
 ing, a description of that accident, which is well known to 
 obstetric physicians, the strangulation of the infant before 
 its birth by the umbilical cord getting twisted around its 
 neck. It may have had this meaning or it may not, as the 
 Duchess appears to refer to an act of will on her part. 
 
 " K. Rich. Who intercepts me in my expedition ? 
 
 Duch. Oh ! she that might have intercepted thee, 
 By strangling thee in her accursed womb, 
 From all the slaughters, wretch, that thou hast done." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 The Duchess of York's description of her terrible son's 
 nativity, infancy, childhood, and manhood, forms a graphic 
 illustration of the maxim that no man was ever suddenly very 
 wicked, and may well be commended to the study of those 
 physicians who have recently invented, what they are pleased 
 to call, ' moral idiotcy,' and who have humiliated the science 
 
187 
 
 of medicine by attempting to exonerate the guilt, and avert 
 the punishment of murder, on arguments founded on no 
 better grounds than that the infancy of the mature criminal 
 had been thought "tetchy and wayward," and his school days 
 " wild and furious." On these principles, the evidence of 
 Richard the Third's mother would have been amply suf- 
 ficient to prove that he was a moral idiot, and utterly irre- 
 sponsible for the guilt of his actions. It might thus be 
 urged, that with all his apparent force of will he had no 
 free choice, but was himself the puppet of organization and 
 of circumstance, and therefore, that all his crimes were inevi- 
 table. This question really resolves itself into one which the 
 intellect of man has never yet been able to solve, namely, 
 the origin of evil This at least, however, we are bound to 
 acknowledge, that, if there be any fate in the production of 
 evil, there is also a fated necessity in its punishment ; and 
 this practical distinction we must draw, that while a murder 
 committed by a madman is a painful accident of his disease, 
 a murder committed as the climax of a wicked life is a 
 stupendous crime, towards which, neither knowledge nor ig- 
 norance, on our part, of the origin of evil, can justify any other 
 feeling than that of abhorrence, or any other conduct than 
 that of retributive justice. Richard himself held that his 
 own bad actions were fated, and this doctrine of fatalism, with 
 the contrary one of the grace, are stated in two lines between 
 him and the queen. 
 
 " K. 'Richard. All unavoided is the doom of destiny : 
 Q. Eliz. True, when avoided grace makes destiny." 
 
 Act iv., Beetle 4. 
 
 " Duchess. Art thou so hasty ? I have staid for thee, 
 God knows, in torment and in agony. 
 
188 
 
 K. Rich. And came I not at last to comfort you ? 
 
 Duch. No, by the holy rood, thou know'st it well, 
 Thou cam'st on earth to make the earth my hell. 
 A grevious burden was thy birth to me : 
 Tetchy and wayward was thy infancy. 
 Thy school-days, frightful, desperate, wild, and furious ; 
 Thy prime of manhood, daring, bold, and venturous ; 
 Thy age confirm'd, proud, subtle, sly, and bloody, 
 More mild, but yet more harmful, kind in hatred." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 7. 
 
 KING HENRY VIII. 
 
 Anne Bullen's enquiry of Lord Sands, whether the wildness 
 he had from his father was madness, points to a know- 
 ledge of the hereditary character of this malady. 
 
 " Sands. If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me ; 
 I had it from my father. 
 
 Anne. Was he mad, Sir ? 
 
 Sands. Oh ! very mad, exceeding mad, in love too : 
 But he would bite none." Act i., Scene 4. 
 
 Wolsey is accused of having caused the insanity and 
 death of one Dr. Pace. 
 
 " Gampeius. They will not stick to say, you envied him ; 
 And, fearing he would rise, he was so virtuous, 
 Kept him a foreign man still ; which so griev'd him, 
 That he ran mad, and died." Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 The king marries Ann Bullen without the privity of the 
 great churchman, whose policy, thus thwarted, provokes the 
 remark : 
 
189 
 
 " All his tricks founder, and he brings his physic 
 After his patient's death ; the king already 
 Hath married the fair lady." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 The idea of the body's exhaustion and repair, and the 
 need of a busy man caring for his health, by alternating 
 labour with repose or recreation, is contained in Wolsey's 
 reply to the king respecting the occupation of his time. 
 
 " For holy offices I have a time ; a time 
 To think upon the part of business, which 
 I bear i'the state ; and nature does require 
 Her times of preservation, which, perforce, 
 I, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal, 
 Must give my tendance to." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 The history of Queen Catharine's sickness and death is 
 drawn with great skill and delicacy. The poor deserted 
 woman appears not to die from any positive disease, but 
 from bodily debility, resulting from the heavy burden of 
 grief and shame to which she had been subjected. The 
 noble reticence of her character prevents any wild outburst 
 of passion, and this suppression of the signs of feeling 
 would all the more recoil upon the bodily strength. One 
 of the surest signs of debility is well marked in the following. 
 
 " Griffith. How does your grace ? 
 
 Katherwe. O, Griffith, sick to death : 
 My legs, like loaden branches, bow to the earth, 
 Willing to leave their burden : Eeach a chair ; — 
 So, — now, methinks, I feel a little ease. 
 # # # 
 
 Patience. Do you note, 
 How much her grace is alter' d on the sudden ? 
 How long her face is drawn ? How pale she looks, 
 And of an earthy cold ? Mark you her eyes ? 
 
 Qrif. She is going, wench ; pray, pray." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 2. 
 
 The queen, however, revives sufficiently to sustain the 
 
190 
 
 interview with Capuchius, who brings an affectionate message 
 from the king, entreating her to take good comfort ; which 
 comfort, however, the queen says, comes too late, regretting 
 it as gentle physic, which, in the early stage of disease, 
 might have been remedial. 
 
 " Kafh. O my good lord, that comfort comes too late ; 
 'Tis like a pardon after execution : 
 That gentle physic, given in time, had cur'd me ; 
 But now I am past all comforts here, but prayers." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 2. 
 
 In giving her noble message to her husband, she feels 
 her strength quite fail her, and that symptom of fatal de- 
 bility, so often noted by Shakespeare, is not omitted, "My 
 eyes grow dim.'' 
 
 A minute account is given of Anne Bullen's childbed. It 
 must have been rather curious when this play was repre- 
 sented, for Shakespeare's royal mistress to listen to the 
 minute circumstances under which she first smelt the air, 
 when, as Lear says, " we wawl and cry ;" and how the lady 
 gossip, who brought the king news that it was a girl, only 
 got a hundred marks for it, payment, as she thought, for a 
 groom. 
 
 " K. Henry. Now, Lovell, from the queen what is the news ? 
 
 Lovell. I could not personally deliver to her 
 What you commanded me, but by her woman 
 I sent your message ; who return'd her thanks 
 In the greatest humbleness, and desir'd your highness 
 Most heartily to pray for her. 
 
 King Sen. What say'st thou ? ha ! 
 
 To pray for her ? what, is she crying out ? 
 
 Ziov. So said her woman ; and that her sufferance made 
 Almost each pang a death. 
 
 K. Sen. Alas, good lady I 
 
 Suffolk. G-od safely quit her of her burden, and 
 With gentle travail, to the gladding of 
 Your highness with an heir ! " Act v., Scene 1. 
 
191 
 
 Gardiner, in the council held to accuse Cromwell, compares 
 
 the protestant heresy to a contagious sickness, beyond the 
 
 reach of medicine, the taint of which is likely to spread 
 
 far and wide. 
 
 " If we suffer 
 (Out of our easiness, and childish pity 
 To one man's honour) this contagious sickness, 
 Farewell, all physic : And what follows then ? 
 Commotions, uproars, with a general taint 
 Of the whole state." Act v., Scene 2. 
 
 He had before applied the same simile to Cromwell. 
 
 " A most arch-heretic ! a pestilence 
 That does infect the land." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 The introduction of Dr. Butts, the king's physician, has 
 
 been commented on at page 55. Stowe, in his Annals, 
 
 erroneously attributes the foundation of the College of 
 
 Physicians to this person. 
 
 MACBETH. 
 
 When the witches had vanished from the eyes of Macbeth 
 and Banquo, " as breath into the wind," the latter asks, 
 
 " Were such things here as we do speak about ? 
 Or have we eaten of the insane root, 
 That takes the reason prisoner?" Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 In the absence of any clue to the recognition of this root, 
 it is satisfactory to be able to indicate the source from which 
 there can be little doubt that Shakespeare borrowed the idea, 
 namely, from Plutarch, a work, which it is certain that he 
 
192 
 
 closely studied. One of Shakespeare's own medical contem- 
 poraries, Sir Thomas Browne, quotes the following passage 
 from Plutarch's Life of Antonius, remarking that "what 
 plant this might be considerable (i.e., to be thought of) from 
 the symptoms and cure by wine." 
 
 " In the end they were compelled to live on herbs and 
 roots, but they found few of them that men do commonly 
 eat, and were enforced to taste of them that were never eaten 
 before, among the which, there was one that killed them and 
 made them lose their wits ; for he that had once eaten of it 
 his memory was gone from him, and he knew no manner of 
 thing, but only busied himself in digging and hurling of 
 stones from one place to another, as though it had been a 
 great weight, and to be done with all possible speed. All the 
 camp over were busily stooping to the ground, digging and 
 carrying of stones from one place to another. But at last 
 they cast up a great deal of choler and died suddenly, because 
 they lacked wine, which was the only sudden remedy to cure 
 that disease." — Plutarch, in Vitd Antonii. 
 
 The horrible imaginings suggested to Macbeth, produce in 
 his irritable constitution the bodily symptoms of nervous 
 excitement so forcibly, as to attract his own attention to the 
 disturbance of the bodily functions, and to the unusual man- 
 ner in which palpitation of the heart shakes his frame. 
 
 " Why do I yield to that suggestion 
 Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair, 
 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, 
 Against the use of nature ? Presents fears 
 Are less than horrible imaginings : 
 My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 
 Shakes so my single state of man, that function 
 Is smother'd in surmise ; and nothing is, 
 But what is not." Act i., Scene 3. 
 
193 
 
 Lady Macbeth's proposition to stupify Duncan's spongy- 
 officers with strong drink, describes the effects of the fumes 
 of wine on the brain by a simile drawn from chemistry, then 
 called the spagyric art. The brain, the seat of reason, shall 
 become an alembic, or limbeck, a receptacle of fumes. 
 
 " When Duncan is asleep, 
 (Whereto the rather shall his day's hard journey 
 Soundly invite him,) his two chamberlains 
 Will I with wine and wassel so convince, 
 That memory, the warder of the brain, 
 Shall be a fume, and the receipt of reason, 
 A limbeck only : when in swinish sleep 
 Their drenched natures lie, as in a death." 
 
 Act i., Scene 7. 
 
 The hallucination of the dagger is referred by Macbeth to 
 its true pathological cause. 
 
 " A dagger of the mind, a false creation, 
 Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 Lady Macbeth does not trust to the fumes of wine to 
 stupify the surfeited grooms, since she administers some 
 narcotic, to an extent dangerous, but not fatal, to their lives. 
 
 " I've drugged their possets 
 That death and nature do contend about them, 
 Whether they live, or die." Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 There are few subjects that Shakespeare has treated with 
 
 more pathetic truthfulness than the distress arising from 
 
 want of sleep ; so much so, that the thought intrudes itself 
 
 that he must, in his own person, have experienced this 
 
 penalty of mental excitement exceeding the limits of health. 
 
 In no place, however, is the description of sleep's restorative 
 
 power delineated with such exquisite pathos as where 
 
 Macbeth feels that he has murdered sleep ; it is then that 
 
 he exclaims, 
 o 
 
194 
 
 " Sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
 The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
 Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast." Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 Macbeth's invitation to his guests 
 
 " Now good digestion wait on appetite, 
 And health on both ! " Act hi., Scene 4. 
 
 contains the sound medical doctrine, that food taken with 
 appetite promotes digestion, and that good digestion is need- 
 ful to health: 
 
 The witches' cauldron receives only two ingredients for 
 the composition of its hell-broth, which have any bearing 
 on medicine. " Root of hemlock digged in the dark," points, 
 like several other passages, to the importance attached 
 by the old herbalists to the time and manner in which 
 medicinal or poisonous plants were gathered. The "finger 
 of birth-strangled babe" seems to indicate a knowledge of 
 the accident of strangulation with the umbilical cord, to 
 which the infant is liable during parturition. 
 
 The touching for the king's evil, which is so minutely 
 described in this play, was performed by Edward the Con- 
 fessor, the first of our kings who exercised this miraculous 
 gift. He was, however, by no means the last, for the practice 
 descended so near to these present times of unbelief as the 
 life-time of Samuel Johnson, who was, himself, actually 
 touched by the royal hand for this purpose. In this case 
 we know that the remedy was not efficacious, for the scrofu- 
 lous taint of the great moralist's constitution was as strong 
 and as persistent as the superstitious bias of his mind, which, 
 as this early incident. seems to indicate, might derive its origin, 
 like the physical disease, from hereditary predisposition. In 
 
195 
 
 the Psychology of Shakespeare, I have quoted Fuller's 
 quaint account of this royal charlatanism, and of Queen 
 Elizabeth's early dislike to it. The subject may be traced 
 throughout old medical literature, the physicians being 
 either sufficiently ignorant or sufficiently politic, not to doubt, 
 or not to appear to doubt, the possession by our kings of this 
 miraculous therapeutic power, which was valued by them- 
 selves as a proof of their legitimacy. 
 
 Primrose, on the Popular Error " of the curing of the 
 King's-Evill by the toutch of the seventh sonne," argues, that 
 as this " power of curing the King's-Evill is, by the blessing 
 of God, granted to the Kings of Great Britaine and France," 
 " this privilege is only vouchsafed to the aforesaid Kings, 
 and if other men should attempt the same, it were too much 
 rashnesse, and a grosse tempting of God/* 
 
 " Malcolm. Comes the king forth, I pray you ? 
 
 Doctor. Ay, Sir : there are a crew of wretched souls 
 That stay his cure : their malady convinces 
 The great assay of art : but, at his touch, 
 Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, 
 They presently amend. 
 
 Mai. I thank you, doctor. 
 
 Macduff. What 's the disease he means ? 
 
 Mai. 'Tis call'd the evil : 
 
 A most miraculous work in this good king ; 
 Which often, since my here-remain in England, 
 I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, 
 Himself best knows : but strangely-visited people, 
 All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, 
 The mere despair of surgery, he cures ; 
 HaDging a golden stamp about their necks, 
 Put on with holy prayers : and 'tis spoken, 
 To the succeeding royalty he leaves 
 The healing benediction. With this strange virtue, 
 He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy ; 
 And sundry blessings hang about his throne, 
 That speak him full of grace." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 O 2 
 
196 
 
 Malcolm in medical phrase suggests revenge to comfort 
 Macduff's grief. 
 
 " Let's make us med'cines of our great revenge, 
 To cure this deadly grief." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 The truthful representation of the phenomena of sleep- 
 walking is a main element of the wonderful dramatic power 
 in the scene where Lady Macbeth unconsciously confesses 
 her guilt. The somnambulism does not occur every night, 
 since the physician watches two nights before he is able 
 to observe this great perturbation in nature. 
 
 "Doct. I have two nights watched with you, but can perceive 
 no truth in your report. When was it she last walked ? 
 
 Gentlewoman. Since his majesty went into the field, I have 
 seen her rise from her bed, throw her night-gown upon her, unlock 
 her closet, take forth paper, fold it, write upon 't, read it, afterwards 
 seal it, and again return to bed ; yet all this while in a most fast 
 sleep. 
 
 Doct. A great perturbation in nature I to receive at once the 
 benefit of sleep, and do the effects of watching. * * * 
 
 Gent. Lo you, here she comes ! This is her very guise ; and, 
 upon my life, fast asleep. Observe her ; stand close. 
 
 Doct. How came she by that light ? 
 
 Gent. Why, it stood by her : she has light by her continually ; 
 'tis her command. 
 
 Doct. You see, her eyes are open. 
 
 Gent. Ay, but their sense is shut. 
 
 Doct. What is it she does now ? Look how she rubs her hands. 
 
 Gent. It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing 
 her hands ; I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour. 
 
 Lady M. Yet here's a spot," &c. Act v. Scene 1. 
 
 The physiology of sleep-walking is not very clearly under- 
 stood even now, and, certainly, little could be added to the 
 description of its phenomena which we receive from Shakes- 
 peare. The eye is open, but its sense is shut, at least its sense 
 of discriminating perception. To what extent the senses are 
 obscured in somnambulism is a curious and unresolved 
 
197 
 
 problem. It is probable that Lady Macbeth saw the little 
 hand, which all the perfumes of Arabia could not sweeten, 
 though with hallucinated mind she saw it blood-spotted. It 
 is to be remarked that the hallucinations of dreams appeal 
 to all the senses, so that the test of reality which Shakespeare 
 has himself proposed, the verification of one sense by that 
 of others, would not be valid. The "damned spot" is an 
 hallucination, not of the organ of vision, but of the cerebral 
 centre of the sense ; the smell of blood is equally a false 
 testimony of the cerebral centre of the sense of smell ; and 
 the words which she seems to hear from her lord, " a soldier 
 and afraid," indicate that the cerebral hallucination of sense 
 is complete. The hallucinations of the waking state, rarely, 
 if ever, appeal to all the senses at the same time, and thus 
 afford a curious distinction to the hallucinations, if they can 
 be so called, of dreams. The muscular movements, both 
 vocal and general, in sleep-walking, are not automatic as 
 they have been called, but definitely directed by these hallu- 
 cinations of the cerebral centres of sense. 
 
 When the doctor of physic, who seems to be a sensible, 
 though somewhat timid, man, declines to attempt any treat- 
 ment of the case saying, " this disease is beyond my practice," 
 he appears to have been deterred by the fear of being mixed 
 up with terrible state secrets, " Foul whisperings are abroad," 
 &c. We cannot agree with him in his opinion, " more needs 
 she the divine than the physician," for the wretched queen 
 is at this time clearly in a state of disease, and inaccessible 
 to a divine, whose sacred office could only be available when 
 the perturbations of physical nature had been allayed by 
 physical means. 
 
198 
 
 The doctor does not appear to have given up his patient, 
 for two scenes later we find Macbeth asking his opinion. 
 
 " How does your patient, doctor ? 
 
 Doctor. Not so sick, my lord, 
 
 As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, 
 That keep her from her rest. 
 
 Macb. Cure her of that : 
 
 Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd ; 
 Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow ; 
 Raze out the written troubles of the brain ; 
 And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, 
 Cleanse the stuff 'd bosom of that perilous stuff, 
 "Which weighs upon the heart ? 
 
 -° oc <- Therein the patient 
 
 Must minister to himself. 
 
 Macb. Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.— 
 Come, put mine armour on : give me my staff: — 
 Seyton, send out. Doctor, the thanes fly from me ;— 
 Come, Sir, despatch :— If thou could'st, doctor, cast 
 The water of my land, find her disease, 
 And purge it to a sound and pristine health, 
 I would applaud thee to the very echo, 
 That should applaud again. — Pull't off, I say — 
 What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug, 
 Would scour these English hence '(" Act v., Scene 3. 
 
 " Some sweet oblivious antidote " has been supposed by 
 commentators to have been suggested by Spencer's description 
 of Nepenthe, or by Virgil's of the effects of Lethe. It is 
 more likely, I think, to refer to the " drowsy syrups" men- 
 tioned by Iago. In Shakespeare's time, narcotics were 
 commonly administered in syrups as a vehicle, a mode of 
 pharmacy of which traces still remain. 
 
 Macbeth's expression, 'throw physic to the dogs,' has 
 been quoted to sustain the opinion that Shakespeare himself 
 despised the aid of medicine ; an opinion which is utterly 
 refuted by the manner in which, throughout the plays, he 
 speaks of physic, and represents the character of the phy- 
 sician. When occasion demands, he can represent a starved 
 
199 
 
 apothecary, as in Romeo and Juliet; or a Dr. Caius, 
 ridiculous in clipped English and love-sickness ; but he 
 always represents the character of the physician in a gener- 
 ous and beneficent, even, dignified garb. This is the case 
 with Lady Macbeth' s physician, and, to a still greater extent, 
 with the physicians in Lear and Gymbeline. Macbeth had 
 some reason to say, ' throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of 
 it,' because the doctor, frightened at the terrible secrets of 
 which he had unwittingly become cognizant, and looking 
 upon Lady Macbeth as a great criminal, had declared himself 
 unable to minister to minds diseased. Macbeth, moreover, 
 was in the most impetuous state of combative excitement, 
 and he would throw physic to the dogs, because it could not 
 do the one thing he had at heart at the time, the overthrow 
 of his enemies, and the establishment of his power. The 
 medical form in which this task is proposed, is one of the 
 most remarkable examples of Shakespeare's use of medical 
 similes. The doctor is called upon first to diagnose the 
 disease of the body politic, in the manner which, as we 
 have seen, was then common among physicians ; he is to 
 ' cast the water of the land,' and thus to find her disease ; 
 that being found, he must treat the diseased land, and purge 
 it to a sound and pristine health. What purgative will do 
 this ? Is it rhubarb, senna, or what else ? Who will 
 remove the obstructions which are at least evident, and 
 scour these English hence ? This conversation is held while 
 Macbeth is putting on his armour with impetuous haste, and 
 it is hard to say whether his earnest demand for some sweet 
 oblivious antidote for the sorrow and trouble written in the 
 brain of his queen, or whether his figurative invitation that 
 the doctor should turn statesman, and cleanse the land with 
 
200 
 
 purgatives, most indicate the bias to medical turns of thought. 
 Just before this scene, one of Macbeth's opponents expresses 
 the same thought in the same form, namely, that the com- 
 mon-weal is sick, and requires purgation. 
 
