FOLK-MEDICINE.
Without discussing the extent of Shakespeare's technical medical
knowledge, the following pages will suffice to show that he was fully
acquainted with many of the popular notions prevalent in his day
respecting certain diseases and their cures. These, no doubt, he
collected partly from the literature of the period, with which he was so
fully conversant, besides gathering a good deal of information on the
subject from daily observation. Anyhow, he has bequeathed to us some
interesting particulars relating to the folk-medicine of bygone times,
which is of value, in so far as it helps to illustrate the history of
medicine in past years. In Shakespeare's day the condition of medical
science was very unlike that at the present day. As Mr. Goadby, in his
"England of Shakespeare" (1881, p. 104), remarks, "the man of science
was always more or less of an alchemist, and the students of medicine
were usually extensive dealers in charms and philtres." If a man wanted
bleeding he went to a barber-surgeon, and when he required medicine he
consulted an apothecary; the shop of the latter being well described by
Romeo (v. 1):
"And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff'd, 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,
Remnants of pack-thread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scattered, to make up a show."
Such a man was as ready "to sell love-philtres to a maiden as narcotics
to a friar."
_Bleeding._ Various remedies were in use in Shakespeare's day to stop
bleeding. Thus, a key, on account of the coldness of the metal of which
it is composed, was often employed; hence the term "key-cold" became
proverbial, and is referred to by many old writers. In "Richard III."
(i. 2), Lady Anne, speaking of the corpse of King Henry the Sixth, says
"Poor key-cold figure of a holy king."
In the "Rape of Lucrece" (l. 1774) the same expression is used:
"And then in key-cold Lucrece' bleeding stream
He falls, and bathes the pale fear in his face."
In Beaumont and Fletcher's "Wild Goose Chase" (iv. 3) we read: "For till
they be key-cold dead, there's no trusting of 'em."[589]
[589] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 482; also, Brand's
"Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 311; Henderson's "Folk-Lore
of Northern Counties," 1879, pp. 168, 169.
Another common remedy was the one alluded to in "King Lear" (iii. 7),
where one of the servants says:
"I'll fetch some flax, and whites of eggs,
To apply to his bleeding face."
This passage has been thought to be parodied in Ben Jonson's play, "The
Case is Altered" (ii. 4): "Go, get a white of an egg and a little flax,
and close the breach of the head; it is the most conducible thing that
can be." Mr. Gifford, however, has shown the incorrectness of this
assertion, pointing out that Jonson's play was written in 1599, some
years before "King Lear" appeared, while the allusion is "to a method of
cure common in Jonson's time to every barber-surgeon and old woman in
the kingdom."[590]
[590] Aldis Wright's "Notes to King Lear," 1877, p. 179.
Cobwebs are still used to stanch the bleeding from small wounds, and
Bottom's words seem to refer to this remedy of domestic surgery: "I
shall desire you of more acquaintance, good Master Cobweb; if I cut my
finger, I shall make bold with you."
Anciently, says Mr. Singer, "a superstitious belief was annexed to the
accident of bleeding at the nose;" hence, in the "Merchant of Venice"
(ii. 5), Launcelot says: "It was not for nothing that my nose fell
a-bleeding on Black Monday last." In days gone by, it was customary with
our forefathers to be bled periodically, in spring and in autumn, in
allusion to which custom King Richard refers ("Richard II.," i. 1), when
he says to his uncle:
"Our doctors say this is no month to bleed."
Hence the almanacs of the time generally gave particular seasons as the
most beneficial for bleeding. The forty-seventh aphorism of Hippocrates
(sect. 6) is, that "persons who are benefited by venesection or purging
should be bled or purged in the spring."
_Blindness._ The exact meaning of the term "sand-blind," which occurs in
the "Merchant of Venice" (ii. 2), is somewhat obscure:
"_Launcelot._ O heavens, this is my true-begotten father! who,
being more than sand-blind, high gravel blind, knows me not.
* * * * *
_Gobbo._ Alack, sir, I am sand-blind, I know you not."
It probably means very dim-sighted,[591] and in Nares's "Glossary"[592]
it is thus explained: "Having an imperfect sight, as if there was sand
in the eye." The expression is used by Beaumont and Fletcher in "Love's
Cure" (ii. 1): "Why, signors, and my honest neighbours, will you impute
that as a neglect of my friends, which is an imperfection in me? I have
been _sand-blind_ from my infancy." The term was probably one in vulgar
use.[593]
[591] Dyce's "Glossary," p. 381; cf. the word "Berlué,
pur-blinded, made sand-blind," Cotgrave's "Fr. and Eng. Dict."