 " Caithness. Well, march we on, 
 
 To give obedience where 'tis truly ow'd : 
 Meet we the medicine of the sickly weal ; 
 And with him pour we, in our country's purge, 
 Each drop of us." Act v. Scene 2. 
 
 Macbeth relies more upon charms than upon medicine, but 
 the last charm turns out to be an equivocation on an event 
 brought about by medical art. 
 
 " Macbeth. I bear a charmed life, which must not yield 
 To one of woman born. 
 
 Macduff. Despair thy charm ; 
 
 And let the angel whom thou still hast serv'd 
 Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb 
 Untimely ripp'd." Act v., Scene 7. 
 
 The removal of the foetus from the mother's womb, named 
 Caesarian after Rome's greatest soldier, who is said to have 
 entered the world like Macduff, may be performed after the 
 mother's death, or before, in the hope of saving both lives. 
 The mode of expression, ' untimely ripped,' seems to indicate 
 that the first of these was the manner in which Macduff saw 
 the light. In Cymbeline, the name given to the infant, 
 Posthumus, indicates that he was born after the death of 
 his mother. The mother in the vision uses the same term 
 as Macduff, "ripped." 
 
 " Sicilius. I died, whilst in the womb he stay'd 
 Attending Nature's law. * * 
 Mother. Lucina lent me not her aid, 
 But took me in my throes ; 
 That from me was Posthumus ripp'd, 
 Came crying 'mongst his foes, 
 A thing of pity ! " Act v. Scene 4t. 
 
201 
 
 COEIOLANUS. 
 
 The current of medical thought which runs through this 
 play is broad and strong. Menenius' version of iEsop's 
 fable is thorougly medical in its description of the bodily 
 functions, while, as in so many other references of this kind, 
 the poet applies the doctrines of physiology to the theory 
 of government and statesmanship. In this instance, the simile 
 appears rather misapplied, since the rulers of a nation would 
 be the brain and the hands, rather than the stomach of the 
 body politic. This misapplication, however, is explained by 
 the circumstances of the discussion, namely, that the disaf- 
 fected mob accuse the Senate, that they " suffer us to 
 famish, and their storehouses are crammed with grain." 
 Menenius, with quiet humour, describes the slow manner in 
 which the process of digestion is carrried on. " Your most 
 grave belly was deliberate, not rash," it is the shop and 
 storehouse of the whole body, which, after first receiving 
 the general food, sends it " through the rivers of blood, even 
 to the court the heart." The flow of blood to the heart, 
 thus distinctly stated, was a fact well known and recog- 
 nized in Shakespeare's time. It was the flow of blood from 
 the heart, and round again in a circle to the heart, that is, 
 the circulation of the blood, which was not known to 
 Shakespeare or to any other person before Harvey's immortal 
 discovery. The flow of the blood " through the cranks and 
 offices of man" is a singular expression. ' Offices' appear to 
 mean functions, put for their organs, and 'cranks' mean bend- 
 
202 
 
 ings, or turnings, and, no doubt, refer to the elbows or turns 
 in the blood vessels. The word, an uncommon one, is used 
 in Venus and Adonis; in which the course of a hunted 
 hare is described. " He cranks and crosses with a thousand 
 doubles." 
 
 ' The strongest nerves ' appears to be used in the sense of 
 sinews or tendons, a sense in which Shakespeare uses the 
 word nerve generally, perhaps universally. 
 
 The idea that the flour of the food for the nourishment 
 of the body is separated from the refuse or bran which 
 remains in the stomach, again leads back the mind to the 
 plethoric storehouse of the senators on which the discussion 
 hinges. 
 
 " Menenius. There was a time, when all the body's members 
 Rebell'd against the belly ; thus accus'd it : — 
 That only like a gulf it did remain 
 I' the midst o' the body, idle and unactive, 
 Still cupboarding the viand, never bearing 
 Like labour with the rest ; where the other instruments 
 Did see, and hear, devise, instruct, walk, feel, 
 And mutually participate ; did minister 
 Unto the appetite and affection common 
 Of the whole body. The belly answered, — 
 
 Citizen. Well, Sir, what answer made the belly ? 
 
 Men. Sir, I shall tell you. — With a kind of smile, 
 Which ne'er came from the lungs, but even thus, 
 (For, look you, I may make the belly smile 
 As well as speak,) it tauntingly replied 
 To the discontented members, the mutinous parts 
 That envied his receipt ; even so most fitly 
 As you malign our senators, for that 
 They are not such as you — 
 
 OH. Your belly's answer : What ! 
 The kingly-crowned head, the vigilant eye, 
 The counsellor heart, the arm our soldier, 
 Our steed the leg, the tongue our trumpeter, 
 With other muniments and petty helps 
 In this our fabric, if that they — 
 
 Men. What then ? 
 
203 
 
 ' Fore me, this fellow speaks ! — What then ? What then ? 
 
 Cit. Should by the cormorant belly be restrain'd, 
 Who is the sink o' the body, — 
 
 Men. Well, what then r 1 
 
 Cit. The former agents, if they did complain, 
 What could the belly answer ? 
 
 Men. I will tell you ; 
 
 If you'll bestow a small (of what you have little,) ,. 
 Patience a while, you'll hear the belly's answer. 
 
 Cit. You are long about it. 
 
 Men. Note me this, good friend ; 
 
 Your most grave belly was deliberate, 
 Not rash like his accusers, and thus answer' d, 
 ' True is it, my incorporate friends,' quoth he, 
 ' That I receive the general food at first, 
 Which you do live upon : and fit it is ; 
 Because I am the storehouse, and the shop 
 Of the whole body ; But if you do remember, 
 I send it through the rivers of your blood, 
 Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain, 
 And through the cranks and offices of man : 
 The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins, 
 From me receive that natural competency 
 Whereby they live : and though that all at once, 
 You, my good friends,' (this says the belly,) ' mark me, — 
 
 Cit. Ay, Sir ; well, well. 
 
 Men. ' Though all at once cannot 
 
 See what I do deliver out to each ; 
 Yet I can make my audit up, that all 
 From me do back receive the flour of all, 
 And leave me but the bran.' What say you to't ? 
 
 Cit. It was an answer : How apply you this ? 
 
 Men. The senators of Eome are this good belly, 
 And you the mutinous members." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 Rabelais uses this same fable of iEsop to illustrate the 
 social miseries which would result if the world should be 
 filled with a rascally rabble of people that would not lend ; 
 his hero, in the witty classification of men into those 
 who borrow and those who lend, decidedly belonging to the 
 former category, and being as decidedly inimical to all 
 who did not belong to the latter. Malone refers to this 
 fable as it is told by Camden, in his Bemains, (a.d. 1605,) 
 
204 
 
 and remarks, that " Shakespeare appears to have had Camden 
 as well as Plutarch before him." Rabelais, however, appears 
 to me by far the more probable model, on account of the 
 physiological dress in which he invests the fable, which 
 Camden merely repeats after iEsop. Rabelais had been 
 translated before 1775, and Mr. Upton observes on the 
 expression in Lear, " Nero is an angler in the lake of dark- 
 ness," that Rabelais says " Nero was a fiddler in hell and 
 Trajan an angler." But, independently of this coincidence, 
 it is very improbable that Shakespeare would omit to make 
 acquaintance with a mind so congenial to more than one 
 phase of his own as that of Rabelais, whose version of the 
 fable is as follows : 
 
 " It would prove much more easy in nature to have fish 
 entertained in the air, and bullocks fed in the bottom of the 
 ocean, than to support or tolerate a rascally rabble of people 
 that will not lend. These fellows, I vow, I do hate with a 
 perfect hatred ; and if, conform to the pattern of this 
 grievous, peevish, and perverse world which laudeth nothing, 
 you figure and lighten the little world, which is man, you will 
 find in him a terrible justling coyle and clutter. The head 
 will not lend the sight of his eyes to guide the feet and 
 hands ; the legs will refuse to bear up the body ; the hand 
 will leave off working any more for the rest of the members ; 
 the heart will be weary of its continued motion for the 
 beating of the pulse, and will no longer lend his asssistance ; 
 the lungs will withdraw the use of their bellows ; the liver 
 will desist from convoying any more blood through the veins 
 for the good of the whole ; the bladder will not be indebted 
 to the kidneys, so that the urine thereby will be totally 
 stopped. The brains, in the interim, considering this un- 
 
205 
 
 natural course, will fall into a raving dotage, and withhold 
 all feeling from the sinews, and all motion from the muscles. 
 Briefly, in such a world without order and array, owing 
 nothing, lending nothing, and borrowing nothing, you would 
 be a more dangerous conspiration than that which iEsop 
 exposed in his apologue. Such a world will perish undoubt- 
 edly ; and not only perish, but perish very quickly. Were it 
 iEsculapius himself, his body would immediately rot, and 
 the chafing soul, full of indignation, take its flight." 
 
 When Menenius has finished his argument with the mob, 
 Marcius breaks in upon them with another medical simile by 
 no means so complimentary as the former one. 
 
 " What's the matter, you dissentious rogues, 
 That, rubbing the poor itch of your opinion, 
 Make yourselves scabs ? " Ibid. 
 
 He follows it up with another, the general truth of 
 which, however, may be questioned. 
 
 " Your affections are 
 A sick man's appetite, who desires most that 
 Which would increase his evil." Ibid. 
 
 The haughty warrior rallies his flying soldiers with yet 
 another medical simile. 
 
 " Marcius. All the contagion of the south light on you ! 
 You shames of Rome ! — you herd of — Boils and plagues 
 Plaster you o'er ; that you may be abhorr'd 
 Further than seen, and one infect another 
 Against the wind a mile !" Act i., Scene 4. 
 
 The boils or plagues invoked would appear to refer to the 
 boils or bubos of the plague, the strength of whose infection 
 is thus fancifully exaggerated. 
 
206 
 
 When Marcius himself is severely wounded he bravely 
 makes light of it. 
 
 " The blood I drop is rather physical 
 Than dangerous to me." Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 A subsequent disparagement of his wounds draws from his 
 colleague a reply,' referring to a natural event in wounds, 
 and also to an old mode of treatment. 
 
 " Marcius. I have some wounds upon me, and they smart 
 To" hear themselves remember'd. 
 
 Cominius. Should they not, 
 
 Well might they fester 'gainst ingratitude, 
 And tent themselves with death." Act i., Scene 9. 
 
 Wounds not remembered might well fester from neglect, 
 or if not remembered and not tented according to the 
 surgical practice of the time, they might well be supposed 
 to run the risk of ending fatally, or in medical periphrasis 
 " tent themselves with death." The tent mentioned here, 
 and in many other passages, is, of course, the substance 
 made of lint or flax, which in the rough surgery of the 
 olden time, was habitually thrust into wounds. 
 
 Cominius continuing -to argue against Marcius' over- 
 strained modesty, refers to the manner in which suicide was 
 thought preventable in the olden time. 
 
 " If 'gainst yourself you be incensed, we'll put you 
 (Like one that means his proper harm) in manacles." 
 
 Act i., Scene 9. 
 
 The loss of blood, however, has its effect on the haughty 
 man, causing physical and mental debility. 
 
 " Lartius. Marcius, his name ? 
 Ooriolanus By Jupiter, forgot ! — 
 
 I am weary ; yea, my memory is tir'd. — 
 Have we no wine here ? " Ibid. 
 
207 
 
 When Menenius receives a letter from his friend Marcius, 
 now surnamed Coriolanus, he describes the health preserving 
 effect of the pleasure it affords him, in terms which convey 
 the poet's high appreciation of Galen, the great medical 
 authority of his own day. The reference, however, implies 
 a trifling anachronism, inasmuch Galen did not live until 
 nearly six hundred years after the time of Menenius. 
 Shakespeare was wilfully reckless of anachronisms, like 
 the king who was above grammar. He expresses as much 
 in the playful sneer of Lear's fool. " This prophecy shall 
 Merlin make ; for I live before his time." " An estate of 
 seven years' health," appears a medical thought conveyed 
 in a legal form. 
 
 " A letter for me ? It gives me an estate of seven years' health ; 
 in which time I will make make a_ lip at the physician : the most 
 sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiric physic, and, to this 
 preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. Is he not 
 wounded? He was wont to come home wounded." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 In the following, commentators suppose that "rapture" 
 means some sort of fit. Shakespeare uses " rapt" to express 
 a condition resembling ecstasy, as in Macbeth, 
 
 " Your prattling nurse 
 Into a rapture lets her baby cry." Act n., Scene 1. 
 
 Coriolanus' abhorrence of " the rank-scented many," leads 
 him to denunciate the weak counsels of the Senate, who 
 incline to give them some share of power, " mingling them 
 with us." This to his aristocratic pride would be like wil- 
 fully catching the measles, an old term for leprosy. " And 
 to meselle houses of that same lond." — R. Brunne. "Eise 
 ye dede men, dense ye mesels." — Wiclif, quoted by Rich- 
 ardson. 
 
208 
 
 " As for my country I have shed my blood, 
 Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs 
 Coin words till their decay, against those measels, 
 Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought 
 The very way to catch them." Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 The ' wish/ which Coriolanus attributes to the senators of 
 his own faction, was quite contrary to the practice of the 
 medical men in Shakespeare's day, who were in the habit 
 of refusing to compromise their reputation by entering upon 
 the treatment of sick persons whom they judged to be 
 incurable. Thus Fuller speaks of a physician of the highest 
 eminence, who studiously kept himself out of the way of 
 being employed by James I. in the treatment of the Prince 
 of Wales, whose early decease he had prognosticated. 
 
 " To jump a body with a dangerous physic 
 That's sure of death without it." Ibid. 
 
 The violent tribune's retort to Menenius' exhortation to 
 temperance, when he wishes to execute mob-law upon the 
 hero, conveys the same medical maxim as that referred to 
 in Much Ado, namely, "for to strange sores strangely they 
 strain the cure." Brutus puts the same maxim in an in- 
 verted form, both the one and the other, however, being 
 evidently founded upon the maxim of Hippocrates, that 
 extreme diseases need extreme remedies. 
 
 "Menenius. Be that you seem, truly your country's friend, 
 And temperately proceed to what you would 
 Thus violently redress. 
 
 Brutus. Sir, those cold ways, 
 
 That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous 
 Where the disease is violent : — Lay hands upon him, 
 And bear him to the rock." Ibid. 
 
 When Coriolanus has beaten back the iEdiles and the 
 
209 
 
 people, his friends entreat him to retire, in another reference 
 to the old form of surgery which treated wounds with tents. 
 
 " Leave us to cure this cause : 
 
 Men. For 'tis a sore upon us 
 
 You cannot tent yourself." Ibid. 
 
 A string of surgical similes is maintained. The enemy com- 
 pares Coriolanns to a disease which must be cut away ; the 
 friend compares him to a limb affected with curable disease 
 which it would be fatal to amputate ; and then with versatile 
 thought leaving this idea, he compares him to a gangrened 
 foot whose former service it would be ingratitude to forget 
 
 " Sicinius. He's a disease, that must be cut away. 
 
 Menenitis. O, he's a limb, that has but a disease ; 
 Mortal, to cut it off ; to cure it, easy. 
 What has he done to Rome that's worthy death ? 
 Killing our enemies ? The blood he hath lost, 
 (Which, I dare vouch, is more than that he hath 
 JBy many an ounce,) he dropp'd it for his country : 
 And, what is left, to lose it by his country, 
 Were to us all, that do't, and suffer it, 
 A brand to the end o' the world. 
 
 Sic. This is clean kam. 
 
 Brutus. Merely awry : when he did love his count y, 
 It honour'd him. 
 
 Men. The service of the foot 
 
 Being once gangren'd, is not then respected 
 For what before it was — 
 
 Bru. We'll hear no more : — 
 
 Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence ; 
 Lest his infection, being of catching nature, 
 Spread further." Act iii., Scene 1. 
 
 Menenius persuades submission -to the sentence of banish- 
 ment, because 
 
 " The violent fit o' the time craves it as physic 
 For the whole state." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
210 
 
 Coriolanus compares the breath and the love of the people 
 to two causes of disease, the marsh miasma, and, as in 
 Henry V., to putrifying bodies. 
 
 " You common cry of curs ! whose breath I hate 
 As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize 
 As the dead carcases of unburied men 
 That do corrupt my air, I banish you." Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 Volumnia, no doubt, refers to the cutaneous eruptions 
 common in plague as the " red pestilence." " The red plague 
 rid you," in the Tempest, and the " tokened pestilence," in 
 Antony and Cleopatra, refer to the same symptoms. The 
 tokens, i. e., of death, included, however, more than the red 
 eruption. 
 
 " Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome, 
 And occupations perish !" Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 The activity and vigour of a state of war is paradoxically 
 preferred to peace, as if the former were a state of health, 
 and the latter of disease. Hamlet makes peace the time of 
 health, though of plethoric health which ripens into war. 
 Apoplexy is here confounded with lethargy, which is de- 
 scribed as proceeding by the degrees, mulled, deaf, sleepy, 
 insensible. The term apoplexy is used rather loosely by 
 Shakespeare in many places, but always to signify an affection 
 of the brain ; whereas, modern physicians have most absurdly 
 used the same term for sudden diseases of other organs, and 
 thus speak and write of apoplexy of the lungs and apoplexy 
 of. the liver. 
 
 " 1st Servant. Let me have war, say I : it exceeds peace as far 
 as day does night ; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. 
 Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy: mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 5. 
 
211 
 
 It has been said that the fate of the battle of Leipsic turned 
 upon a badly cooked cutlet, which gave Napoleon a fit of indi- 
 gestion. Menenius so fully recognizes the alliance between 
 the stomach and the brain, that he will not throw away a 
 chance by asking grace for his country from his triumphal 
 and revengeful friend, except at a time when, upon physio- 
 logical grounds, good digestion has filled the veins and 
 warmed the blood, and fairly paved the way to generosity of 
 feeling. 
 
 " Menenius. I'll undertake it : 
 I think he'll hear me. Yet, to bite his lip, 
 And hum at good Cominius, much unhearts me. 
 He was not taken well ; he had not din'd : 
 The veins unfill'd, our blood is cold, and then 
 We pout upon the morning, are unapt 
 To give or to forgive ; but when we have stuff 'd 
 These pipes, and these conveyances of our blood, 
 With wine and feeding, we have suppler souls 
 Than in our priest-like fasts : therefore I'll watch him 
 Till he be dieted to my request, 
 And then I'll set upon him." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
212 
 
 JULIUS C^ISAR. 
 
 The charm against sterility, referred to by Caesar, is 
 copied from Plutarch, who describes the feast Lwpercalia, in 
 which " noble young men run naked through the city striking 
 in sport whom they meet in their way with leather thongs," 
 which blows were supposed to have the effect attributed to 
 them by Caesar. 
 
 " The barren, touched in this holy chase, 
 Shake off their steril curse." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Cassius's description of Caesar's fever is rather meagre 
 from our point of view, compared with many of Shakes- 
 peare's medical descriptions. The symptoms given are, 
 that this god did shake, his lips lost their colour, his eyes 
 their lustre, and he did groan, and was afflicted with 
 thirst, and his spirit was beaten down, as that of the bravest 
 must be under sickness. * 
 
 " He had a fever when he was in Spain, 
 And, when the fit was on him, I did mark 
 How he did shake : 'tis true, this god did shaken 
 His coward lips did from their colour fly ; 
 And that same eye, whose bend doth awe the world, 
 Did lose its lustre : I did hear him groan : 
 Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans 
 Mark him, and write his speeches in their bookSj 
 Alas ! it cried, ' Q-ive me some drink, Titinius,' 
 As a sick girl." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Casca's description of Caesar's epilepsy is as terse as 
 it well can be. He fell down, foamed at the mouth, 
 and was speechless. 
 
213 
 
 " The rabblement hooted, and clapped their chapped hands, and 
 threw up their sweaty night-caps, and uttered such a deal of stink- 
 ing breath because Caesar refused the crown, that it had almost 
 choked Caesar ; for he swooned, and fell down at it : and for mine 
 own part, I durst not laugh, for fear of opening my lips, and re- 
 ceiving the bad air. 
 