[592] Vol. ii. p. 765.
[593] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 93.
_Blister._ In the following passage of "Timon of Athens" (v. 1), Timon
appears to refer to the old superstition that a lie produces a blister
on the tongue, though, in the malice of his rage, he imprecates the
minor punishment on truth, and the old surgery of cauterization on
falsehood:[594]
"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!"
[594] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 258.
We may also compare the passage in "Winter's Tale" (ii. 2), where
Paulina declares:
"If I prove honey-mouth'd, let my tongue blister,
And never to my red-look'd anger be
The trumpet any more."[595]
[595] Cf., too, "Love's Labour's Lost" (v. 2):
"A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart,
That put Armado's page out of his part."
_Bone-ache._ This was a nickname, in bygone years, for the _Lues
venerea_, an allusion to which we find in "Troilus and Cressida" (ii.
3), where Thersites speaks of "the bone-ache" as "the curse dependent on
those that war for a placket." Another name for this disease was the
"brenning or burning," a notice of which we find in "King Lear" (iv. 6).
_Bruise._ A favorite remedy in days past for bruises was parmaceti, a
corruption of spermaceti, in allusion to which Hotspur, in "1 Henry IV."
(i. 3), speaks of it as "the sovereign'st thing on earth for an inward
bruise." So, too, in Sir T. Overbury's "Characters," 1616 ["An Ordinarie
Fencer"]: "His wounds are seldom skin-deepe; for an _inward bruise_,
lambstones and sweetbreads are his only spermaceti." A well-known plant
called the "Shepherd's Purse" has been popularly nicknamed the "Poor
Man's Parmacetti," being a joke on the Latin word _bursa_, a purse,
which, to a poor man, is always the best remedy for his bruises.[596] In
"Romeo and Juliet" (i. 2), a plantain-leaf is pronounced to be an
excellent cure "for your broken shin." Plantain-water was a remedy in
common use with the old surgeons.[597]
[596] Dr. Prior's "Popular Names of British Plants," 1870, p. 185.
[597] "The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," 1860, p. 78.
_Bubukle._ According to Johnson, this denoted "a red pimple." Nares
says it is "a corrupt word for a carbuncle, or something like;" and Mr.
Halliwell-Phillipps, in his "Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial
Words," defines it as a botch or imposthume. It occurs in "Henry V."
(iii. 6), where Fluellen describes Bardolph's face as "all bubukles."
_Burn._ The notion of one heat driving out another gave rise to the
old-fashioned custom of placing a burned part near the fire to drive out
the fire--a practice, says Dr. Bucknill,[598] certainly not without
benefit, acting on the same principle as the application of turpentine
and other stimulants to recent burns. This was one of the many instances
of the ancient homoeopathic doctrine, that what hurts will also
cure.[599] Thus, in "King John" (iii. 1), Pandulph speaks of it:
"And falsehood falsehood cures; as fire cools fire
Within the scorched veins of one new burn'd."
[598] "The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," 1860, p. 65.
[599] See Tylor's "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 761.
Again, in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (ii. 4), Proteus tells how:
"Even as one heat another heat expels,
Or as one nail by strength drives out another,
So the remembrance of my former love
Is by a newer object quite forgotten."
We may also compare the words of Mowbray in "Richard II." (i. 1), where
a similar idea is contained:
"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."
Once more, in "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 2), Benvolio relates how
"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."
_Cataract._ One of the popular names for this disease of the eye was
the "web and the pin." Markham, in his "Cheap and Good Husbandry" (bk.
i. chap. 37), thus describes it in horses: "But for the wart, pearle,
pin, or web, which are evils grown in or upon the eye, to take them off,
take the juyce of the herb betin and wash the eye therewith, it will
weare the spots away." Florio ("Ital. Dict.") gives the following:
"Cataratta is a dimnesse of sight occasioned by humores hardened in the
eies, called a cataract or a pin and a web." Shakespeare uses the term
in the "Winter's Tale" (i. 2), where Leontes speaks of
"all eyes blind
With the pin and web, but theirs;"
and in "King Lear" (iii. 4), alluding to "the foul fiend
Flibbertigibbet," says, "he gives the web and the pin."[600] Acerbi, in
his "Travels" (vol. ii. p. 290), has given the Lapland method of cure
for this disease. In a fragment of an old medical treatise it is thus
described: "Another sykenes ther byth of _yezen; on a webbe_, a nother a
wem, that hydyth the myddel of the yezen; and this hes to maners, other
whilys he is white and thynne, and other whilys he is thykke, as whenne
the obtalmye ne is noght clene yhelyd up, bote the rote abydyth stylle.
Other whilys the webbe is noght white but rede, other blake."[601] In
the Statute of the 34 and 35 of Henry VIII. a pin and web in the eye is
recited among the "customable diseases," which honest persons, not being
surgeons, might treat with herbs, roots, and waters, with the knowledge
of whose nature God had endowed them.
[600] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. pp. 660, 661; Dyce's
"Glossary," p. 322.
[601] Quoted in Singer's "Shakespeare."
_Chilblains._ These are probably alluded to by the Fool in "King Lear"
(i. 5): "If a man's brains were in's heels, were't not in danger of
kibes?" Hamlet, too, says (v. 1): "the age is grown so picked, that the
toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his
kibe."
_Deformity._ It was an old prejudice, which is not quite extinct, that
those who are defective or deformed are marked by nature as prone to
mischief. Thus, in "Richard III." (i. 3), Margaret says of Richard, Duke
of Gloster:
"Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!
Thou that was seal'd in thy nativity
The slave of nature, and the son of hell."
She calls him _hog_, in allusion to his cognizance, which was a boar. A
popular expression in Shakespeare's day for a deformed person was a
"stigmatic." It denoted any one who had been _stigmatized_, or burned
with an iron, as an ignominious punishment, and hence was employed to
represent a person on whom nature has set a mark of deformity. Thus, in
"3 Henry VI." (ii. 2), Queen Margaret says:
"But thou art neither like thy sire, nor dam;
But like a foul misshapen stigmatic
Mark'd by the destinies to be avoided,
As venom toads, or lizards' dreadful stings."
Again, in "2 Henry VI." (v. 1), young Clifford says to Richard:
"Foul stigmatic, that's more than thou canst tell."
We may note, too, how, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (v. 1), mothers'
marks and congenital forms 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."[602]
[602] Cf. "King John" (iii. 1), where Constance gives a
catalogue of congenital defects.
Indeed, constant allusions are to be met with in our old writers
relating to this subject, showing how strong were the feelings of our
forefathers on the point. But, to give one further instance of this
superstition given by Shakespeare, we may quote the words of King John
(iv. 2), with reference to Hubert and his supposed murder of Prince
Arthur:
"A fellow by the hand of Nature mark'd,
Quoted, and sign'd, to do a deed of shame,
This murder had not come into my mind."
This adaptation of the mind to the deformity of the body concurs, too,
with Bacon's theory: "Deformed persons are commonly even with nature;
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."
_Drowning._ The old superstition[603] of its being dangerous to save a
person from drowning is supposed, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, to be
alluded to in "Twelfth Night." It was owing to the belief that the
person saved would, sooner or later, injure the man who saved him. Thus,
in Sir Walter Scott's "Pirate," Bryce, the pedler, warns the hero not to
attempt to resuscitate an inanimate form which the waves had washed
ashore on the mainland of Shetland. "'Are you mad,' exclaimed the
pedler, 'you that have lived sae lang in Zetland, to risk the saving of
a drowning man? Wot ye not if ye bring him to life again he will do you
some capital injury?'"
[603] "Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 150. See "Notes and
Queries" for superstitions connected with drowning, 5th series,
vol. ix. pp. 111, 218, 478, 516; vol. x. pp. 38, 276; vol. xi.
pp. 119, 278.
_Epilepsy._ A popular name for this terrible malady was the
"falling-sickness," because, when attacked with one of these fits, the
patient falls suddenly to the ground. In "Julius Cæsar" (i. 2) it is
thus mentioned in the following dialogue:
"_Cassius._ But, soft, I pray you: what, did Cæsar 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.
_Cassius._ No, Cæsar hath it not; but you, and I,
And honest Casca, we have the falling-sickness."
_Fistula._ At the present day a fistula means an abscess external to the
rectum, but in Shakespeare's day it was used in a more general
signification for a burrowing abscess in any situation.[604] The play of
"All's Well that Ends Well" has a special interest, because, as Dr.
Bucknill says, its very plot 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 a great 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 taken from the tale of Gilletta of
Narbonne, in the "Decameron" of Boccaccio. It came to Shakespeare
through the medium of Painter's "Palace of Pleasure," and is to be found
in the first volume, which was printed as early as 1566.[605] The story
is thus introduced by Shakespeare in the following dialogue (i. 1),
where the Countess of Rousillon is represented as inquiring:
"What hope is there of his majesty's amendment?
_Laf._ 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 by
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.
_Laf._ 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.
_Laf._ 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.
_Ber._ What is it, my good lord, the king languishes of?