 Cassius. But, soft, I pray you : What ? Did Cesar swoon ? 
 
 Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, 
 and was speechless. 
 
 Brutus. 'Tis very like : he hath the falling sickness." 
 
 Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 When Portia claims to participate in the mental dis- 
 quiet of her husband, and he excuses his restlessness on the 
 ground of ill health, she refutes him, with a good 
 knowledge of the rules of regimen. 
 
 " I should not know you, Brutus. Dear my lord, 
 Make me acquainted with your cause of grief. 
 
 Brutus. I am not well in health, and that is all. 
 
 Portia. Brutus is wise, and were he not in health, 
 He would embrace the means to come by it. 
 
 Bru. Why, so I do : — Good Portia, go to bed, 
 
 For. Is Brutus sick ? and is it physical 
 To walk unbraced, and suck up the humours 
 Of the dank morning ? What, is Brutus sick ; 
 And will he steal out of his wholesome bed 
 To dare the vile contagion of the night, 
 And tempt the rheumy and unpurged air 
 To add unto his sickness ? No, my Brutus ; 
 You have some sick offence within your mind." 
 
 Act h., Scene 1. 
 
 Brutus, still hesitating to share the secrets of his 
 heart with the too inquisitive woman, attempts to console 
 her with the assurances of his love. 
 
 " You are my true and honourable wife, 
 As dear to me as are the ruddy drops 
 That visit my sad heart." Ibid. 
 
 On these three lines, a short essay, the only one bearing 
 upon Shakespeare's physiological opinions I have anywhere 
 
214 
 
 been able to find, has been written by Mir Thomas 
 Nimmo, and has been published in the second volume 
 of the Shakespeare Society's Papers. Mr. Nimmo considers 
 that this passage " contains, what I cannot view otherwise 
 than a distinct reference to the circulation of the blood, which 
 was not announced to the world, as is generally supposed, 
 until some years after the death of Shakespeare." Assuming 
 the truth of this, he argues either that the Play was not 
 written so early as 1603, the date fixed by Mr. Collier, or 
 that "Shakespeare had been made acquainted by Harvey 
 himself, with his first notions on the subject." . . . " Is 
 it then impossible that Harvey, a young medical practitioner, 
 may have become acquainted with Shakespeare, may have 
 become intimate with him, and may have acquainted him 
 with those great ideas by which also he hoped to become 
 famous." In some comments on the article, Mr. T. J. 
 Pettigrew satisfactorily disposes of Mr. Nimmo's suggestion : 
 '' There is no evidence that Shakespeare knew Harvey ; and, 
 as Shakespeare died in 1616, when the first ideas of Harvey 
 upon the subject were promulgated at the college, he could 
 not, through that medium, have been acquainted with it ; 
 but if the date of 1603, as given by Mr. Collier, as the period 
 at which the play of Julius Caesar was written, be the cor- 
 rect one, it is quite clear that Shakespeare could not have 
 then known Harvey, for he must at that time have been 
 abroad, and, whatever may have been his reflections upon 
 the discovery of the existence of valves in the veins, there 
 are no traces in any of his writings to shew that he had 
 then entertained any particular views upon the nature of 
 the circulation." 
 
 Shakespeare might indeed have known Harvey, as he 
 
215 
 
 no doubt was intimate with many of the leading minds 
 of the age ; but, in addition to the fact, that Harvey's 
 first notice of his discovery was made in the year of 
 Shakespeare's decease, Mr. Nimmo's suggestion is easily 
 refuted from the other writings of the poet, with which it 
 seems probable that Mr. Nimmo had not made himself ac- 
 quainted. There are several passages in the plays, in which 
 the presence of blood in the heart is quite as distinctly 
 referred to, as in this speech of Brutus ; but the passages 
 quoted in these pages from Love's Labour Lost, and from 
 the Second Part of Henry IV., distinctly prove that Shakes- 
 peare entertained the Galenical doctrine universally prevalent 
 before Harvey's discovery, that, although the right side of 
 the heart was visited by the blood, the function of the heart 
 and its proper vessels, the arteries, was the distribution of 
 the vital spirits, or, as Biron calls them, " the nimble spirits 
 in the arteries." Shakespeare believed indeed in the flow 
 of the blood. " the rivers of your blood," which went " even 
 to the court, the heart ;" but he considered that it was the 
 liver, and not the heart which was the cause of the flow. 
 There is not, in my opinion, in Shakespeare, a trace of any 
 knowledge of the circulation of the blood. Surely the temple 
 of his fame needs not to be enriched by the spoils of 
 any other reputation ! 
 
 The sickness of Ligarius, which he discards at the bidding 
 of Brutus, " I here discard my sickness," would seem not to 
 have been a pretended one, since Caasar refers to its nature 
 and effect. 
 
 " Caesar was ne'er so much your enemy 
 As that same ague which hath made you lean." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
216 
 
 In tha quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, the former 
 says, 
 
 " You shall digest the venom of your spleen, 
 Though it do split you." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 This seems again to convey the old false notion thai 
 poison always swells the body. 
 
 Portia's mode of committing suicide is as remarkable as it 
 is obscure. 
 
 " Brutus. Impatient of my absence ; 
 
 And grief, that young Octavius with Mark Antony 
 Have made themselves so strong ; — for with her death 
 That tidings came ; — With this she fell distract, 
 And, her attendants absent, swallow'd fire." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 Messala may well say, " For certain she is dead, and by 
 strange manner." Shakespeare, however, took the fact from 
 Plutarch. " She determining to kill herself (her parents and 
 friends carefullie looking to her to kepe her from it) tooke 
 hotte burning coles, and cast them into her mouth, and kept 
 her mouth so close, that she choked herselfe." 
 
 In Antony's eulogium on Brutus, the theory of the old 
 physicians, that life is composed of the four elements (see 
 Twelfth Night), is alluded to. 
 
 " His life was gentle ; and the elements 
 So mix'd in him that nature might stand up, 
 And say to all the world, ' This was a man.' " 
 
 Act v., Scene 5. 
 
 This old theory is the subject of the 44th and 45th 
 SonnetB. 
 
217 
 
 ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA. 
 
 Cleopatra, with the idea that she would like to sleep away 
 the time of her lover's absence, calls for mandragora, as a 
 soporific. 
 
 " Cleopatra. Charmian, — 
 
 Charmian. Madam. 
 
 Cleo. Ha, ha ! — 
 Give me to drink mandragora. 
 
 Char. Why, madam? 
 
 Cleo. That I might sleep out this great gap of time 
 My Antony is away." Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 Shakespeare refers to this drug, a second time, in Othello, 
 
 and in exactly the same sense. Iago observing of his master 
 
 whose peace of mind has been for ever destroyed by jealousy 
 
 " No poppy nor mandragora, 
 Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
 Shall med'cine thee to that sweet sleep 
 Which thou ow'dst yesterday." 
 
 Mandragora appears to have been extensively used as a 
 narcotic in the olden time. It was prescribed by Hippocrates. 
 Salmon, quoting Schroder, says, that it is seldom used in- 
 wardly. The plant is the atropia mandragora, and it was 
 chiefly brought from Italy ; the root, the leaves, and the 
 apples were used medicinally, and, according to Salmon, it 
 is "wonderfully narcotic and soporific." The root of the 
 plant is forked, and was supposed to bear resemblance to 
 the form of a man, hence called ' anthropomorphon ;' thus 
 arose the remarkable saying that when the plant was plucked 
 from the ground, it emitted a groan like that of a humaij 
 being in pain. Shakespeare refers, in two passages, to the 
 
218 
 
 supposed human shape of the mandrake, in the Second Part 
 of Henry IV.; and in two other passages he refers to the 
 superstition respecting its groan. The plant, therefore, is re- 
 ferred to in the plays, altogether, six times, and it is mark- 
 worthy that on the two occasions where its real medicinal 
 properties are the occasion of its mention, the Latin term, 
 mandragora is used ; the vulgar appellative, mandrake, being 
 employed on the occasions where the vulgar superstition is 
 alluded to. 
 
 " Would curses kill as doth the mandrakes' groan ? " 
 
 Henry VI., 2nd Part, Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 " And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, 
 That living mortals hearing them run mad." 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, Act iv., Scene 5. 
 
 The penalty, however, seems to have been attached to the 
 act of pulling the root from the earth, and, in ancient times, 
 it was evaded by fastening a dog to the plant, and whipping 
 the animal, who, in efforts to escape, drew forth the root. 
 
 The reference made here to Antony, as the great medicine 
 
 whose tinct has gilded his messenger, no doubt refers to gold, 
 
 which among our superstitious forefathers was emphatically 
 
 considered the great medicine ; the allusion is the same as 
 
 that of " the tinct and multiplying medicine" found in All's 
 
 Well that Ends Well. 
 
 " Cleo. How much unlike art thou Mark Antony ! 
 Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath 
 With his tinct gilded thee." Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 The effect of a voluptuous life upon the character, through 
 
 the influence of the body, and especially of the brain, is 
 
 described by Pompey. 
 
 " Tie up the libertine in a field of feasts ; 
 Keep his brain fuming ; Epicurean cooks 
 Sharpen with eloyless sauce his appetite ; 
 
219 
 
 That sleep and feeding may prorogue his honour, 
 
 Even till a Lethe'd dullness ! " Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 Here is another allusion to ' green sickness,' referring, as 
 
 in Henry IV., to a man. 
 
 " Caesar is sad ; and Lepidus, 
 Since Pompey's feast, as Menas says, is troubled 
 With the green-sickness." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 The " tokened pestilence," means the plague or pestilence 
 in which "the Lord's tokens," (Love's Labour Lost,) or 
 the " death's tokens," (Troilus and Gressida,) have ap- 
 peared, indicating, according to the old belief, that there was 
 no hope of recovery. 
 
 " JSnobarbus. How appears the fight ? 
 
 Seams. On our side like the token'd pestilence, 
 Where death is sure." Act iii., Scene 8. 
 
 One would suppose that the poet must have seen a 
 wound of the shape here so minutely described. 
 
 " Antony. Thou bleed'st apace. 
 
 Scarus. I had a wound here that was like a T, 
 But now 'tis made an H." Act iv., Scene 7. 
 
 Caesar laments over the death of Antony as if his life 
 had been a part of his own existence, yet a diseased part, 
 which it was needful to lance. 
 
 " Oh Antony ! 
 I've follow'd thee to this ; but we do lance 
 Diseases in our bodies." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 Cleopatra threatens suicide by starvation and watchfulness, 
 a very efficient means, as alienist physicians too well know. 
 The singular mode of suicide which she did adopt, by the 
 bite of the asp, "the pretty worm of Nilus that kills and 
 pains not," is a much more congenial form of death to the 
 voluptuous character of the woman, who had made a study 
 " of easy ways to die." 
 
220 
 
 " Ccesar. The manner of their deaths ? 
 
 I do not see them bleed. 
 
 Dolabella. Who was last with them ? 
 
 1 Guard. A simple countryman, that brought her figs : 
 This was his basket. 
 
 Cms. Poison'd them. 
 
 1 Guard. O Csesar, 
 
 This Charmian liv'd but now ; she stood, and spake : 
 I found her trimming up the diadem 
 On her dead mistress ; tremblingly she stood, 
 And on the sudden dropp'd. 
 
 Cms. O noble weakness ! — 
 
 If they had swallow' d poison, 'twould appear 
 By external swelling ; but she looks like sleep, 
 As she would catch another Antony 
 In her strong toil of grace. 
 
 Dol. Here, on her breast, 
 
 There is a vent of blood, and something blown, 
 The like is on her arm. 
 
 1 Guard. This is an aspic's trail : and these fig-leaves 
 Have slime upon them, such as the aspic leaves 
 Upon the caves of Nile. 
 
 Cms. Most probable 
 
 That so she died ; for her physician tells me 
 She hath pursued conclusions infinite 
 Of easy ways to die." Act v., Scene 2. 
 
 Caesar's comments upon the bodies of the queen and her 
 women repeats the old notion that poison produces swelling 
 of the body. 
 
 No book appears to me to convey a more faithful im- 
 pression of the opinions prevalent among the class of medical 
 men we should call general practitioners in the seventeenth 
 century, than the Diary of the Rev. John Hall, Vicar of 
 Stratford upon Avon, who studied medicine at the Univer- 
 sity, and afterwards at "Barber Chyrurgeons Hall," and 
 practised it more or less professionally in conjunction with 
 his clerical duties. This diary, which extends from 1648 
 to 1679, is about equally divided into medical and ecclesias- 
 tical notes. As this diary commenced thirty years after 
 
221 
 
 Shakespeare's death, and as it emanated from a learned 
 man, who had made medicine the study of his life, we 
 might expect that it would be considerably in advance of 
 Shakespeare's knowledge of medicine. We find, however, 
 in the notes, far more to illustrate than to refute the opinions 
 of the medical vicar's immortal townsman. Thus, in the 
 subject of swelling of the body from poison, Ward writes : 
 " When one was poisoned at Coventrie, hee was taken upp 
 out of his grave ; but as the apothecarie said the earth 
 would keep him from swelling, so that no judgement could 
 bee made thereby ; but being opened, they found the poison 
 in his stomach." 
 
 It is curious that Shakespeare makes Cleopatra apply the 
 aspic both to the breast and to the arm, since we find a dis- 
 cussion in old Primrose's Popular Errors, on this point. 
 Primrose does not appear to have read Shakespeare, or 
 with his love of reference he would certainly have shewn 
 it. In his chapter on the mountebank's antidote, he says : 
 " And now the story of Cleopatra comes to my minde. 
 Petrus Victorius blames the painters, that paint Cleopatra 
 applying the aspe to her paps, seeing it is manifest out of 
 Plviarch, in the Life of Antonius, and out of Plinie like- 
 wise, that she applyed it to her arme. Zonaras relates that 
 there appeared no signe of death upon her, save two blew 
 spots on her arme. Ccesar also in her statute which he 
 carryed in triumph, applyed the aspe to her arme : For 
 in the armes there are great veines and arteries, which 
 doe quickly and in a straight way convey the venome to the 
 heart, whereas in the paps the vessels are slender, which, 
 by sundry circumvolutions onely, do lead to the heart." 
 
222 
 
 CYMBELINE. 
 
 The conversation between the queen and the physician, 
 Cornelius, contains several note-worthy points on the subject 
 of poisons ; — the herbalist practice of gathering flowers while 
 the dew is on them ; — the conscientious scruple of the 
 physician to give the queen slow and deadly poisons ; — the 
 queen's excuse that, in order to amplify her judgment or 
 knowledge from herbs to more potent agents, she wishes to 
 try the effects of these deadly compounds upon worthless 
 animals, and to experiment upon antidotes ; — the reply of the 
 good and sensible man that to inflict pain on brutes hardens 
 the heart, and that to experiment in this manner with poisons 
 is not without danger to the health. 
 
 " Queen. Whiles yet the dew's on ground, gather those flowers ; 
 Make haste : Who has the note of them ? * * 
 Now, master doctor ; have you brought those drugs ? 
 
 Cornelius. Pleaseth your highness, ay : here they are, madam : 
 But I beseech your grace, (without offence — 
 My conscience bids me ask ;) wherefore you have 
 Commanded of me these most poisonous compounds, 
 Which are the movers of a languishing death ; 
 But, though slow, deadly ? 
 
 Queen. I wonder, doctor, 
 
 Thou ask'st me such a question : Have I not been 
 Thy pupil long ? Hast thou not learn'd me how 
 To make perfumes ? distil ? preserve ? yea, so, 
 That our great king himself doth woo me oft 
 For my confections ? Having thus far proceeded, 
 (Unless thou think'st me devilish,) is't not meet 
 That I did amplify my judgment in 
 Other conclusions ? I will try the forces 
 Of these thy compounds on such creatures as 
 We count not worth the hanging, (but none human,) 
 
223 
 
 To try the vigour of them, and apply 
 Allayments to their act ; and by them gather 
 Their several virtues and effects. 
 
 Cor. Your highness 
 
 Shall from this practice but make hard your heart : 
 Besides, the seeing these effects will be 
 Both noisome and infectious." Act i., Scene 6. 
 
 The annals of criminal jurisprudence shew that this excuse 
 of the queen's is one of the readiest and most common among 
 those who deal with poisons for the purpose of murder. In 
 the great trial of the horrible poisoner Palmer, it was argued 
 that the strychnine he had bought was for the purpose of 
 poisoning dogs ; but there was no proof that he had used 
 any part of the drug for this purpose, or it is possible that 
 this vulgar Borgia might thus have evaded his doom. 
 
 Cornelius penetrates the character of the queen, and sus- 
 pecting her wicked intentions, gives her a narcotic, something 
 that will stupify and dull the sense for a while, but will not 
 prove poisonous. 
 
 " Cornelius. I do not like her. She doth think she has 
 Strange lingering poisons : I do know her spirit, 
 And will not trust one of her malice with 
 A drug of such damn'd nature : Those she has 
 Will stupify and dull the sense awhile : 
 "Which first, perchance, she'll prove on cats and dogs ; 
 Then afterward up higher ; but there is 
 No danger in what show of death it makes, 
 More than the locking up the spirits a time, 
 To be more fresh, reviving." Ibid. 
 
 A crisis in the plot of the play hinges upon the operation 
 on Imogen of this narcotic, the supposed powers of which 
 appear to have been exactly the same as that given by Friar 
 Lawrence to Juliet for the purpose of simulating death. 
 Modern medicine is acquainted with no drug having the 
 property to produce for a while the show of death, and yet 
 
221 
 
 to leave the powers of life so unharmed, that the subject of 
 them shall be " more fresh, reviving." 
 
 The meaning of the following passage is thought obscure 
 by the commentators. It would be plain enough but for 
 the word " emptiness ;" but as it is more difficult to vomit 
 on an empty, than on a full stomach, this word seems used 
 merely to augment the expression. Iachimo is comparing 
 the excellence of Imogen with the sluttery of her husband's 
 supposed mistress. 
 
 " Sluttery, to such neat excellence oppos'd, 
 Should make desire vomit emptiness, 
 Not so allur'd to feed." Act i. Scene 7. 
 
 Imogen, desiring her lord's content in all things, except 
 his absence from her, wishes that to be " medicinable," or 
 to have the property of medicine. 
 
 " Let that grieve him — 
 Some griefs are med'cinable ; that is one of them, 
 For it doth physick love." Act hi. Scene 2. 
 
 The idea in the following seems to be, that the wife, im- 
 patient to meet her lord, longs for counsel to do so, in words 
 quicker than the ears can receive them ; as excess of light 
 may blind, so may rapidity of sound smother the sense of 
 hearing. 
 
 " Say, and speak thick ; — 
 Love's counsellor should fill the bores of hearing 
 To the smothering of the sense." Ibid. 
 
 When Imogen strives not to permit her sickness to engross 
 attention, her excuse conveys a reproach on the- fancied 
 illnesses of those on whom the influences of city life have 
 conferred the curse of hypochondria. 
 
225 
 
 " So sick I am not ; — yet I am not well : 
 But not so citizen a wanton, as 
 To seem to die, ere sick." Act iv., Scene 2. 
 
 Posthumus, life- weary and in prison, compares his state 
 with that of a man clinging to life in the agony of painful 
 disease. The gout, however, is not a good form of disease 
 for this illustration, since there are few of those who suffer 
 from it who " groan in perpetuity." 
 
 " Yet am I tetter 
 Than one that's siek o' the gout : since he had rather 
 Groan so in perpetuity, than be cur'd 
 By the sure physician, death, who is the key 
 To unbar these locks." Act v., Scene 4. 
 
 The wicked queen, who bore down all with her brain, is 
 struck with disease of the brain, when her schemes fail. She 
 lies " upon a desperate bed " from the effects of 
 
 " A fever with the absence of her son ; 
 A madness, of which her life's in danger." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 Towards the end of the play we learn the fatal result, 
 " with horror, madly dying," though, like the death of Con- 
 stance and of Lady Macbeth, it is hidden from view. 
 
 Shakespeare sometimes places before his audience scenes 
 of death, whose terror can hardly be exceeded, as that of 
 King John and Cardinal Beaufort ; but the innate delicacy, 
 which is not inconsistent with much verbal grossness, pre- 
 vents him from so exhibiting a woman. 
 
 Cymbeline's reflection upon a physician announcing the 
 death of his patient would seem to convey no exalted opinion 
 of an art which could not always save life, if it were not 
 accompanied by the full admission of the highest purpose to 
 which medicine can ever pretend, namely, to prolong life. 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 " Cornelius. Hail, great "king ! 
 To sour your happiness, I must report 
 The queen is dead. 
 
 Cymbeline. Whom worse than a physician 
 
 Would this report become ? But I consider, 
 By medicine life may he prolong'd, yet death 
 Will seize the doctor too. — How ended she ? 
 