_Laf._ A fistula, my lord."
[604] Dr. Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 95.
[605] Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. iii. p. 225.
The account given of Helena's secret remedy and the king's reason for
rejecting it give, says Dr. Bucknill, an excellent idea of the state of
opinion with regard to the practice of physic in Shakespeare's time.
_Fit._ Formerly the term "rapture" was synonymous with a fit or trance.
The word is used by Brutus in "Coriolanus" (ii. 1):
"your prattling nurse
Into a rapture lets her baby cry
While she chats him."
Steevens quotes from the "Hospital for London's Follies" (1602), where
Gossip Luce says: "Your darling will weep itself into a rapture, if you
take not good heed."[606]
[606] See Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. vii. p. 347.
_Gold._ It was a long-prevailing opinion that a solution of gold had
great medicinal virtues, and that the incorruptibility of the metal
might be communicated to a body impregnated with it. Thus, in "2 Henry
IV." (iv. 4), Prince Henry, in the course of his address to his father,
says:
"Coming to look on you, thinking you dead,
And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,
I spake unto this 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 medicine potable.'"
Potable gold was one of the panaceas of ancient quacks. In John Wight's
translation of the "Secretes of Alexis" is a receipt "to dissolve and
reducte golde into a potable licour, which 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,
however, is a highly complicated one, the gold being acted upon by juice
of lemons, honey, common salt, and _aqua vitæ_, and distillation
frequently repeated from a "urinall of glass"--as the oftener it is
distilled the better it is. "Thus doyng," it is said, "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 very excellent to
preserve a man's youthe and healthe, and to heale in a fewe daies any
disease rooted in a man, and thought incurable. The said golde will also
be good and profitable for diverse other operations and effectes: as
good wittes and diligent searchers of the secretes of nature may easily
judge." A further allusion to gold as a medicine is probably made in
"All's Well that Ends Well" (v. 3), where the King says to Bertram:
"Plutus himself,
That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine,
Hath not in nature's mystery more science,
Than I have in this ring."
Chaucer, too, in his sarcastic excuse for the doctor's avarice, refers
to this old belief:
"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."
Once more, in Sir Kenelm Digby's "Receipts" (1674), we are told that the
gold is to be calcined with three salts, ground with sulphur, burned in
a reverberatory 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."
The term "grand liquor" is also used by Shakespeare for the _aurum
potabile_ of the alchemist, as in "Tempest" (v. 1):
"Where should they
Find this grand liquor that hath gilded them?"
_Good Year._ This is evidently a corruption of _goujère_, a disease
derived from the French _gouge_, a common camp-follower, and probably
alludes to the _Morbus Gallicus_. Thus, in "King Lear" (v. 3), we read:
"The good-years shall devour them, flesh and fell,
Ere they shall make us weep."
With the corruption, however, of the spelling, the word lost in time its
real meaning, and it is, consequently, found in passages where a sense
opposite to the true one is intended.[607] It was often used in
exclamations, as in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 4): "We must give folks
leave to prate: what, the good-jear!" In "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 1),
Thersites, by the "rotten diseases of the south," probably meant the
_Morbus Gallicus_.
[607] Wright's "Notes to King Lear" (1877), p. 196.
_Handkerchief._ It was formerly a common practice in England for those
who were sick to wear a kerchief on their heads, and still continues at
the present day among the common people in many places. Thus, in "Julius
Cæsar" (ii. 1), we find the following allusion:
"O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius,
To wear a kerchief! Would you were not sick!"
"If," says Fuller, "this county [Cheshire] hath bred no writers in that
faculty [physic], the wonder is the less, if it be true what I read,
that if any here be sick, they make him a posset and tye a kerchief on
his head, and if that will not mend him, then God be merciful to
him."[608]
[608] "Worthies of England" (1662), p. 180.
_Hysteria._ This disorder, which, in Shakespeare's day, we are told, was
known as "the mother," or _Hysterica passio_, was not considered
peculiar to women only. It is probable that, when the poet wrote the
following lines in "King Lear" (ii. 4), where he makes the king say,
"O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!
_Hysterica passio!_ down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element's below!--Where is this daughter?"
he had in view the subjoined passages from Harsnet's "Declaration of
Popish Impostures" (1603), a work which, it has been suggested,[609] "he
may have consulted in order to furnish out his character of Tom of
Bedlam with demoniacal gibberish." The first occurs at p. 25: "Ma.