 Cor. With horror, madly dying, like her life, 
 Which, being cruel to the world, concluded 
 Most cruel to herself." Act v., Scene 5. 
 
 The queen's confession, which the king credits on the 
 recognized legal ground, because " she spoke it dying," 
 informs us that the physician's aid failing her, she had 
 obtained poison from some other source. 
 
 " She did confess she had 
 For you a mortal mineral ; which, being took, 
 Should by the minute feed on life, and, ling'ring, 
 By inches waste you." Ibid. 
 
 This belief in slow poisoning was general in olden time, 
 although no better founded on fact than the belief that 
 persons burst with poison, or that narcotics could, like an 
 alarum clock, be set for a certain number of hours. Ambrose 
 Park's third chapter on poisons is on the subject, " Whether 
 there be any such Poysons as will kill at a set time 1 " a 
 question which, on the authority of Theophrastus, he answers 
 in the negative, grounding his own opinion on the different 
 operations of all drugs on " man's different natures in com- 
 plexion and temper." " For in such (for example sake) as 
 have the passages in their arteries more large, the poyson 
 may more readily and speedily enter into the heart, together 
 with the aire that is continually drawn into the body." 
 
 " Some poysons, more readily perform their parts, others 
 more slowly, yet may you find no such as will kill in set 
 
227 
 
 limits of time, according to the will and desire of men ; 
 for that some kill sooner or later than others, they do this 
 not of their own or proper nature, as physicians rightly 
 judge, but because the subject on which they light, doth, 
 more or less, resist or yield to their efficacie." 
 
 The name given to Cymbeline's physician is worthy of 
 note. Cornelius was the name of the physician to Charles V., 
 who gained European reputation by curing the Emperor of 
 gout and general ill habit of body. It seems more probable, 
 therefore, that Shakespeare adopted the name from this 
 source, than from the more classic one of Cornelius Celsus. 
 The physicians in Lear and Macbeth are not honoured with 
 names. Henry the Eighth's physician, Dr. Butts, however, is 
 named, though, if Goodall be correct, with the error of the 
 final letter, "s" instead of "e." Dr. Caius, in The Merry 
 Wives of Windsor, was probably named after the eminent 
 physician to Queen Elizabeth, though the dramatic character 
 bears no shade of resemblance to the learned and wealthy 
 physician, who left the noblest monument with the shortest 
 epitaph on record ; the former being the College founded by 
 him at Cambridge, and the latter the inscription on his 
 tomb in the chapel of that College, " Fui Caius." 
 
 Q S 
 
228 
 
 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 
 
 Troilus, in the same speech, refers to his love both as 
 
 an ulcer and a wound. 
 
 " Pour'st in the open ulcer of my heart 
 Her eyes, her hair, her cheeks, her gait, her voice; 
 # # # # * 
 
 But, saying thus, instead of oil and balm, 
 
 Thou lay'st in every gash that love hath given me 
 
 The knife that made it." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 In the description of Ajax, gout is alluded to as a disease 
 of the joints, and especially of the joints of the hands. 
 
 "Alexander. He is melancholy without cause, and merry against 
 the hair : he hath the joints of every thing ; but everything so out 
 of joint, that he is a gouty Briareus, many hands and no use ; or 
 purblinded Argus, all eyes and no sight." Ibid. 
 
 Agamemnon begins his address to the council of war with 
 an allusion to jaundice as the physical effect of grief. 
 
 The resemblance which he traces in the checks and disas- 
 ters in the veins of action, to knots in the pine which ren- 
 der the vein of the wood tortuous, would seem to be derived 
 from the tortuous knots so common in the veins of the 
 legs, known to medical men as varices. 
 
 " Princes, 
 
 "What grief hath set the jaundice on your cheeks ? 
 
 The ample proposition that hope makes 
 
 In all designs begun on earth below, 
 
 Fails in the promis'd largeness ; checks and disasters 
 
 Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd ; 
 
 As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap, 
 
 Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain 
 
 Tortive and errant from his course of growth." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
229 
 
 In the following passage, the old belief in planetary in- 
 fluence on diseases is expressed. 
 
 " And therefore is the glorious planet, Sol, 
 In nohle eminence enthron'd and spher'd 
 Amidst the other ; whose med'cinable eye 
 Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil, 
 And posts, like the commandment of a king, 
 Sans check, to good and bad. But when the planets, 
 In evil mixture, to disorder wander, 
 What plagues, and what portents ! " Ibid. 
 
 The want of subordination and discipline produces, what 
 Ulysses calls, a social fever, the diagnosis of which being 
 given, Agamemnon invites an exposition of the proper treat- 
 ment. 
 
 " Ulysses. So every step, 
 
 Exampled by the first pace that is sick 
 Of his superior, grows to an envious fever 
 Of pale and bloodless emulation : 
 And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, 
 Not her own sinews. To end a tale of length, 
 Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength. 
 
 Nestor. Most wisely hath Ulysses here discover' d 
 The fever whereof all our power is sick. 
 
 Agamemnon. The nature of the sickness found, Ulysses, 
 What is the remedy ? " Ibid. 
 
 Ulysses, commenting upon the mimicry with which Pa- 
 troclus disparages Nestor's age, describes the symptoms of 
 senile disease, rather than the faint defects of age. 
 
 " And then, forsooth, the faint defects of age 
 Must be the scene of mirth ; to cough, and spit, 
 And with a palsy, fumbling on his gorget, 
 Shake in and out the rivet." Ibid. 
 
 The malignant buffoonery of Thersites constantly avails 
 itself of offensive allusions to disease. In the following, the 
 double meaning attributed to boils running with matter 
 is obvious. 
 
230 
 
 " And those boils did ran ? Say so, — did not the general run ? 
 were not that a botchy core ? " Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The use of the old surgical appliance, the tent, is here 
 
 distinctly indicated as being thrust to the bottom of the 
 
 wound. 
 
 " Sector. Modest doubt is call'd 
 
 The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches 
 To the bottom of the worst." Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 Thersites logically concludes, that painful nodes are the 
 most appropriate curse for those who fight for a lewd woman. 
 
 " After this, the vengeance on the whole camp ! or, rather, the 
 bone-ache ! for that, methinks, is the curse dependent on those 
 that war for a placket." Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 The very objectionable casus belU of the Greeks is here 
 again stated, and another medical curse imprecated. 
 
 " All the argument is, a cuckold and a whore. r A good quarrel to 
 draw emulous factions, and bleed to death upon ! Now the dry 
 serpigo on the subject ! and war and lechery confound all I " 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 The serpigo is mentioned in Measure for Measure, erro- 
 neously, indeed, as a possible case of death. It appears to 
 have been a term widely used by old medical authors for any 
 creeping skin disease. The disease, however, to which it was 
 most frequently applied, was the vesicular disease now called 
 herpes cwcimMus, which certainly could not be called dry. 
 The term serpigo was also frequently applied to creeping 
 forms of impetigo and psoriasis, and to the latter of these 
 especially, a dry scaly eruption, the term of the text would 
 be perfectly appropriate. 
 
 The following contains the correction of a vulgar ana- 
 tomical error. 
 
231 
 
 "Ulysses. The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: 
 His legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure." Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 In Sir Thomas Browne's Enquiries into Vulgar and 
 Common Errors, the first Chapter, Book 3, is on the 
 subject " That an elephant hath no joints. The first shall 
 be of the elephant, whereof there generally passeth an 
 opinion it hath no joints, and this absurdity is seconded 
 with another, that being unable to lie down, it sleepeth 
 against a tree." " This conceit is not the daughter of 
 later times, but an old and gray-headed error," says the 
 commentator on Browne ; it was derived from Ctesias the 
 first Greek who saw and described an elephant, and it was 
 controverted by Aristotle. 
 
 The digestive maxim of, " after dinner sit awhile," was 
 not entertained by Patroclus, who, speaking" for his chief to 
 the princes of their afternoon call, says, 
 
 " He hopes it is no other 
 But, for your health and your digestion sake, 
 An after-dinner's breath." Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 Ulysses, speaking of the intense pride of Achilles, treat 
 it as a disease, in which his mental, and his active or corpo- 
 real parts, rage in fatal commotion. 
 
 " Imagin'd worth 
 Holds in his blood such swoln and hot discourse, 
 That, 'twixt his mental and his active parts, 
 Kingdom'd Achilles in commotion rages, 
 And batters down himself: What should I say ? 
 He is so plaguy proud, that the death-tokens of it 
 Cry—' No recovery.' " Ibid. 
 
 These marks which were held to be of such fearful import, 
 are called " The Lord's tokens," in Love's Labour Lost, Act 
 v., Scene 2 ; and are again referred to as a fatal symptom in 
 
232 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, " The tokened pestilence where death 
 is sure." 
 
 The following is the account which Woodall gives of these 
 cutaneous marks, and of the effect which the belief in their 
 fatal character had upon the patients in whom they appeared. 
 
 " Of the markes or spots, commonly, though neither 
 properly nor always truely called, God's Tokens." " The 
 fourth apparent outward signe of the Plague is, the markes 
 or spots appearing upon the skinne, usually called God's 
 Tokens, but not as being ever certaine tokens of the pes- 
 tilence, and so of death to the patient, as vulgarly they 
 are taken to be, by ignorant people in their unexpert con- 
 jectures and opinions, for that it is daily manifest, many 
 have spots of severall formes and colours, when venomous 
 feavours raigne, and yet have not the plague : and again 
 many have suspitious and fearefull spots, which the vulgar 
 tearme God's Tokens, and recover and live many years after ; 
 myself have cured not a few in that kind, that are now, to 
 God's glory, living ; these spots are upon some bodies like 
 flea bitings, in others larger, in some againe as big as a 
 penny. In some bodies there are very many, and sometimes 
 they are like frecles, and they are most commonly found 
 upon the breast, and sometimes upon the backe, armes, and 
 legges of the patients ; they are in some of a colour blewish, 
 or of a sad red, and some are like lead colour, and others 
 purple, some are of a pale blew, and these spots are ever 
 without paine : but the very appearance of any spots, to any 
 in the plague, cause sudden fear to the patient ; which, 
 though the markes be insensible, yet through sudden feare, 
 they produce faintings, swoundings, trembling of the heart, 
 and death following thereupon, although neither the patient 
 
233 
 
 feele paine as is said, neither alwayes the Artist can judge, 
 by reason hee seeth just cause of sudden death to his patient, 
 the reason being secret with God, as inwardly afflicting man- 
 kind, de prcescientia Dei, namely of the foreknowledge of 
 God : so much of the markes, spots, or tokens, in some ap- 
 pearing in the disease of the Plague." — p. 333. 
 Troilus describes one symptom of his passion. 
 
 " My heart beats thicker than a feverous pulse, 
 And all my powers do their bestowing lose." 
 
 Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 The symptoms of fever are referred to in many other 
 passages : in Cassius' description of Caesar's fever ; by King 
 John, who threatens the citizens of Angiers, with his cannon, 
 " to make a shaking in your walls ;" in Macbeth, " after life's 
 fitful fever," " as if the earth was feverous and did shake ;" 
 and again, in the almost same words in Coriolanus, " as if 
 the world were feverous and did tremble." Old medical 
 writers called ague ' the fever,' and it is still called ' inter- 
 mittent fever ' and the ' marsh fever.' It is evident from 
 the above expressions that Shakespeare often used the 
 term in this sense. He, however, also applied it in the 
 sense more usually accepted at the present time to de- 
 signate common infectious fever : see the speech of the 
 archbishop in the Second Part of Henry IV., Act iv., 
 Scene 1, "A burning fever" brought on by surfeiting, 
 and "we must bleed for it;" and in Henry V., Act iv., 
 Scene 1, "Think'st thou thy fiery fever will go out." In 
 Tvmon, typhus seems referred to, as " potent and infectious 
 fevers ; " and the fever of drunkards, " till the high fever 
 seethe your blood to froth." 
 
 The advice of Patroclus to his patron expresses an old 
 
234 
 
 superstition about self-inflicted wounds, and the imperceptible 
 manner in which the poison of ague may infect the system. 
 
 " Those wounds heal ill that men do give themselves : 
 Omission to do what is necessary 
 Seals a commission to a blank of danger ; 
 And danger, like an ague, subtly taints 
 Even then when we sit idly in the sun." Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 The woman's longing, here mentioned, is probably that 
 of child-bearing women, to which so much superstitious im- 
 portance has been attached. 
 
 " Achilles. I have a woman's longing, 
 An appetite that I am sick withal." Ibid. 
 
 In the following, Thersites quibbles on the word tent. 
 
 " Patroclus. Who keeps the tent now ? 
 Thersites. The surgeon's box, or the patient's wound." 
 
 Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 The malevolent buffoon, no longer satisfying himself as 
 before with a single disease, the bone-ache or the dry serpigo, 
 imprecates in the following curse a whole nosology. 
 
 " Now the rotten diseases of the south, the guts-griping, rup- 
 tures, catarrhs, loads o'gravel i'the back, lethargies, cold palsies, 
 raw eyes, dirt-rotten livers, wheezing lungs, bladders full of im- 
 posthume, sciaticas, lime-kilns i' the palm, incurable bone-ache, 
 and the rivell'd fee-simple of the tetter, take and take again such 
 preposterous discoveries ! " Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 This is the only place in all the dramas where such a list 
 of diseases is given, unless we allow the maladies of Pe- 
 truchio's horse to enter into competition. 
 
 By the ' rotten diseases of the south ' were probably meant 
 that disease which the English called ' the French disease,' and 
 the French called ' the Neapolitan disease.' ' Loads of gravel 
 in the hack,' of course refer to gravel in the kidneys, which 
 
235 
 
 would be attended by pain in the loins ; it would, however, 
 require some medical knowledge to refer this pain to its 
 true cause. 'Lethargy' is frequently confounded by medi- 
 cal men of the time, and by Shakespeare himself, with 
 apoplexy, and ' cold palsies' are the old medical term for 
 chronic paralysis. 'Dirt-rotten livers' indicate a patho- 
 logical state, as distinguished from a named disease, a state, 
 moreover, by no means of common occurrence. The same 
 may be said of 'bladders full of imposthume,' or chronic 
 inflammation of the bladder, with muco-purulent discharge. 
 One can only guess that ' lime-kilns i' the palm' was meant 
 to designate that condition of chronic gout in the joints of 
 the hands, in which, what are called chalk stones are formed ; 
 it might, however, be objected that these would appear not 
 in the palm, but in the knuckles, and, therefore, this expla- 
 nation is only tendered for want of a better. ' The rivelled 
 fee-simple of the tetter,' or shrivelled, as we should now write 
 it, points to the intractable ring-worm. Altogether, this 
 nosological catalogue indicates a degree of pathological 
 knowledge by no means of that superficial kind, which 
 every observant man possesses ; such as that, for instance, 
 indicated in the next comparison which Thersites uses, 
 "Thou green sarsenet flap for a sore eye." 
 
 Shakespeare sometimes confuses the idea of an organ and 
 its function, but the two are very carefully distinguished by 
 Troilus expressing belief in the constancy of his mistress. 
 
 " That doth invert the attest of eyes and ears, 
 As if those organs had deceptious functions, 
 Created only to calumniate." Act v., Scene 2. 
 
 The use of the term nerve and sinew in this play is to be 
 noted ; Agamemnon is called, 
 
236 
 
 " Thou great commander, nerve and bone of Greece." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 Hector exhorts Troilus 
 
 " Let grow thy sinews 'till their knots be strong." 
 
 Act v., Scene 3. 
 
 Achilles says of Troy, when he has slain Hector, 
 
 " Here lies thy heart, thy sinews, and thy bone." 
 
 Act v., Scene 9. 
 
 In the first of these lines, the word nerve appears to be 
 used in the sense to which we now restrict the word sinew, 
 and in the second, the word sinew appears to be used for 
 muscle. Knots in the veins, or varices, are spoken of in this 
 play, but there are no such things as knots in the sinews 
 proper, while knots of muscles or knotted muscles would 
 be perfectly appropriate to express the confirmation of this 
 tissue. Shakespeare, throughout the plays, nowhere uses 
 the word muscle in its anatomical sense. The third of these 
 lines illustrates the meaning of the word nerve as sinew, in 
 the first line ; a sense in which, with one or two doubtful 
 exceptions, Shakespeare appears always to have made use 
 of the word nerve ; for instance, " as hardy as the Nemean 
 lion's nerve," — Hamlet ; and in the 120th Sonnet, 
 
 " Needs must I under my transgression bow, 
 Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel." 
 
 It is certain that this erroneous use of the word is 
 borrowed from Hippocrates, and unless it can be shewn 
 to have been common to other writers of Shakespeare's 
 time, it would add much to the other weighty evidence 
 contained in his writings, that he was conversant with the 
 works of the Father of Medicine ; the copy of an obsolete 
 
237 
 
 error being stronger evidence to this effect, than the adoption 
 of that which in his day was still recognised as truth, and 
 therefore, was more likely to have been received at second 
 hand. It would not have been needful for Shakespeare to 
 have read Hippocrates in the Greek, since several translations 
 of his works, or portions of his works, were then in existence. 
 The use of the word nerve by Hippocrates, and those who 
 came after him, is thus stated by Le Clerc : " The Greek 
 anatomists that came after Hippocrates, distinguished three 
 sorts of parts which were before confounded ; the Nerves 
 called vevpa, which are the passages of the animal spirits, 
 which communicate sense and motion to all parts of the 
 body ; the tendons, tzvovteq, which come from the muscles, and 
 serve to contract or extend the members or the ligaments ; 
 avvSeafioi, which serve peculiarly to strengthen the articu- 
 lations of the bones. Hippocrates has given the first of 
 these names indifferently to all the three parts ; so that 
 vsupov, nerve, did as well and as often signifie in him a ten- 
 don and a ligament. He seems sometimes to mean by it, a 
 nerve, though, according to Galen, Hippocrates uses gener- 
 ally the word tovoc in that signification." 
 
 Cassandra predicting the death of Hector mentions the 
 white appearance of the eyes, in persons dying from 
 haemorrhage. 
 
 " Look, how thou diest ! look, how thine eye turns pale ! 
 Look, how thy wounds do bleed at many vents ! " 
 
 Act v., Scene 3. 
 
 The farewell words of Pandarus have a curious reference 
 to his vocation, and to the old-fashioned sweating treatment 
 of the malady incurred in it. In old times the public stews. 
 were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester. 
 
238 
 
 " My fear is this, — 
 Some gulled goose of" Winchester would hiss ; 
 Till then I'll sweat, and seek about for eases"; 
 And at that time bequeath you my diseases." 
 
 Act v., Scene 11. 
 
 ROMEO AND JULIET. 
 
 The distinction between a man who is born blind and 
 one who becomes blind is, that 
 
 " He, that is strucken blind, cannot forget 
 The precious treasure of his eyesight lost." Act i. Scene 1. 
 
 The precocity of southern women, and the effect well re- 
 cognised among medical men, of early child-bearing upon 
 the health, are noted by Capulet. Lady Capulet was a 
 mother at Juliet's age. 
 
 " My child is yet a stranger in the world, 
 She hath not seen the change of fourteen years ; 
 Let two more summers wither in their pride, 
 Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride. 
 
 Paris. Younger than she are happy mothers made. 
 Capulet. And too soon marr'd are those so early made." 
 
 Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 Benvolio's epigram, and his fence of wit with Romeo, con- 
 tain remarks of medical interest. The assertion that one pain 
 is lightened by another's anguish is a well known fact, often 
 acted upon in the treatment of disease by blisters, cauteries, 
 &c. " One desperate grief cures with another's anguish," is 
 
239 
 
 not, as might seem, a mere repetition, but rather the ex- 
 pression of another medical fact ; that some forms of diseases 
 give way on the supervention of others ; thus, it is well 
 known, that some disorders give way on the supervention 
 of consumption, and, which is perhaps yet more to the 
 point, the old belief is still widely credited, that ague will 
 cure consumption. Consumptive people are still sent to 
 aguish districts, in order that they may take the new 
 infection of the less fatal disease. 
 
 " Benvolio. Tut, man ! One fire burns out another's burning, 
 
 One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish ; 
 Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning : 
 
 One desperate grief cures with another's languish : 
 'fake thou some new infection to the eye, 
 And the rank poison of the old will die. 
 
 Romeo. Your plantain leaf is excellent for that. 
 
 Ben. For what, I pray thee ? 
 
 Bom. For your broken shin. 
 
 Ben. Why, Eomeo, art thou mad ? 
 
 Bom. Not mad, but bound more than a madman is : 
 Shut up in prison, kept without my food," 
 Whipp'd, and tormented, and — Good e'en, good fellow." 
 
 Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 One does not see the connection of Romeo's plain tain 
 leaf with Benvolio's medical philosophy. The surgical virtue 
 of this leaf is also spoken of by Costard, in Love's Labour 
 Lost. Romeo's description of the treatment of madmen 
 goes some points beyond that of Rosalind, " a dark house 
 and whip," since starvation is added, and the poor wretch 
 is to be tormented, plagued, and teased into excitement 
 probably; perhaps more would have been added, but for 
 the interruption. There can be little doubt, from the some- 
 times painful, and sometimes ludicrous manner in which the 
 treatment of madmen is referred to by Shakespeare, that 
 he felt its cruelty and folly. 
 
240 
 
 The nurse's little piece of domestic medicine, putting 
 wormwood to her nipple to wean the infant at the time 
 of the earthquake, is quaintly in character. 
 
 " When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple 
 
 Of my dug, and felt it bitter, pretty fool ! 
 
 To see it tetchy, and fall out with the dug." Act i. Scene 3. 
 
 In Mercutio's account of the queen of dreams, the follow- 
 ing passage is not very intelligible to any knowledge we at 
 present possess of the parasitic inhabitants of maid's fingers, 
 the only one inhabiting there with which we are acquainted 
 being, the acarus scabiei, being an animal invisible to the 
 naked eye, and, under the microscope, more like a lobster 
 than a worm. 
 
 " Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat, 
 Not half so big as a round little worm 
 Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid." Act i., Scene 4. 
 
 In the writings of an eminent surgeon of Shakespeare's 
 day, the following passage occurs, which proves that Mercutio's 
 illustration was in perfect accord with medical opinion. 
 
 " We commonly call them worms, which many women, 
 sitting in the sunne shine, can cunningly picke out with 
 nedles, and are most common in the handes." — A Com- 
 pendious C'hyrurgerie, by John Banester, A.D. 1585, p. 465. 
 
 The blisters on ladies' lips, herpes labialis, occasioned by 
 bad breath and indigestion from trashy food, is sound medical 
 doctrine, best illustrated by Shakespeare's own maxim, 
 "things sweet in taste are in digestion sour." 
 
 " O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream : 
 Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, 
 Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are." Ibid. 
 
241 
 
 The old herbalist doctrine, that every plant, and indeed, 
 every natural substance; has its proper medicinal virtue, is 
 more fully expressed by Father Laurence while gathering his 
 baleful weeds and medicinal flowers, than in any other of the 
 references to this subject that are scattered through the plays. 
 The constant revolution of nature in birth and death, in 
 nutrition and decay here also expressed, is fully established by 
 modern science, so that the old thought of the circle of life 
 is no longer a vague idea but a proved and established fact. 
 
 The herbalist reflection, on the intermixture of good and 
 evil, of malignant and benignant power in different parts 
 of the same plant, may find an illustration in the laurel tribe. 
 
 " Now ere the sun advance his burning eye, 
 The day to cheer, and night's dank dew to dry, 
 I must upfill this osier cage of ours, 
 With baleful weeds, and precious-juiced flowers. 
 The earth, that's nature's mother, is her tomb ; 
 What is her burying grave, that is her womb : 
 And from her womb children of divers kind 
 We sucking on her natural bosom find ; 
 Many for many virtues excellent, 
 None but for some, and yet all different. 
 O, mickle is the powerful gra^e, that lies 
 In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities ; 
 For nought so vile that on the earth doth live, 
 But to the earth some special good doth give ; 
 Nor aught so good, but, strain'd from that fair use, 
 Eevolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse : 
 Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied ; 
 And vice sometime 's by action dignified. 
 Within the infant rind of this weak flower 
 Poison hath residence, and medicine power : 
 For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part ; 
 Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 Mercutio's quaint picture of a drivelling idiot, lolling up 
 
 and down, and exercising the magpie faculty of concealment 
 R 
 
242 
 
 upon some bauble to which he attaches value, could scarcely 
 be more tersely expressed. 
 
 " This drivelling love is like a great natural, that runs lolling up 
 and down to hide his bauble in a hole." Act ii., Scene A 
 
 The effects attributed to the narcotic given by the friar to 
 Juliet are impossible, and can only be referred to the great 
 ignorance and superstition respecting the effects of poisons 
 which prevailed in the olden time, when the most enlightened 
 medical men could believe that life might be insidiously 
 taken away by such means as poisoned gloves and poisoned 
 torches, and when it was a subject, as we have shewn, of 
 scientific disputation whether poisons could be set to operate, 
 or, to use Juliet's expression, ' tempered ' to produce their 
 effects a long time or a short time after. 
 
 " Friar Laurence. Take thou this phial, being then in bed, 
 
 And this distilled liquor drink thou off : 
 
 When, presently, through all thy veins shall run 
 
 A cold and drowsy humour, which shall seize 
 
 Each vital spirit ; for no pulse shall keep 
 
 His natural progress, but surcease to beat : 
 
 No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou liv'st ; 
 
 The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade 
 
 To paly ashes ; thy eyes' windows fall, 
 
 Like death, when he shuts up the day of life ; 
 
 Each part, depriv'd of supple government, 
 
 Shall stiff, and stark, and cold, appear like death : 
 
 And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death 
 
 Thou shalt remain full two and forty hours, 
 
 And then awake as from a pleasant sleep." Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 The effects promised are represented to have been pro- 
 duced, for passionate old Capulet, who, when he thought 
 his disobedient daughter alive, had no better term for her 
 than ' You green-sickness carrion,' finds her cold, pale, and 
 stiff. 
 
243 
 
 " Capulet. Ha ! let me see her : — Out, alas I she's cold : 
 Her hlood is settled, and her joints are stiff; 
 Life and these lips have long been separated." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 5. 
 
 Romeo's description of the starved apothecary's shop, while 
 
 it testifies to the author's faithful observation of detail, cannot 
 
 be said to shew any medical knowledge ; nor ought this to be 
 
 expected, since such knowledge would have been quite 
 
 out of character in Romeo. If Friar Laurence had visited the 
 
 shop, doubtless his observations upon the poor wretch to 
 
 whom it belonged, and on the shop itself, would have been 
 
 widely different, and probably full of medical knowledge. 
 
 The condition of affairs described is certainly very unlike 
 
 that of the London " coach-keeping apothecaries" as they are 
 
 commented upon by writers of the period, and whose lucrative 
 
 business could well bear comparison with the gains of the 
 
 learned and authentic fellows of the college, by whom they 
 
 were treated with such authoritative contempt. The trade in 
 
 physic could not have been a bad one, if Decker, in his Gull's 
 
 Hornbook, had any grounds for the following advice. "How a 
 
 gallant should behave himself at an ordinary : You may rise 
 
 during dinner time to ask for a closestool, protesting to all the 
 
 gentlemen that it costs you an hundred pounds a year in 
 
 physic, besides the annual pension which your wife allows her 
 
 doctor." 
 
 " Borneo. I do remember an apothecary, — 
 And hereabouts he dwells, — which late I noted 
 In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, 
 Culling of simples ; meagre were his looks, 
 Sharp misery had worn him to the bones : 
 And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, 
 An alligator stuffd, and other skins 
 Of ill-shap'd fishes ; and about his shelves 
 A beggarly account of empty boxes, 
 Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds, 
 R 2 
 
244 
 
 JEtemnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses, 
 
 Were thinly scatter'd to make up a show." Act v. Scene 1. 
 
 Mr. Steevens points out that Shakespeare derived the 
 circumstance of the apothecary's shop, from Painter's trans- 
 lation of the Italian novel on which the drama is founded : 
 
 " beholding an apotecary's shop of lyttle furniture, 
 
 and like store of boxes and other thynges requisite 
 for that science, thought that the very poverty of the 
 master apothecarye would make him wyllyngly yelde to that 
 whych he pretended to demande." Malone shews, by a quo- 
 tation from Nashe, that in Shakespeare's time a stuffed 
 alligator made part of the furniture of an apothecary's shop ; 
 and Steevens refers to the third plate of Hogarth's Marriage 
 a-la-Mode, and to his own personal observation, to shew that 
 the custom has been handed down to a recent period. 
 
 In Romeo's demand for a rapid poison, he expresses the 
 thought that it will act upon the blood, or being conveyed 
 by means of the blood, " disperse itself through all the veins." 
 The opinion does not seem to have existed that these rapid 
 poisons could act upon the nervous system. 
 
 " Borneo. Come hither, man. — I see that thou art poor : 
 Hold, there is forty ducats : let me have 
 A dram of poison ; such soon-speeding gear 
 As will disperse itself through all the veins, 
 That the hfe-weary taker may fall dead, 
 And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath 
 As violently, as hasty powder fir'd 
 Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 A curious act of authority to prevent the spread of pesti- 
 lence is described by Friar John. 
 
 " The searchers of the town, 
 Suspecting that we both were in a house 
 Where the infectious pestilence did reign, 
 Seal'd up the doors, and would not let us forth." 
 
 Act v., Scene 2. 
 
245 
 
 Romeo, in the tomb, expresses the still prevalent opinion 
 of lighting (not lightning) before death. 
 
 " How oft when men are at the point of death, 
 Have they heen merry ? which their keepers call 
 A lightning before death." Act v., Scene 3. 
 
 The word ' merry,' however, scarcely describes the condition 
 to which this expression refers, which rather means that when 
 a man has been in a state of delirium or aberration of mind, 
 his mental faculties become collected and alert for a 
 short period before his decease. This phenomenon does 
 undoubtedly, although rarely, take place. 
 
 TIMON OF ATHENS. 
 
 Apemantus, who, in his malignant humour, strongly re- 
 sembles Thersites, is like him also in his readiness to 
 imprecate disease. He begins by wishing the comforts of 
 chronic rheumatism to the supple parasites. 
 
 " Aches contract and starve your supple joints." 
 
 Act i,, Scene 1. 
 
 The connection between the flow of the blood and bodily 
 
 warmth, and the decrease of both in old age, are expressed 
 
 by Timon. 
 
 " These old feUows 
 Have their ingratitude in them hereditary : 
 Their blood is cak'd, 'tis cold, it seldom flows ; 
 
246 
 
 'Tis lack of kindly warmth, they are not kind ; 
 And nature, as it grows again toward earth, 
 Is fashion'd for the journey, dull, and heavy." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 The comments of Flaminius upon his master's false friend 
 express the idea, that food, after it has been converted to 
 the nutriment of the body, supplies either reinforcement to 
 diseased or to healthy function. Perhaps there is no medi- 
 cal opinion which of late years has undergone a larger and 
 more important development, than the relationship existing 
 between the nutrition of the body and a state of health or 
 of disease, and it may perhaps be said, without exaggera- 
 tion, that the highest expression of modern medical science 
 is to trace the conditions of development and decay, of 
 health and of disease, in the varying states of nutrition. Of 
 course, so broad a view as this could not be attributed 
 either to Shakespeare or to the most enlightened physician 
 of his time, but the following passage clearly expresses the 
 opinion, which, at that time, was much in advance of profes- 
 sional knowledge, that additions to the nutriment of the body 
 may either increase and foster a state of disease, or may 
 invigorate the healthy functions so as to expel disease. Which 
 of these events took place would depend upon the state of 
 the body and the kind of disease. Thus, there is an old 
 proverb, which commands us "to feed a cold, and starve a 
 fever ;" it may, however, be quoted rather as a vulgar 
 error, than as a condensed expression of true knowledge, 
 which would be better expressed by the concise saying 
 of that able physician, the late Dr. Graves of Dublin, who, 
 when walking with Dr. Stokes through St. Patrick's cathe- 
 dral, remarked, " When I die, let this be my epitaph : He 
 fed fever." 
 
247 
 
 " Thou disease of a friend, and not himself ! 
 Has friendship such a faint and milky heart, 
 It turns in less than two nights ? you gods, 
 I feel my master's passion ! This slave 
 Unto this hour has my lord's meat in him : 
 Why should it thrive, and turn to nutriment, 
 When he is turn'd to poison ? 
 O, may diseases only work upon't ! 
 
 And, when he 's sick to death, let not that part of nature 
 Which my lord paid for, be of any power 
 To expel sickness, or prolong his hour !" Act iii. Scene 1. 
 
 Timon's own injunction to the thieves may serve as an 
 illustration of the manner in which, in one condition of the 
 body, diseases only may work upon the very material which 
 in another condition, is doubtless of " power to expel sick- 
 ness," for if the subtle blood of the grape can add fuel to 
 disease in high fever, its power in low fever to expel disease 
 is equally unquestionable. 
 
 " Here's gold : Go, suck the subtle blood of the grape, 
 Till the high fever seeth your blood to froth, 
 And so 'scape hanging. Trust not the physician ; 
 His antidotes are poison, and he slays 
 More than you rob." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 The following passage expresses a practice among physi- 
 cians of Shakespeare's day, which seems very strange and 
 inhuman to us, namely, that they would not only not under- 
 take the treatment of diseases of which they thought there 
 was little chance of cure, but that they would throw up the 
 treatment of a case which they had already undertaken when 
 the patient's condition appeared hopeless. 
 
 Lord Bacon, in his work on The Advancement of Learn- 
 ing, comments severely upon this practice of the physicians 
 of his day. " In the enquiry of diseases, they do abandon 
 the cures of many, some as in their nature incurable, and 
 others as past the period of cure ; so that Sylla and the 
 
248 
 
 triumvirs never proscribed so many men to die, as they do 
 by their ignorant edicts ; whereof numbers do escape with 
 less difficulty than they did in the Soman proscriptions. 
 Therefore I will not doubt to note as a deficience, that they 
 enquire not the perfect cures of many diseases, or extremities 
 of diseases ; but pronouncing them incurable, do enact a law 
 of neglect, and exempt ignorance from discredit. Nay, 
 farther, I esteem it the office of a physician not only to 
 restore health, but to mitigate pain and dolours ; and not 
 only when such mitigation may conduce to recovery, but 
 when it may serve to make a fair and easy passage." 
 
 " Sempronius. Must I be his last refuge ? His friends, like 
 physicians, 
 Thrice give him o'er ; Must I take the cure upon me ?" 
 
 Act iii., Scene 3. 
 
 An old-fashioned surgical remedy is referred to by Alci- 
 biades. 
 
 " Is this the balsam, that the usuring senate 
 Pours into captains' wounds ? Banishment ?" 
 
 Act iii., Scene 5. 
 
 The nosological point of Timon's terrible curse on 
 Athens is somewhat generalised under the heading of in- 
 fectious fevers, the disease of lust and liberty, (that is, of 
 libertinism,) and an infectious skin disease under the title of 
 general leprosy ; cold sciatica is indeed particularised, but 
 it may be supposed to be given as a type of the chronic 
 diseases of age. 
 
 " Plagues, incident to men, 
 Your potent and infectious fevers heap 
 On Athens, ripe for stroke ! Thou cold sciatica, 
 Cripple our senators, that then- limbs may halt 
 As lamely as their manners ! Lust and liberty 
 Creep in the minds and marrows of our youth ; 
 
219 
 
 That 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive, 
 
 And drown themselves in riot ! Itches, hlains, 
 
 Sow all the Athenian hosoms ; and their crop 
 
 Be general leprosy ! Breath infect breath ; 
 
 That their society, as their friendship, may 
 
 Be merely poison !" Act iv., Scene 1. 
 
 The aid of the sun in the production of malaria is 
 invoked. The medical propriety of the term ' rotten hu- 
 midity' could not be surpassed, since it is one of the recog- 
 nized laws of malaria, that a due proportion of heat, moisture, 
 and decomposition should combine to generate it. Excessive 
 heat, or excessive cold, an amount of humidity which inun- 
 dates vegetation and prevents rottenness, or a want of 
 humidity which dries up a country and prevents decay, are 
 one and all adverse to the production of malaria. Hence 
 it is that agues occur chiefly in the spring and fall, when 
 there is enough both of sun and moisture to produce rotten 
 humidity. Shakespeare has the same thought in Henry 
 IV., " Worse than the sun in March this praise doth nourish 
 agues." 
 
 " Tinion. O blessed breeding sun, draw from the earth 
 Eotten humidity ; below thy sister's orb 
 Infect the air !" Aet iv., Scene 3. 
 
 Timon, in his adjuration to Alcibiades, expresses very dis- 
 tinctly the opinion so often alluded to in the plays, that 
 diseases are dependent upon planetary influence. 
 
 " Be as a planetary plague, when Jove 
 Will o'er some high-vic'd city hang his poison 
 In the sick air : Let not thy sword skip one." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 The converse of this wish is the idea expressed by Mar- 
 cellus, in Hamlet, speaking of Christmas time. 
 
 " The nights are wholesome, then no planets strike." 
 
250 
 
 The supposed aid of astrology to medicine here indicated 
 was by no means a mere vulgar error ; thus the Rev. John 
 Ward, the clerical physician of Shakespeare's own parish, 
 quaintly reports the opinion of the great herbalist on this 
 point, " Nick Culpepper says, that a physitian without 
 astrologie is like a pudden without fat." 
 
 The most fearful invocation, however, of the mad misan- 
 thropist is the one which he addresses to the rapacious 
 courtesans, including, as it does, a complete list of the 
 secondary effects of venereal virus. 
 
 " Timon. Consumptions sow 
 In hollow bones of man : strike their sharp shins, 
 And mar men's sparring. Crack the lawyer's voice, 
 That he may never more false title plead, 
 Nor sound his quillets shrilly : hoar the flamen 
 That scolds against the quality of flesh, 
 And not believes himself : down with the nose, 
 Down with it flat ; take the bridge quite away 
 Of him, that his particular to foresee, 
 
 Smells from the general weal : make curl'd-pate ruffians bald ; 
 And let the unscarr'd braggarts of the war 
 Derive some pain from you : Plague all ; 
 That your activity may defeat and quell 
 The source of all erection. — There's more gold : — 
 Do you damn others, and let this damn you, 
 And ditches grave you all !" Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 Among all these symptoms of "the malady of France," 
 the only ambiguous one is the first, in which the word con- 
 sumption seems to be somewhat indefinitely applied, as it 
 is in the next scene, where Timon says, " Consumption catch 
 thee ! " It seems most probable, that ' consumptions in the 
 hollow bones' means disease of the bones of the cranium, 
 which form that which may essentially be called, the hollow 
 bone of the body. Disease of these bones we know to 
 have been terribly frequent in the olden time, when the 
 
251 
 
 treatment of syphilis consisted mainly in the administra- 
 tion of mercury. 
 
 Painful nodes on the shin-bones are, no doubt, meant by 
 the expression, ' strike their sharp shins,' and in connexion 
 with this symptom, it may either be that ' mar men's 
 sparring ' means, that they would prevent men from \ising 
 those kicks on the shins, which form part of the move- 
 ments of attack and defence in wrestling ; or that the 
 aching nodes may prevent men spurring on horseback. 
 Venereal ulcerations of the larynx are next referred to ; 
 " Crack the lawyer's voice," &c. The priest is made to 
 bear the mark of infamy still more in public, in the white 
 scaly skin disease to which Timon, in the earlier part 
 of the scene, applies the very same epithet, ' hoar,' old 
 English for white, as hoar frost, " Make the hoar leprosy 
 adored." 
 
 The next symptom applies to that hideous disfigurement 
 of chronic syphilis, loss of the nose ; even its structure is 
 referred to, " take the bridge quite away." The fearful list 
 of the effects of chronic syphilis is concluded by impotence 
 and baldness ; the last of which is especially remarkable, 
 as it was not observed to be a symptom of the complaint 
 until a date shortly before Shakespeare wrote. It will be 
 instructive to compare his list of symptoms with the following, 
 from Hamilton's History of Medicine, which perhaps contains, 
 the most complete list to be found in any medical author 
 of the period. 
 
 " Nicholas Brassa's work on syphilis is one of the best of the 
 age, founded almost wholly upon his own experience, and 
 evincing a thorough acquaintance with his subject. His 
 description of the symptoms which accompany this dreadful 
 
2.52 
 
 complaint, and make it distinct from every other, is complete, 
 but it should be remembered that the whole of the morbid train 
 which he describes is not to be expected to occur in the same 
 individual. The following brief enumeration of the symp- 
 toms he details, may serve to give some idea of the appear- 
 ance, assumed by the complaint at that period : — Hard 
 pustules on the head and forehead ; pains in the head and 
 limbs, especially in the thighs, which increase at night ; in 
 one subject, whom he dissected in 1524, he found a con- 
 gestion of white pus among the muscles of the thigh ; 
 abscesses both in the thighs and other parts ; ulcers . . . ; 
 nodes ; painful tubercules ; tumours on the joints ; cracks 
 and scales on the hands and feet ; a crust over the whole 
 body as in leprosy ; relaxation of the uvula ; ulcers in the 
 mouth, fauces, and epiglottis, which do not proceed to 
 suppuration ; erosion of the cartilages of the larynx ; caries 
 of the bones ; buboes which, when brought to suppurate, 
 remove the complaint ; and a falling off of the hair of 
 the head and the beard. His mention of this last 
 symptom fixes the period at which he wrote, which could 
 not have been earlier than 1536, since we learn from 
 Fallopius, that the loss of the hair was not observed to be 
 a symptom of the complaint before that date, when the 
 disorder had been known for about forty years. In the 
 catalogue of symptoms, exhibiting, it must be confessed, a 
 sufficiently frightful picture of this loathsome complaint, one 
 only, which is now one of the commonest attendants upon 
 syphilis, is wanting, namely, gonorrhoea ; which, as Fal- 
 lopius, upon whose information we may rely, also acquaints 
 us, did not appear during the first forty years after its 
 introduction, Femelius being the first to notice it. Had 
 
253 
 
 such a symptom fallen under the notice of so attentive an 
 observer as Brassa, we may feel assured he would not have 
 omitted it." 
 
 This description of syphilis published, as it appears, some 
 time subsequently to 1536, and the best that, up to that 
 time, had been published, is less complete, as an enumeration 
 of symptoms, than that of Shakespeare ; for while it contains 
 some symptoms, which are not those of syphilis, as abscesses 
 in the thighs, and relaxation of the uvula, it omits two 
 important particulars which the dramatist mentions, namely, 
 impotence and loss of the nose. It is to be observed, more- 
 over, that, while Brassa jumbles together, what are called 
 the primary and the secondary symptoms of the disease, 
 Shakespeare, in this remarkable passage, mentions the se- 
 condary forms of the disease only. That this is from 
 knowledge and not from ignorance is very certain, since, 
 in an earlier passage of the same scene, he refers to the 
 primary symptoms. 
 
 " She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores 
 Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices." 
 
 It has been impossible to shirk this repulsive subject, for 
 in Shakespeare's time, both the novelty and the ravages of 
 this disease attracted to it a larger share both of public and 
 professional attention than any other disease, except, perhaps, 
 the epidemics which were at that time so frequent and 
 so fatal ; and however free from gloss is the manner in which 
 Shakespeare has here spoken of the diseases which dog 
 immorality and disgust innocence, it was needful for the 
 elucidation of our subject to examine this passage in detail 
 and with care, for there is really no other passage through- 
 
254 
 
 out the plays which appears to carry with it so strong a 
 proof of the medical knowledge of the author. 
 
 The wide prevalence and the horrible nature of these 
 ' rotten diseases of the south' are referred to in Hamlet, in 
 the grave-digging scene. 
 
 "Samlet. How long will a man lie in the earth ere he rot ? 
 
 Clown. I'faith, if he be not rotten afore he die 
 (As we have many pocky corses now-a-days 
 That will scarce hold the laying in ;) 
 He will last for some eight year, or nine year ; 
 A tanner will last you some nine year." 
 
 In Wunderlich's History of Medicine, p. 80, it is recorded 
 that Girtanner had reckoned up 263 separate treatises which 
 had been written on this disease before the end of the six- 
 teenth century ; a fact significant of the attention and anxiety 
 which it excited in the profession. 
 
 If Shakespeare disgusts the delicacy of the present age 
 by the undisguised manner in which he treats this 
 subject, it must be admitted that he presents it in a form 
 little calculated to delude or to mislead, but that, on the 
 contrary, he paints the morbid features of libertinism in 
 all their truthful hideousness, from which a young man 
 might derive the same kind of lesson, as that of temper- 
 ance, which the Spartan fathers endeavoured to teach their 
 children, by presenting to their observation the repulsiveness 
 of drunkenness in the person of their helots. 
 
 That the disease was held to be eminently disgraceful, is 
 obvious from such expressions as "the powdering tub of 
 infamy;" and from the care taken to conceal it, as in the 
 following passage from Hamlet, which sounds very like the 
 professional experience of a physician ; the adjective, of 
 course, points to the disease as ' the malady of France.' 
 
255 
 
 "King. ■ But, so much was our love, 
 
 We would not understand what was most fit ; 
 But, like the owner of a foul disease, 
 To keep it from divulging, let it feed 
 Ev'n on the pith of life." 
 
 Timon thus refers to the cure of this disorder, in his 
 exhortation to the courtesans to spread sin and misery. 
 
 " Give them diseases, * * * * 
 
 * * * * season the slaves 
 
 For tubs and baths ; bring down rose-cheeked youth 
 To the tub-fast, and the diet." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 The tub mentioned twice in this sentence is, no doubt, the 
 powdering tub, whose use is referred to in Henry V, " The 
 powdering tub of infamy," used in the spital. This tub is 
 is also mentioned in Measure for Measure, in the lewd 
 conversation between the Clown and Lucio. 
 
 " Clown. Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is 
 herself in the tub. 
 
 Lucio. Why, 'tis good ; it is the right of it : it must be so : 
 ever your fresh whore, and powdered bawd." 
 
 The baths referred to were, probably, sweating baths, 
 which were greatly used in the treatment of this disease ; 
 thus we read in Astruc's learned work, that Jasper 
 Torella, an eminent physician and medical author, and also 
 Bishop of Justinia, who flourished in the early part of the 
 sixteenth century, says that the cure of this disease, which he 
 calls pudendagra, depends, in the first place upon diet and po- 
 tions, in the second upon bathing and local appHcations, and 
 especially on the use of the stove or sudatory, the hot air or 
 sweating bath ; and in the third place on liniments containing 
 a small proportion of quicksilver. But, although the sweating 
 bath played so great a part in the treatment of lues, the 
 secretions of the skin were also systematically stimulated by 
 
256 
 
 what were called sweating decoctions and sweating drinks, 
 composed of sassafras and guaiacum, so that Pandarus might 
 well refer to sweating as the principal remedy for the disease. 
 " Till then I'll sweat, and seek about for eases." Guaiacum 
 and sassafras were the main ingredients in these sudorific 
 medicines. Ward humorously indicates the abundant use of 
 the latter, by saying that an apothecary, whenever his wife 
 was talkative, set her to beat sassafras. 
 
 The following passage, from Woodall, shews that the sur- 
 geons of Shakespeare's time adopted a particular diet in the 
 treatment of lues, which was known and distinguished, par 
 excellence, as the diet ; and it is this diet, no doubt, which 
 is referred to by Timon with the affix of the definite article. 
 
 " Of the Dyet Pot. The Dyet Pot is not alone to be used 
 in cases of dyet drinke, seething for the Pox and not other- 
 wise ; for as a learned doctor upon occasion lately reasoned, 
 there is difference between the Dyet and a Dyet, though in 
 both kinds there is even, quot homines tot sentential, so 
 many men so many minds. Wherefore concerning descrip- 
 tions of several dyet drinks for the Pox, I will refer the 
 Surgeon's mate to other authors : for in truth I must defer 
 that point to fitter opportunity ; I mean till I write toutching 
 the cure of that disease." — Woodall, p. 23. 
 
 I have not anywhere found that the old surgeons recom- 
 mended fasting during the treatment, and therefore cannot 
 explain the word tub-fast ; the most they did was to en- 
 join a liquid and moderate diet ; thus, during inunction, 
 Ambrose Pare" orders, " Yet, if the patient shall be weak, you 
 may some houre before the unction, give him some gelley, 
 the yolke of an egge, or some broath made of meate, boiled 
 to pieces, but very sparingly, lest nature, intent upon the 
 
257 
 
 concoction of solid meats, or in great quantity, should bee 
 drawn away from that which we intend." 
 
 The following is the diet and treatment laid down as proper 
 in this disease by the medical rector of Sratford : " Diet in 
 the pocks is to be drying, as oat cakes, biscuits, a few raisins, 
 now and then a bit of veal may bee permitted them ; purge, 
 let blood, sweat six or seven mornings together." — p. 279. 
 There are numerous references in Ward's Diary to different 
 forms and uses of diet : thus he speaks of " dyet drinks of 
 sarza and guaiacum in stew-pots." — p. 250. " The inch dyet, 
 wherein we eat by drammes, and drink by spoonfuls, more 
 perplexeth the mind than cureth the bodie." — p. 254. " A 
 dyet bag of many ingredients," into which one of the consult- 
 ing physicians merrily recommended them to put a haycock, 
 —p. 381. 
 
 Although Timon speaks under the title of leprosy, of the 
 lepra of syphilis, which is known to us to be not contagious, 
 he also recognizes the contagious form of the disease, to 
 which the term was more strictly applied. 
 
 " Timon. All villains that do stand by thee are pure. 
 
 Apemantus. There is no leprosy but what thou speak'st. 
 
 Timon. If I name thee. — 
 I'll beat thee, — but I should infect my hands." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 It must, however, be remembered that in Shakespeare's 
 time, the secondary forms of syphilis were erroneously 
 thought to be contagious in the highest degree. 
 
 Thus Erasmus, quoted by Astruc, says : "G. A. But you 
 forget, this evil is propagated many ways besides that of 
 copulation, as by kissing, talking together, touching each 
 other, drinking together. For such is the spiteful nature 
 thereof, that it is never better pleased than when it can 
 s 
 
258 
 
 spread its poison to others without advantaging itself. P. E. 
 If it be thus, let no one suffer his barber to come near 
 him to mow down his beard ; or, for safety, let every man 
 shave himself. Q. A. But if, by way of security, what if 
 each of them were to keep his lips close, and not speak a 
 word till the barber has done and is gone about his busi- 
 ness ? P. E. That won't do, because the infection may be 
 taken in by the nostrils. 0. A. I have a remedy for that. 
 P. E. Pray what ? 0. A. To do as the chemists, wear 
 a mask with glass eyes that may let in the light, and a 
 tube also that may be fastened from under the arms, by 
 which the air may pass to and from the mouth and nostrils. 
 P. E. This is well enough, if we had nothing to fear from 
 a touch of his fingers, from his linen, and from his comb 
 and scissors." 
 
 A perusal of Astruc's learned work instructs me, that I 
 have probably been wrong in the opinion expressed in an ear- 
 lier page, that the French crown referred to in Measure for 
 Measure, All's Well that Ends Well, and Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, was the common venereal rupia, since it 
 appears that there was a particular form of venereal skin 
 disease which was called " le chapelet," a technical term 
 which would be anglicised into " crown." " The skin," says 
 Astruc, "is troubled with hard, callous, circular tubercles 
 or pustules. They are frequently to be found, too, about 
 the forehead and temples, and behind the ears, where, being 
 disposed in order, they form the figure of a crown, and 
 are commonly called by the French, le chapelet." — Treatise 
 on the Venereal Diseases, by John Astruc, M.B. 
 
 'In the following, Timon appears to refer to the old super- 
 stition that a lie produces a blister on the tongue, though in 
 
259 
 
 the malice of his rage, he imprecates the minor punishment 
 on truth, and the old surgery of cauterization on falsehood. 
 
 " Timon. Thou sun, that comfort'st, burn ! — Speak, and be 
 
 hang'd : 
 For each true word, a blister ! and each false 
 Be as a caut'rizing to the root o' the tongue, 
 Consuming it with speaking !" Act v., Scene 2. 
 
 HAMLET. 
 
 In the Oxford edition the word ' blood ' is substituted in 
 the following passage for ' head ' as it occurs in other editions, 
 with the utmost advantage, as it would appear, to the sense. 
 The presence of the blood in the heart was, as we have 
 shewn, well known to Shakespeare. 
 
 " The blood is not more native to the heart, 
 The hand more instrumental to the mouth, 
 Than is the throne of Denmark to thy father." 
 
 Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 The opinion of Laertes is so far true, that contagious fevers 
 are certainly contracted with greater facility in youth, than 
 either in infancy or in age. 
 
 " The canker galls the infants of the spring, 
 Too oft before their buttons be disclose'd ; 
 And in the morn and liquid dew of youth 
 Contagious blastments are most imminent." Act i. Scene 3. 
 
 The foUowing quotation has already been commented upon, 
 
 as appearing to confirm the evidence of other passages, that 
 
 Shakespeare entertained the medical opinion of his day, that 
 
 the arteries were used for the transmission of the vital spirits. 
 s 2 
 
260 
 
 " Hamlet. My fate cries out, 
 
 And makes each petty artery in this body 
 As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve." Act i., Scene 4. 
 
 " Each vital spirit," spoken of by Friar Laurence in Romeo 
 and Juliet, (see page 242,) as under the influence of poison 
 when the pulse ceases to beat, has an obvious reference to 
 the same theory. 
 
 Shakespeare is not wholly responsible for the impossible 
 manner of the murder which the ghost describes, since he 
 but adheres to the story as given in the tale of Saxo-Gram- 
 maticus. Commentators, probably led by the similarity of 
 sound, have been satisfied to suppose that the juice of cursed 
 hebenon is the juice of henbane ; but henbane is by no 
 means a virulent poison ; and the word is much more likely 
 to have been a generic name for poison producing hebetudo 
 animi. The leperous distilment doubtless means, a juice 
 or distilment supposed to be capable of producing leprosy. 
 
 " Ghost. Brief let me be : — Sleeping within mine orchard, 
 My custom always in the afternoon, 
 Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, 
 With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, 
 And in the porches of mine ears did pour 
 The leperous distilment ; whose effect 
 Holds such an enmity with blood of man, 
 That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through 
 The natural gates and alleys of the body ; 
 And, with a sudden vigour, it doth posset 
 And curd, like eager droppings into milk, 
 The thin and wholesome blood : so did it mine ; 
 , And a most instant tetter bark'd about, 
 Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, 
 All my smooth body. 
 Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand, 
 Of life, of crown, and queen, at once despatch'd." 
 
 Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 In the players' representation of the murder, the poison 
 
261 
 
 which has these effects, impossible to any natural substance, 
 is represented to be a compound, endued with its virus by 
 the ceremonial of witchcraft. 
 
 " Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, 
 With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, 
 Thy natural magic and dire property, 
 On wholesome life usurp immediately." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 The manner in which Laertes traces the effect of Hamlet's 
 supposed disappointment in love, represents a physiological 
 chain of events which can often be observed in the develop- 
 ment of insanity from a moral cause. The moral shock first 
 produces fasting, either from disgust of food, pre-occupation 
 of mind, or wilful abstinence ; the supply of nutriment cut 
 off, loss of sleep results, partly from this cause and partly 
 from the moral cause itself; general physical debility follows, 
 accompanied by disturbance of the cerebral functions and 
 the development of mania, so that he, who "first fell into 
 a sadness" as the natural and not morbid result of disap- 
 pointed affection, passes through a period of physical dis- 
 turbance into a state of disease of the brain at the opposite 
 pole of emotion, namely, ■ mania — " The madness wherein 
 now he raves." The power of ethnological insight here 
 indicated is remarkable. 
 
 " Polonius. And he, repulsed, (a short tale to make,) 
 Fell into a sadness ; then into a fast ; 
 Thence to a watch ; thence into a weakness ; 
 Thence to a lightness ; and, by this declension, 
 Into the madness whereon now he raves, ' 
 And all we mourn for." Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 Hamlet refers to the tent used as a probe, as if he would 
 thrust it to the sensitive part of a wound. 
 
 " I'll tent him to the quick I if he but blench, 
 I know my course !" Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
262 
 
 In the following play upon the double meaning of the 
 word ' choler,' the medical sense is most prominent, and the 
 rational treatment of carrying off the excess of bile by pur- 
 gation is alluded to. 
 
 " Guildenstem. The king, Sir — 
 
 Samlet. Ay, Sir, what of him ? 
 
 Ouil. Is, in his retirement, marvellously distempered. 
 
 Sam. "With drink, Sir ? 
 
 Guil. No, my lord, rather with choler. 
 
 Sam. Your wisdom should show itself more richer, to signify 
 this to his doctor ; for, for me to put him to his purgation, would, 
 perhaps, plunge him into far more choler." Act iii., Scene 2. 
 
 In Hamlet's defence of his sanity, his appeal to the pulse 
 has been thought to mean that it had not that rapidity which 
 exists generally in mania ; perhaps, the expression, 'temper- 
 ately keep time,' would be more rightly referred to its regu- 
 larity than to its rapidity ; but, however this may be, it is 
 certain that the last phrase, 'makes as healthful music,' 
 refers to its regularity, since medical men even now speak of 
 the rythm of the heart's action, and the rythm of the pulse, 
 in this sense. The simile with which he concludes, forcibly 
 calls to mind a burrowing ulcer leaving thin edges of un- 
 healthy skin, which the surgeon in vain attempts to film over 
 with superficial applications, and to effect the cure of which, 
 he finds it actually essential ' to tent to the quick,' and even 
 to apply a corsive, (or corrosive,) like that referred to by 
 Queen Margaret. 
 
 " Samlet. Ecstasy ! 
 My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, 
 And makes as healthful music : It is not madness, 
 That I have uttered : hring me to the test, 
 And I the matter will re-word ; which madness 
 Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, 
 Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, 
 
263 
 
 That not your trespass, but my madness, speaks : 
 
 It will but skin and film the ulcerous place ; 
 
 Whiles rank corruption, mining all within, 
 
 Infects unseen." Act iii. Scene 4. 
 
 There is an amusing story told of a medical man, who, 
 in spite of a one-sided education, was a most useful member 
 of Parliament, that in attempting to quote one of the above 
 lines, he said, 
 
 " Lay not that nattering ointment to your chest." 
 
 In describing the signs of Hamlet's terror, the queen 
 
 calls the hair an excrement, 
 
 " Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, 
 Starts up, and stands on end." Act iii., Scene 4. 
 
 The hair is called " valour's excrement," in the Merchant 
 of Venice; and Autolycus, in Winter's Tale, says of his 
 false beard, that he will " pocket up his pedlar's excrement." 
 Shakespeare in this did not deviate from either scientific or 
 common usage. Decker says, " Why should the chins and 
 lips of old men lick up that excrement which they violently 
 clip away from the heads of young men V and Ray in the 
 Creation, quoted by Richardson, says, "The hair, which 
 though it be esteemed an excrement ; " also Howell, " Hair 
 but an excrementitious thing." 
 
 The following saying of the king's tallies still more 
 closely with the aphorism of Hippocrates than that of 
 the friar in Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 " Diseases, desperate grown, 
 By desperate appliance are reliev'd, 
 Or not at all." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 The aspect of a recent scar, and the technical word for it, 
 cicatrix, are here given, though Shakespeare gives to the 
 latter a false quantity. 
 
264 
 
 " Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red 
 After the Danish sword." Act iv., Scene 3. 
 
 The word hectic is peculiarly appropriate here, as a chronic 
 fever produced by irritation. 
 
 " The present death of Hamlet. Do it, England ; 
 For like the hectic in my blood he rages, 
 And thou must cure me." Ibid. 
 
 Hamlet's comparison of needless war to an imposthume is 
 excellent on both sides. 
 
 " This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace ; 
 That inward breaks, and shows no cause without 
 Why the man dies." Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 War has been stated by cynical statists to be man's 
 natural condition, and peace but the period of exhaustion 
 and recruitment. Shakespeare does not go quite so far as 
 this, but he looks upon war as a disease produced by that 
 state of the body in which health becomes rank and plethoric ; 
 a state expressed by the king in this passage, in which, 
 however, pleurisy has been written for plethory. 
 
 " For goodness, growing to a pleurisy, 
 Dies in his own too-much." Act iv., Scene 7. 
 
 Imposthumes, or aposthumes, for the word is written by 
 our old surgical writers both ways indifferently, had a wide 
 meaning ; indeed according to Ambrose Parens classification of 
 them into five species, the name appears to have included every 
 thing which could be called ' a swelling against nature :' 
 phlegmons, pustules, erysipelas, oedema, scirrhus, carbuncle, 
 scrofulous swellings, &c. The term, moreover, appears to have 
 been used for any collection of purulent fluid. Thus in the 
 Three Exact Pieces of Leonard Phioravant, Knight and Doctor 
 of Physick, (a.d. 1652), there is a chapter on Inward Impos- 
 
265 
 
 tumes. " These imposthumes inwardly, are evill to know, and 
 uncertain to cure, because the patient himself cannot tell in 
 "what place they be, though he feel the pain : and, therefore, 
 all that we reason of in that matter may be to the contrary. 
 For where a man cannot see with the eye, nor touch with 
 the hand, the matter is doubtful whether it be, or no : and, 
 therefore, it is best to say little." 
 
 The medical Parson Ward also says in his Diary, — " Mat- 
 thias Carnax affirms that he found many ulcers and apostems 
 in the heart." — p. 256. And again, " Gill told mee of a 
 woman that had an apostheme about the side, and his master 
 intended to trepan her on one of the ribs ; whether it canne 
 be : I suspected itt to be a ly." — p. 266 
 
 The use of the word, therefore, by Hamlet is most appro- 
 priate ; an abscess of the liver breaking into the peritoneum, 
 or an empyema producing suffocation by opening into the 
 lungs, would have exactly the effect which he describes. 
 
 A spendthrift sigh hurts by easing, as every one knows 
 who has adopted this method to cure a stitch in the side, 
 which, being caused by a slight cramp of the intercostal 
 muscles, is cured, like other cramps, by the muscle being 
 violently stretched. 
 
 " And then this should is like a spendthrift sigh, 
 That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o'the ulcer." 
 
 Act iv., Scene 7. 
 
 The description which Laertes gives of the weapon-poison 
 refers to the herbalist opinion of the influence of the moon. 
 
 " I bought an unction of a mountebank, 
 So mortal, that but dip a knife in it, 
 Where it draws blood, no cataplasm so rare, 
 Collected from all simples that have virtue 
 Under the moon, can save the thing from death." Ibid. 
 
266 
 
 LEAR. 
 
 Kent, in rebuking the king's anger for his advice, says, 
 
 " Kill thy physician, and thy fee bestow 
 Upon the foul disease." Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 Lear cursing Goneril says, 
 
 " The untented woundings of a father's curse 
 Pierce every sense about thee !" Act i., Scene 4. 
 
 Untented appears to mean, ' not to be tented,' wounds the 
 bottom of which is not to be reached. 
 
 " A cure for kibes or chilblains" is given in Phioravant, 
 and no doubt this is the meaning attached to it here, and 
 also in Hamlet. 
 
 " Fool. If a man's brains were in his heels, wer't not in danger 
 of kibes." Act i., Scene 5. 
 
 Kent, railing at the steward, says, 
 
 " A plague upon your epileptic visage ! 
 Smile you at my speeches as I were a fool ? " 
 
 Act ii., Scene 2. 
 
 The offence given seems to have been an idiotic simper, 
 and the intimate relationship of epilepsy with idiotcy, makes 
 the observation, "epileptic visage," appropriate. 
 
 Lear, in the excitement of his rage, makes use of the 
 following remarkable expression, 
 
 " O, how this mother swells up toward my heart ! 
 Hysterica passio ! Down, thou climbing sorrow, 
 Thy element's below." Act ii., Scene 4. 
 
 It might, at first sight, appear that this use of a strictly 
 
267 
 
 technical term was not properly applied to one of the male 
 sex; but, although hysteria far most frequently attacks 
 women, and the term itself, indeed, is derived from the 
 female organization, both ancient and modern physicians 
 recognize the fact that the symptoms which are called hys- 
 terical are frequently observed in men. Old physicians con- 
 stantly call hysteria the rising of the mother, Mater pro 
 matrix. In Dr. Hall's Century of Cases, the mother is con- 
 stantly used for hysterical affections : thus, " The fits of the 
 mother often afflicted her, of which she was not delivered till 
 she shed tears." — p. 148. The following quotation, however, 
 is as explanatory as can be desired. " There is another 
 disease which people term the Rising of the lights, and 
 I am of his opinion, that it is the same with what they 
 call Hysterica passio, or, The mother, because it seizeth 
 upon women, (though men too sometimes have somewhat 
 like it,) and it is evident enough, since Dr. Highmore, n 
 very industrious learned man, hath sufficiently shewn, that 
 the lungs are the part principally affected with that which 
 hitherto hath been called a Fit of the mother." — Medela 
 Medirinw; a Plea, &c, by M. N., Med. Lond. [i.e., Dr. 
 Nedham] A.D., 1 665, p. 48. 
 
 While Lear is still able to contend against his rage, he finds 
 the following medical excuse for the conduct of his son-in-law. 
 
 " No, but not yet : — may be, he is not well : 
 Infirmity doth still neglect all office, 
 Whereto our health is bound ; we are not ourselves, 
 When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind 
 ' To suffer with the body : I'll forbear ; 
 
 And am fallen out with my more headier will, 
 
 To take the indispos'd and sickly fit 
 
 Tor the sound man." Act ii., Scene 4>. 
 
 He curses Goneril as a disease in himself, comparing her, 
 
268 
 
 it would appear, to those fatal signs which were called 
 
 the death-tokens in the plague. 
 
 " But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter ; 
 Or, rather, a disease that's in my flesh, 
 Which I must needs call mine : thou art a boil, 
 A plague-sore, an embossed carbuncle, 
 In my corrupted blood." Ibid. 
 
 Lear enunciates a truth often observed in compound dis- 
 eases, though here the greater malady is that of the mind. 
 
 " But where the greater malady is fix'd, 
 The lesser is scarce felt." Act iii., Scene 4. 
 
 The web and pin, or the ' pin and web,' as it is called in 
 the Winter's Tale, was an old name for cataract. 
 
 " Edgar. This is the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet : he begins at 
 curfew, and walks till the first cock ; he gives the web and the pin, 
 squints the eye,. and makes the hare-lip." Ibid. 
 
 The poor mad king has a medical idea of the origin of 
 
 his daughter's wickedness. 
 
 "Lear. Then let then anatomize Began ; see what breeds about 
 her heart : Is there any cause in nature, that makes these hard 
 hearts ? " Act iii., Scene 6. 
 
 ■* 
 
 After Gloster's eyes have been so cruelly trodden out, a 
 
 servant says, 
 
 " I'll fetch some flax, and whites of eggs, 
 To apply to his bleeding face. Now, heaven help him." 
 
 Act hi., Scene 7. 
 
 White of eggs was a frequent application of the old 
 surgeons, and, in Banister's Surgery, the whites of eggs 
 spread upon flax is noted as a good application. 
 
 Lear asks for a perfume as from an apothecary, who, ib 
 
 the olden time, was the recognised perfumer as well as drug 
 
 vendor. 
 
 " Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, 
 To sweeten my imagination." Act iv., Scene 6. 
 
269- 
 
 The physician's treatment of Lear belongs rather to 
 mental than physical disease ; he, however, gives his patient 
 some narcotic herbs to produce sleep. 
 
 " Physician. There is means, madam : 
 Our foster-nurse of nature is repose, 
 The which he lacks ; that to provoke in him, 
 Are many simples operative, whose power 
 Will close the eye of anguish." Act iv., Scene 4. 
 
 The physician's bearing is honest and self-reliant, and the 
 honourable treatment he receives marks the esteem of the 
 author for his calling. 
 
 The gradual sickening of Regan, from the poison she has 
 taken, is true to nature, and favourably contrasts with the 
 descriptions of impossible effects from poison so abundant 
 in the plays. 
 
 OTHELLO. 
 
 Desdemona's father, unable to give credence to her love for 
 a middle-aged man of colour on any other supposition, at- 
 tributes it to the use of charms, love-philtres, or aphrodisiac 
 drugs, the belief of the power of which was common in 
 Shakespeare's time, and is said to be still prevalent throughout 
 the south of Europe. Falstaff's kissing-comfits and eryngoes 
 belong to the same category; Decker refers- to the latter 
 in the same sense, "Good cheer, the very eryngo-root of 
 gluttony," he says, helps to draw "the coach of lechery." 
 
270 
 
 " Brdbantio. Are there not charms 
 
 By which the property of youth and maidenhood 
 May be abused ? " Act i., Scene 1. 
 
 " Judge me the world, if 'tis not gross in sense, 
 That thou hast practised on her with foul charms ; 
 Abused her delicate youth with drugs, or minerals, 
 That waken motion." Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 " She is abus'd, stol'n from me, and corrupted 
 By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks." 
 
 Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 " I therefore vouch again 
 That with some mixtures powerful o'er the blood, 
 Or with some dram conjur'd to this effect 
 He wrought upon her." Ibid. 
 
 Koderigo gives a reason for contemplated suicide in medical 
 form of speech. 
 
 " It is a silliness to live when to live is torment ; and then we 
 have a prescription to die when death is our physician." Ibid. 
 
 Iago's exposition, of what may be called medical metaphy- 
 sics, describes human conduct as the result of the oscillating 
 balance of reason and desire, and attributes virtue and vice 
 to the wise or foolish management of the body and exer- 
 cise of the will. It contains one expression which, with a 
 degree of probability n'ot more overstrained than that which 
 attributes to Shakespeare the knowledge of Harvey's great dis- 
 covery, by a literal reading, would lead to the conclusion that 
 he had anticipated Linnaeus' theory of the sexes of plants. 
 No other author I know of, uses the word "gender" in 
 any other sense than to mark the attributes of sex; while 
 he himself uses it in this sense in several passages, as 
 " the numbers of the genders" — Merry Wives. But he also 
 uses it to designate a kind or species, as in Hamlet — " The 
 great love the general gender bear him." It is probable, 
 
271 
 
 therefore, that it is in this sense the word is used by Iago, 
 and, that Shakespeare had not necessarily any idea of the 
 sexual physiology of plants which the great Swedish natu- 
 talist developed into a system ; and thus also when he refers, 
 in other places, to the sex of plants, that it is merely a 
 poetical metaphor ; as, for instance, when in Midsummer 
 Night's Dream he says, " The female ivy so enrings the 
 barky fingers of the elm ;" in Romeo and Juliet, " Among 
 fresh female buds shall you this night inherit at my house ;" 
 in the Winter's Tale, "Pale primroses that die unmarried." 
 
 " Iago. Virtue ? a fig ! 'tis in ourselves, that we are thus, or 
 thus. Our bodies are our gardens ; to the which our wills are gar- 
 deners : so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce ; set hyssop, 
 and weed up thyme : supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract 
 it with many ■ either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured 
 with industry ; why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies 
 in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason 
 to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures 
 would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions : but we have 
 reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted 
 lusts : whereof I take this, that you call love, to be a sect or 
 scion." Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 Iago's argument, that Othello will become weary and dis- 
 gusted with his bride, is illustrated by a medical simile. She 
 is to him, at present, as luscious as locusts, which the Oxford 
 editor quotes from Ludolfus to be " Suavis valde nee non 
 salubris est cibus ;" the "locusts and wild honey," indeed 
 of St. John's diet. When wearied of her she will disgust 
 his taste like coloquimtida (colocinth or bitter apple). 
 
 " These Moors, are changeable in their wills ; fill thy purse with 
 money. The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall 
 be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida." Act i., Scene 3. 
 
 The motive of Iago's machinations is envy and jealousy, 
 
272 
 
 the last of which, he likens in its effect to a corrosive mineral 
 
 poison. 
 
 " For that I do suspect the lusty Moor 
 Hath leap'd into my seat ; the thought whereof 
 Doth, like a poisonous mineral, gnaw my inwards.'' 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 He advises Cassio to petition Desdemona's good offices with 
 her husband for the pardon of his drunken broil. 
 
 " This broken joint, between you and her husband, entreat her to 
 splinter ; and, my fortunes against any lay worth naming, this 
 crack of your love shall grow stronger than it was before." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 Splints, or splinters, as these surgical appliances were 
 called, are used both to broken bones, and to joints which 
 have been recently dislocated. The first part of this sentence 
 seems to imply their use to the latter purpose, but the second 
 part points to a crack, as in a broken bone. 
 
 Iago, in appeasing the impatience of his dupe, refers to 
 the gradual cure of wounds as by granulation. 
 
 " How poor are they that have not patience ! 
 What wound did ever heal but by degrees'?" 
 
 Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 The devilish philosophy of Iago can find no better illus- 
 tration than slow poison for the fatal mischief he has effected 
 on his master's peace of mind. If jealousy, like a poison- 
 ous mineral, gnawed his own vitals, that which he has in- 
 stilled into the Moor, is a slow poison, not, indeed, felt at 
 first, but acting by degrees on the blood. The effect, in the 
 utter loss of that " which knits up the tangled sleeve of 
 care," of that which the most powerful narcotics known 
 cannot reproduce, neither poppy, whose juice is opium, nor 
 mandragora, which Cleopatra calls for to sleep away the 
 
273 
 
 absence of her imperial lover, nor all the syrups in which 
 narcotics were then usually administered. 
 
 •' The Moor already changes with my poison : 
 Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons, 
 Which, at the first, are scarce found to distaste ; 
 But, with a little act upon the blood, 
 Burn like the mines of sulphur. — I did say so : — 
 Look, where he comes ! Not poppy, nor mandragora, 
 Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
 Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep 
 Which thou ow'dst yesterday." Act hi., Scene 3. 
 
 When the slow poison of Othello's jealousy verges upon its 
 outbreak, he says to Desdemona, 
 
 " Give me your hand : This hand is moist, my lady, 
 # # # # 
 
 This argues fruitfulness, and liberal heart ; 
 
 Hot, hot, and moist : This hand of yours requires 
 
 A sequester from liberty." Act iii., Scene 4. 
 
 This sign of warmth is repeated in the Venus and Adonis 
 
 " With that she seizeth on his sweating palm, 
 The precedent of pith and livelihood." 
 
 It appears to express an old opinion that " a moist 
 palm indicates a hot liver," one, however, which Primrose 
 considered a vulgar error, and to the refutation of which 
 he devoted a chapter. 
 
 The general disturbance of the bodily health, and especially 
 of the nervous system from some trifling local irritation, is 
 well expressed by Desdemona. 
 
 " Men's natures wrangle with inferior things, 
 Though great ones are their object. 'Tis even so ; 
 For let our finger ache, and it indues 
 Our other healthful members ev'n to a sense 
 Of pain." Act iii., Scene 4 
 
 Othello's mind is so terribly over-wrought, that it re-acts 
 T 
 
274 
 
 upon the body until he is described as falling into a trance. 
 Iago's designation of this as an epilepsy, of which it is the 
 second fit, appears a mere falsehood. It is to be observed, 
 however, that Shakespeare's knowledge of epilepsy here goes 
 farther than in Julius Ccesar, since he describes the maniacal 
 excitement which so often follows the fit. 
 
 " logo. My lord is fallen into an epilepsy ; 
 This is his second fit ; he had one yesterday. 
 
 Cos. Rub him about the temples. 
 
 lago. No, forbear : 
 
 The lethargy must have his quiet course : 
 If not, he foams at mouth : and, by and by, 
 Breaks out to savage madness. Look, he stirs." 
 
 Act iv. Scene 1 . 
 
 When Cassio has been persuaded to withdraw himself, lago 
 applies to the patient himself the truthful and correct desig- 
 nation of his morbid state. 
 
 " I shifted him away, 
 And laid good 'scuse upon your ecstasy." Ibid. 
 
 The lunar theory of lunacy, from which the term, is 
 definitely expressed by Othello. 
 
 " It is the very error of the moon 
 She comes more nearer earth than she was wont, 
 And makes men mad." Act v., Scene 2. 
 
 Othello compares the tears, which flow in his dread re- 
 morse, to the gum of Arabia ; probably not gum arabic, but 
 myrrh is meant. 
 
 " Of one, whose subdu'd eyes, 
 Albeit unused to the melting mood, 
 Dropt tears as fast as the Arabian trees 
 Their medicinal gum." Ibid, 
 
275 
 
 PERICLES. 
 
 Pericles directs a sarcasm at the proverbial dislike which 
 doctors have to physic. 
 
 " Pericles. Thou speak'st like a physician, Helicanus ; 
 Who minister'st a potion unto me, 
 That thou would'st tremble to receive thyself." 
 
 Act i., Scene 2. 
 
 He describes his shipwrecked condition by a term which 
 has puzzled the commentators, "thronged up with cold," 
 very expressive of a condition which cold would produce, 
 as if a man were pressed or squeezed together by it. 
 " Thronged up," however, is a midland counties' vulgarism ; 
 ' thronged up with work,' being a term often used to 
 express the being overwhelmed with work. 
 
 " A man throng'd up with cold ; my veins are chill, 
 And have no more of life than may suffice 
 To give my tongue that heat to ask your help." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 1. 
 
 The dependence of life upon the blood is referred to in 
 the king's pledge. 
 
 " Wishing it so much blood unto your life." 
 
 Act ii., Scene 3. 
 
 And again in the estimate of the prince's love. 
 
 " Even as my life, or blood that fosters it." 
 
 v Act ii., Scene 5. 
 
 Ceremon, an Ephesian lord, who practises as a physician, 
 
 states the reasons why he prefers the "virtue and cunning," 
 
 or power and knowledge of this art to honour and wealth. 
 
 The word "infusions" is used ambiguously, perhaps er- 
 T 2 
 
276 
 
 roneously, for the " true qualities," which Ceremon, like Friar 
 Laurence in Romeo and Juliet, finds in " plants, herbs, 
 stones." He calls physic a secret art, which, however, he 
 bases both on authority and on experience, ' my practise ;' 
 he is both dogmatist and empiric. He hints at a knowledge 
 of the vis medicatrix, the cures of nature. Shakespeare 
 had good precedent for making a lord practise physic. The 
 medical Marquis of Dorchester has been mentioned at page 
 30. Another medical peer was also Shakespeare's con- 
 temporary. " Edmund, Earl of Derby, who died in Queen 
 Elizabeth's days, was famous for chirurgerie, bone-setting 
 and hospitalitie." — Ward's Diary, p. 161. 
 
 " Ceremon. I held it ever, 
 
 Virtue and cunning were endowments greater 
 Than nobleness and riches : careless heirs 
 May the two latter darken and expend ; 
 But immortality attends the former, 
 Making a man a god. 'Tis known, I ever 
 Have studied physic, through which secret art, 
 By turning o'er authorities, 1 have 
 (Together with my practice,) made familiar 
 To me and to my aid, the bless'd infusions 
 That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones ; 
 And I can speak of the disturbances 
 That nature works, and of her cures ; which gives me 
 A more content in course of true delight 
 Than to be thirsty after tottering honour, 
 Or tie my pleasure up in silken bags, 
 To please the fool and death." Act hi., Scene 2. " 
 
 The means used by Ceremon to recover the queen from 
 her apparent state of death, by stimulants from the boxes 
 in the closet, by warmth and friction, "the fire and the 
 cloths," are exactly those which would be adopted in such 
 a case. Music also is employed, as with Lear, to arouse 
 the mind into a state of wakeful attention. 
 
277 
 
 " For Jook, how fresh she looks ! — They were too rough 
 That threw her in the sea. Make a fire within ; 
 Fetch hither all my boxes in my closet. 
 Death may usurp on nature many hours, 
 And yet the fire of life kindle again 
 Her overpressed spirits. I have heard 
 Of an Egyptian, had nine hours lien dead, 
 By good appliance was recovered. 
 Well said, well said ; the fire and the cloths. — 
 The rough and woeful music that we have, 
 Cause it to sound, 'beseech'you. 
 
 The vial once more — How thou stirr'st, thou block ! — 
 The music there. — I pray you, give her air : — 
 Gentlemen, 
 
 This queen will live : nature awakes ; a warmth 
 Breathes out of her ; she hath not been entranc'd 
 Above five hours. See how she 'gins to blow 
 Into life's flower again !" Ibid: 
 
 In stating that a man who had "nine hours lien dead," 
 
 had been recovered, the poet has, no doubt, lapsed into a 
 
 looseness of expression, really intending that the man had 
 
 lain nine hours as dead, or with the appearance of death. 
 
 Even Homer sometimes nods, and Shakespeare could no more 
 
 intend to bring a dead man to life again, than he could 
 
 have intended to describe the men who had been killed at 
 
 the battle of St. Alban's as still exercising the functions of 
 
 life. 
 
 "And dead men's cries do fill the empty air." 
 
 Henry VI., Part 2. 
 
 Pericles is in a state of melancholy, his distemperature 
 displaying itself by long-continued silence and abstinence. 
 
 " A man, who for this three months hath not spoken 
 To any one, nor taken sustenance, 
 But to prorogue his grief." Act v., Scene 1. 
 
 It is thought that the sweet harmony of a beautiful and 
 skilful musician may " make a battery through his deafened 
 parts," that is, attract his attention and win some words from 
 
278 
 
 him ; and, although the courtiers fear that all will be effect- 
 less, the remedy is tried under the promise, 
 
 " If that thy prosperous and artificial feat 
 Can draw him but to answer thee in aught, 
 Thy sacred physic shall receive such pay 
 As thy desires can wish." Ibid. 
 
 The remedial employment of music is thus represented a 
 second time in this play. 
 
 When Pericles finds his daughter in the fair musician, 
 he questions her bodily presence. 
 
 " But are you flesh and blood ? 
 Have you a working pulse ? and are no fairy-motion ?" 
 
 Ibid. 
 
 Titus Andronicus is the only one of Shakespeare's plays 
 which contains no passages referring to medical subjects. 
 
 VENUS AND ADONIS. 
 
 The vulgar remedy, prescribed for the fainting fit into 
 which Henry VI. falls when he hears of the death of Gloster, 
 is applied to the goddess for the same purpose. The term, 
 "holds her pulses hard," is obscure. 
 
 " He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks, 
 He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard ; 
 He chafes her lips." 
 
279 
 
 On the following lines on the lips of Adonis, an edition 
 of Mr. Knight's has this note ; " The custom of strewing 
 houses with fragant herbs was universal at a period when 
 the constant recurrence of the plague . habituated families 
 to the use of what they considered preventives." The 
 passage also refers to the old pretence of predicting pes- 
 tilence from the aspect of the heavenly bodies ; one form 
 of medical astrology. 
 
 " Long may they kiss each other, for this cure ! 
 
 O never let their crimson liveries wear ! 
 And as they last, their verdure still endure, 
 
 To drive infection from the dangerous year ! 
 That the star-gazers, having writ on death, 
 May say, the plague is banish'd by thy breath." 
 
 The Goddess of Love accuses the Mistress of the Moon 
 that, with the desire " to mingle beauty with infirmities," she 
 has made the youth subject to the tyranny of disease, " of 
 mad mischances and much misery ;" 
 
 " As burning fevers, agues pale and faint, 
 
 Life-poisoning pestilence, and frenzies wood, 
 The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint 
 Disorder breeds by heating of the blood ; 
 Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn'd despair, 
 Swear Nature's death for framing thee so fair." 
 
 The distinction here drawn between fever and ague is 
 noteworthy, since Shakespeare usually employs the words 
 as synonymous. " Wood," applied to frenzies, means mad. 
 It is used by Shakespeare in this sense, in Midsum- 
 mer Right's Dream, and Henry VI. 1st Part, " raging 
 wood." In Beaumont and Fletcher's Gentle Shepherdess is 
 the expression, " bitten by wood-dog's venomed tooth." The 
 Anglo-Saxon was ' wod,' the Scotch still use ' wud.' 
 
280 
 
 The effect of fear on the heart is described in a metaphor 
 strikingly resembling the very remarkable one used by 
 Angelo in Measure for Measure ; the idea, however, is here 
 expressed with far less force and exactness. Angelo makes 
 the heart a king, and the blood his subjects ; here the heart 
 is a captain, and the ' feeling parts' are soldiers. 
 
 " This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear, 
 
 Through which it enters to surprise her heart ; 
 Who, overcome by doubt and bloodless fear, 
 
 With cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part ; 
 Like soldiers, when their captain once doth yield, 
 They basely fly, and dare not stay the field." 
 
 The heroic surgery of an English queen to her husband's 
 poisoned wound, was like that which Adonis' hounds employ. 
 
 " And there another licking of his wound, 
 'Gainst venom'd sores the only sovereign plaster." 
 
 That disturbance of the brain frequently causes imperfect 
 performance of the function of sight, and especially the 
 phenomenon of double vision, is a fact not generally known 
 beyond the limits of the medical profession ; yet it is here 
 stated very distinctly. 
 
 " Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly, 
 
 That her sight dazzling, makes the wound seem three ; 
 
 And then she reprehends her mangling eye, 
 
 That makes more gashes where no breach should be ; 
 
 His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled, 
 
 For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled," 
 
281 
 
 THE KAPE OF LUCRECE. 
 
 That the veins become turgid under the influence of passion- 
 ate emotion might be taught by common observation. The 
 point worthy of notice in the description of Tarquin's state 
 as he stands by his yet sleeping victim is, that the veins are 
 supposed to act independently of the heart, an idea quite in 
 accordance with the physiology of the period. 
 
 " For standing by her side, 
 His eye, which late this mutiny restrains, 
 Unto a greater uproar tempts his veins ; 
 
 And they, like straggling slaves for pillage fighting, 
 Obdurate vassals, fell exploits affecting, 
 
 In bloody death and ravishment delighting, 
 
 Nor children's tears, nor mother's groans respecting, 
 Swell in their pride, the onset still expecting ; 
 
 Anon his beating heart, alarum striking, 
 
 Gives the hot charge, and bids them do their liking." 
 
 The beneficial use of poisonous substances in pharmacy, 
 and the correction of one quality by others in medicinal 
 compounds, is thus pointedly stated. 
 
 " The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted 
 In a pure compound ; being so applied, 
 His venom in effect is purified." 
 
 The following line is nearly identical with Gaunt' s obser- 
 vation in Richard II, " Things sweet in taste prove in 
 digestion sour." 
 
 " His taste delicious, in digestion souring." 
 
 The invocation of Lucrece to " hateful vaporous and 
 foggy night," expresses the often repeated opinion of the 
 unwholesome nature of night air, an opinion very naturally 
 
282 
 
 prevalent in an undrained aguish country. The 'musty' 
 
 vapours of night are not now so poisonous, here at least, 
 
 as they are represented in many passages of Shakespeare, 
 
 but the doctrine still holds good in aguish countries, where 
 
 night may yet fitly be appealed to to send her poisonous 
 
 clouds, that they may 
 
 " With rotten damps ravish the morning air ; 
 Let then- exhal'd unwholesome breaths make sick 
 The life of purity," 
 
 After Tarquin's crime is consummated, the wretched lady 
 personifies and rails upon Opportunity which wrought his 
 success and her ruin. She asks of Opportunity " When wilt 
 
 thou — - 
 
 " Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained ? 
 The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee, 
 But they ne'er meet with Opportunity. 
 
 The patient dies while the physician sleeps ; 
 The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds ; 
 
 Justice is feasting while the widow weeps ; 
 Advice is- sporting while infection breeds : 
 Thou grant' st no time for charitable deeds : 
 
 Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages, 
 
 Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages." 
 
 " Give physic to the sick, ease to the pained," is the 
 counterbuff to Macbeth's " Throw physic to the dogs," which 
 has been quoted to prove Shakespeare's low estimate of 
 medicine ; although it clearly means no more than Romeo's 
 " Hang up philosophy unless philosophy can make a Juliet." 
 The opinion here obviously inferred is, that physic can relieve 
 the sick, and that the patient will not die if the physician 
 do not sleep. The line, " advice is sporting while infection 
 breeds," describes the old-world carelessness of medical men 
 in prophylactic hygiene, sanatory science, as it is now some- 
 what loosely called. There can be no greater proof of the 
 
283 
 
 disinterestedness of the medical profession than the devotion 
 of its sons to this branch of their science, which, aiming at 
 the prevention of disease in the mass, has been developed 
 almost entirely by themselves in opposition to the stubborn 
 prejudices of the public. Advice here means medical opinion, 
 as in Henry VI., 2nd Part, " I hope your lordship goes 
 abroad by advice." And again, " With good advice and little 
 medicine." 
 
 Lucrece's suicide, a sacrificial oblation to the chastity of 
 her married life, is effected by stabbing herself. The de- 
 scription of the condition of the blood is very remarkable. 
 
 " And bubbling from her breast, it doth divide 
 
 In two slow rivers, that the crimson blood 
 Circles her body in on every side, 
 
 Who like a late-sack'd island vastly stood 
 
 Bare and unpeopled, in this fearful flood. 
 Some of her blood still pure and red remain'd, 
 And some look'd black, and that false Tarquin stain'd. 
 About the mourning and congealed face 
 
 Of that black blood, a watery rigol goes, 
 Which seems to weep upon the tainted place : 
 
 And ever since, as pitying Lucrece' woes, 
 
 Corrupted blood some watery token shows ; 
 And blood untainted still doth red abide, 
 Blushing at that which is so putrefied." 
 
 The phenomenon which attends the coagulation of blood 
 in the separation of the serum from the clot is obviously 
 referred to in the " watery rigol " which surrounds the "con- 
 gealed face of that black blood." Knowledge of this separation 
 of blood into clot and serum is also evident from the 
 line "Corrupted blood some watery token shows," although 
 the theory of its production is, of course, merely poetic. We 
 scarcely yet can be said to know to what physical cause it 
 really is due, although curiously enough the most recent 
 theory attributes it to what may be called the first stage 
 
284 
 
 of corruption, the development of ammonia. That the 
 dramatist had observed the different colour of the two kinds 
 of blood is evident : but that he should know the cause 
 of it was not to be expected, since even Harvey attributed 
 the difference between bright and dark blood to the size 
 of the opening from which it flows, "when it flows from 
 a small orifice, it is of a brighter hue, — for then it is 
 strained as it were, and the thinner and more penetrating 
 portion only escapes." — Second Disquisition. Harvey at- 
 tributed the coagulation of the blood to the very cause here 
 assigned by Shakespeare. " As it [the blood] lives and is 
 a very principal animal part, consisting of these juices 
 mingled together, it is an animated similar part, composed 
 of a body and a vital principle. When this living principle 
 of the blood escapes, however, in consequence of the ex- 
 tinction of the native heat, the primary substance is forth- 
 with corrupted and resolved into the parts of which it was 
 formerly composed ; first into cruor, afterwards with red and 
 white parts, those of the red parts that are uppermost being 
 more florid, those that are lowest being black. Of these 
 parts, moreover, some are fibrous and tough (and these are 
 the uniting medium of the rest,) others ichorous and serous, 
 in which the mass of coagulum is wont to swim. Into such 
 a serum does the blood almost wholly resolve itself at last. 
 But these parts have no existence severally in living blood ; 
 it is in that only which has become corrupted and is re- 
 solved by death that they are encountered." — On Generation. 
 Thus Harvey's opinion of the life in the blood is as positive 
 as Shakepeare's. In the same work he says, " I maintain 
 that the living principle resides primarily and principally 
 in the blood." 
 
285 
 
 SONNETS. 
 
 The 34th sonnet contains the following medical allusion. 
 
 " For no man well of such a salve can speak, 
 That heals the wound, and cures not the disgrace : 
 Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief." 
 
 The old medical theory, that " our life is made up of the 
 four elements" (see Twelfth Night), is referred to in the 
 44th and 45th Sonnets ; in the former to earth and water ; 
 
 " The other two, slight air and purging fire, 
 
 Are both with thee, wherever I abide ; 
 The first my thought, the other my desire, 
 
 These present-absent with swift motion 1 slide. 
 For when these quicker elements are gone 
 
 In tender embassy of love to thee, 
 My life, being made of four, with two alone 
 
 Sinks down to death, oppress'd with melancholy ; 
 Until life's composition be recur'd 
 
 By those swift messengers return' d from thee, 
 Who even but now come back again, assur'd 
 
 Of thy fair health, recounting it to me : 
 This told, I joy ; but then no longer glad, 
 I send them back again, and straight grow sad." 
 
 The 111th Sonnet has a couplet alluding to the use of 
 vinegar in the plague. Ambrose Par^, in his chapter on 
 " What drinke the patient infected with Plague ought to use," 
 insists on the use of oxymel (vinegar and honey), oxycrate 
 (lemon-juice and syrup), tart cider, juleps of sorel, &c. Mr. 
 Collier's note is " Potions of eysel, i.e., potions of vinegar, 
 for which " eysel," esill, or eyesel, was the old name." 
 
 " Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink 
 Potions of eysel, 'gainst my strong infection." 
 
28G 
 
 The following medical Sonnet, the 118th, is founded upon 
 the old fashion of physicking to prevent sickness. Periodical 
 abstraction of blood and periodical purgation for the purpose 
 of preserving health, were not out of vogue in country- 
 districts within my own memory. Bacon, in his Essay on 
 the Regimen of Health, says, " If you fly physic in health 
 alltogether, it will be too strange for your body when you 
 need it ; if you make it too familiar it will work no extra- 
 ordinary effect when sickness cometh. I commend rather, 
 some diet for certain seasons, than frequent use of physic, 
 except it be grown into a custom, for those diets alter the 
 body more, and trouble it less." He would, therefore, have 
 been delighted with the wisdom of the physician whose 
 personal practice is recorded by Ward. " I have heard of a 
 physician that used constantly to fast, or else bee drunk once 
 every month, for the preservation of his health." — p. 267. 
 
 " Like as, to make our appetites more keen, 
 
 With eager compounds we our palate urge : 
 As, to prevent our maladies unseen, 
 
 We sicken to shun sickness, when we purge ; 
 Even so, being full of your ne'er-cloying sweetness, 
 
 To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding, 
 And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness 
 
 To be diseas'd, ere that there was true needing. 
 Thus policy in love, to anticipate 
 
 The ills that were not, grew to faults assured, 
 And brought to medicine a healthful state, 
 
 Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cured ; 
 But thence I learn, and find the lesson true, 
 Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you." 
 
 The use of distilled medicines and the appearance of 
 the alembic (the limbeck of Lady Macbeth,) are referred 
 to in the 119th Sonnet. 
 
 " What potions have I drunk of syren tears, 
 Distilled from limbecks, foul as hell within." 
 
287 
 
 The following may allude either to the protruded eye-ball, 
 the eye " staring full ghastly" of madding fever, or to the 
 obliquity of the eye, the ' squiny ' of Lear, which is also com- 
 mon in this form of disease. The latter would seem to agree 
 best with the meaning of the passage, " Bear thine eyes 
 straight," in the 140th Sonnet. 
 
 " How have mine eyes out of their spheres been fitted, 
 In the distraction of this madding fever !" 
 
 The 140th Sonnet has the following reference to the 
 habitual practice of physicians to sooth and flatter with hope 
 of recovery, those patients to whom the knowledge that there 
 was no hope would be likely to aggravate the disease. Ward 
 says of the contrary practice, " A physician told a father 
 that his sonne was a dead man : the father replied, I had 
 rather a physician called him so a hundred times than a 
 judge on bench once." It is an anxious, and by no means 
 an easy problem in medical ethics, to determine the period 
 when the sentence of ' no recovery ' ought no longer to be 
 withheld. 
 
 " (As testy sick men, when their deaths be near, 
 
 No news but health from their physicians know :) 
 
 For, if I should despair. I should grow mad, 
 And in my madness might speak ill of thee : 
 
 Now this ill-wresting world has grown so bad, 
 Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be." 
 
 The 147th Sonnet is entirely medical, and so graphic, that 
 explanation is needless. The description of delirium following 
 fever, " frantic mad with evermore unrest," is thoroughly true 
 to nature. 
 
 " My love is as a fever, longing still 
 
 For that which longer nurseth the disease ; 
 Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, 
 
 The uncertain sickly appetite to please. 
 
288 
 
 My reason, the physician to my love, 
 
 Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, 
 Hath left me, and I desperate now approve, 
 
 Desire is death, which physic did except. 
 Past cure I am, now reason is past care, 
 
 And frantic-mad with ever-more unrest ; 
 My thoughts and my discourse as mad men's are, 
 
 At random from the truth vainly express'd ; 
 For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, 
 Who art as black as hell, as dark as night." 
 
 The 153rd Sonnet undoubtedly refers to the use of some 
 hot medicinal spring, perhaps to the bath which has given 
 name to the city of King Baldud, as Steevens suggested. 
 " The help of bath desir'd, and thither hied a sad distemper'd 
 guest," certainly appears to support this view. The de- 
 scription of the spa, having a " dateless lively heat," and 
 that it was "against strange maladies a sovereign cure," 
 would also apply to the bath of Bath, the temperature of 
 whose waters and the antiquity of whose reputation are of 
 the highest. The 154th Sonnet refers more vaguely to the 
 same. 
 
 " Cupid lay by his brand, and fell asleep : 
 
 A maid of Dian's this advantage found, 
 And his love-kindling fire did quickly steep 
 
 In a cold valley-fountain of that ground ; 
 Which borrow'd from his holy fire of love 
 
 A dateless lively heat, still to endure, 
 And grew a seething bath, which yet men prove. 
 
 Against strange maladies a sovereign cure. 
 But at my mistress' eye Love's brand new-fir'd, 
 
 The boy for trial needs would touch my breast ; 
 I, sick withal, the help of bath desir'd, 
 
 And thither hied, a sad distemper'd guest, 
 But found no cure : the bath for my help lies 
 Where Cupid got new fire, — my mistress' eyes." 
 
289 
 
 The following lines, with medical significance, are from the 
 Lover's Complaint. 
 
 " As compound love to physic your cold breast." 
 
 " The aloes of all forces shocks and fears.'' 
 
 " Our drops this difference bore. 
 His poisoned me, and mine did him restore." 
 
 " that sad breath his spongy lungs bestowed." 
 
 In concluding these pages, with whatever shortcoming of 
 information or of ability the task has been executed, I trust 
 that it will be admitted that I have discussed with im- 
 partiality the question propounded in the Introduction, 
 namely, the extent of Shakespeare's knowledge of medicine, 
 and the degree to which he was influenced by medical trains 
 of thought. The enquiry has, of necessity, extended itself 
 to the degree of Shakespeare's ignorance and errors of 
 opinion on medical subjects, and to a comparison of his 
 state of information with that of men living about the 
 same time. The ignorance and error which then prevailed 
 among all classes on medical subjects can only be conceived by 
 the fullest appreciation of the fact that, before Bacon, natural 
 science did not exist, and that, before the Reformation, the 
 Js0lated facts of knowledge were obscured by the ' musty 
 vapours ' and ' rotten damps ' of superstition. The printing 
 press, moreover, was not active as it is now, and the march 
 of knowledge was limping and feeble. Wunderlich records 
 that the doctrines of Galen were yet popular in the middle 
 U 
 
290 
 
 of the 17th century, and that after Fabricius and Harvey- 
 had taught, such was the ignorance of anatomy, that two 
 of the Heidelberg professors had a contention with the phy- 
 sician of the Margrave of Baden, as to whether the heart 
 was in the middle of the thorax or on the left side of the 
 sternum, and that they killed a hog in order to ascertain 
 the fact, and to determine on which side of the chest they 
 ought to apply cataplasms, so as to be over the Prince's 
 heart. — Geschichte der Medicin, p. 121. 
 
 After a perusal of all the medical works of the period on 
 which I have been able to lay hands, and the institution 
 of a close comparison between them and the works of 
 Shakespeare, I have arrived at the fullest conviction that 
 the great dramatist had, at least, been a diligent student of 
 all medical knowledge existing in his time. It has already 
 been satisfactorily proved by the noble author to whom this 
 work is dedicated, that he had been a diligent student of the 
 law. If it be attempted to argue that Shakespeare had 
 obtained his knowledge, either of law or of medicine, by any 
 formal connection with either of these professions, it must 
 be admitted that the arguments mutually invalidate each 
 other ; since the double event, say of his having been both 
 a lawyer's clerk and a doctor's apprentice, is far more im- 
 probable than either single event would be. But if the 
 argument only be urged that Shakespeare had been a diligent 
 student both of medicine and law, not for professional pur- 
 poses, but for the sake of increasing his general information, 
 it would seem that the evidence of diligent study in either 
 department of knowledge would fortify the evidence of such 
 study in the other department ; for the great hungry mind,' 
 which had an appetite for all accessible knowledge, in one> 
 
291 
 
 ol the large divisions into which the knowledge of cause and 
 effect may be separated, would, in all probability, be far from 
 satisfied without appropriating to itself the counterpart of 
 such knowledge from the complementary department. 
 
 In claiming for law and medicine so wide a dominion as 
 the extent of the knowledge of nature and its laws, I, of 
 course, only do so with reservation, and for the purpose of 
 expressing the undoubted fact that the one is founded upon 
 the moral, and that the other is founded upon the 
 physical law, and that, as professions, they practically apply 
 these laws to man's welfare. Whewell speaks of civil law 
 and medicine, as " two of the leading studies of those times 
 (the middle ages) which occupied much of men's time and 
 thoughts, and had a very great influence on society ; the one 
 dealing with notions, the other with things ; the one em- 
 ployed about moral rules, the other about material causes, 
 but both for practical ends." — Inductive Sciences, vol. 1, 
 p. 330. 
 
 But it has been said that, granting the validity of the 
 proof of Shakespeare's knowledge of medicine and law, he 
 was also acquainted with many other subjects ; thus, he wrote 
 of " lavoltas high, and swift corantos," and might therefore 
 have been a dancing master ; he wrote of " tackle, sail, and 
 mast," and might have been a sailor. Doubtless there are 
 few subjects which might not be, incidentally, thus illustrated 
 from the writings of our author. My learned friend, Dr. 
 Copland, has communicated to me an anecdote which tells 
 on this point. He was present at a dinner party with 
 Haslam, of Bethlehem Hospital, a man of great reading and 
 infinite wit, and Mr. Jerdan, editor of the Literary Gazette ; 
 the former, having stated his opinion that there was no 
 
292 
 
 possible subject which could not be illustrated out of 
 Shakespeare, the latter expressed dissent, and the wager of 
 a dinner for the party was laid between the two, that 
 Jerdan could not name a subject to which Haslam would 
 fail, within fifteen minutes, to apply from memory a 
 Shakespearean illustration. Jerdan named the Tread-mill 
 which had been recently invented, to which Haslam 
 almost immediately applied the words from Lear, " Down 
 thou climbing sorrow, thy element's below," and was ad- 
 judged to have won the wager. 
 
 But it is not upon any ingenious perversion of meaning, 
 nor even upon real but insignificant references, that the proof 
 stands of Shakespeare's study of those great departments of 
 knowledge in which the theories of ethics and physics 
 become concrete and practical. Speaking on my own 
 subject of investigation, I refer to the cumulative evidence 
 collected in the foregoing pages as unanswerable proof that 
 his mind was deeply imbued with the best medical informa- 
 tion of his age. If, however, it be thus established that he 
 diligently worked the champion lodes of knowledge, it is not 
 therefore to be assumed that with indiscriminating avidity 
 he followed every small branch and leader of ore. 
 
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