Maynie had a spice of the _hysterica passio_, as it seems, from his
youth; hee himselfe termes it the moother (as you may see in his
confessione)." Master Richard Mainy, who was persuaded by the priests
that he was possessed of the devil, deposes as follows (p. 263): "The
disease I speake of was a spice of the mother, wherewith I had been
troubled (as is before mentioned) before my going into Fraunce. Whether
I doe rightly terme it the _mother_ or no I know not." Dr. Jordan, in
1603, published "A Briefe Discourse of a Disease called the Suffocation
of the Mother."
[609] Singer's "Shakespeare," pp. 384, 385; Wright's "Notes to
King Lear," pp. 154, 155.
_Infection._ According to an old but erroneous belief, infection
communicated to another left the infector free; in allusion to which
Timon ("Timon of Athens," iv. 3) says:
"I will not kiss thee; then the rot returns
To thine own lips again."
Among other notions prevalent in days gone by was the general
contagiousness of disease, to which an allusion seems to be made in "A
Midsummer-Night's Dream" (i. 1), where Helena says:
"Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go."
Malone considers that Shakespeare, in the following passage in "Venus
and Adonis," alludes to a practice of his day, when it was customary, in
time of the plague, to strew the rooms of every house with rue and other
strong-smelling herbs, to prevent infection:
"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!"
Again, the contagiousness of pestilence is thus alluded to by Beatrice
in "Much Ado About Nothing" (i. 1): "O Lord, he will hang upon him like
a disease: he is sooner caught than the pestilence, and the taker runs
presently mad." The belief, too, that the poison of pestilence dwells in
the air, is spoken of in "Timon of Athens" (iv. 3):
"When Jove
Will o'er some high-viced city hang his poison
In the sick air."
And, again, in "Richard II." (i. 3):
"Devouring pestilence hangs in our air."
It is alluded to, also, in "Twelfth Night" (i. 1), where the Duke says:
"O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence."
While on this subject, we may quote the following dialogue from the same
play (ii. 3), which, as Dr. Bucknill[610] remarks, "involves the idea
that contagion 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 Andrew._ Very sweet and contagious, i' faith.
_Sir Toby._ To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion."
[610] "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 121.
_Insanity._ That is a common idea that the symptoms of madness are
increased by the full moon. Shakespeare mentions this popular fallacy in
"Othello" (v. 2), where he tells us that the moon makes men insane when
she comes nearer the earth than she was wont.[611]
[611] See p. 73.
Music as a cure for madness is, perhaps, referred to in "King Lear" (iv.
7), where the physician of the king says: "Louder the music there."[612]
Mr. Singer, however, has this note: "Shakespeare considered soft music
favorable to sleep. Lear, we may suppose, had been thus composed to
rest; and now the physician desires louder music to be played, for the
purpose of waking him."
[612] Halliwell-Phillipps's "Handbook Index to Shakespeare"
(1866), p. 333.
So, in "Richard II." (v. 5), the king says:
"This music mads me: let it sound no more;
For though it have holp madmen to their wits,
In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad."
The power of music as a medical agency has been recognized from the
earliest times, and in mental cases has often been highly
efficacious.[613] Referring to music as inducing sleep, we may quote the
touching passage in "2 Henry IV." (iv. 5), where the king says:
"Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends;
Unless some dull and favourable hand
Will whisper music to my weary spirit.
_Warwick._ Call for the music in the other room."
[613] "A Book of Musical Anecdote," by F. Crowest (1878), vol.
ii. pp. 251, 252.
Ariel, in "The Tempest" (ii. 1), enters playing _solemn music_ to
produce this effect.
A mad-house seems formerly to have been designated a "dark house."
Hence, in "Twelfth Night" (iii. 4), the reason for putting Malvolio into
a dark room was, to make him believe that he was mad. In the following
act (iv. 2) he says: "Good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad; they have
laid me here in hideous darkness;" and further on (v. 1) he asks,
"Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd,
Kept in a dark house?"
In "As You Like It" (iii. 2), Rosalind says that "Love is merely a
madness, and ... deserves as well a dark-house and a whip as madmen do."
The expression "horn-mad," _i. e._, quite mad, occurs in the "Comedy of
Errors" (ii. 1): "Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad." And,
again, in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 4), Mistress Quickly says, "If he
had found the young man, he would have been horn-mad."
Madness in cattle was supposed to arise from a distemper in the
internal substance of their horns, and furious or mad cattle had their
horns bound with straw.
_King's Evil._ This was a common name in years gone by for scrofula,
because the sovereigns of England were supposed to possess the power of
curing it, "without other medicine, save only by handling and prayer."
This custom of "touching for the king's evil" is alluded to in "Macbeth"
(iv. 3), where the following dialogue is introduced:
"_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.
_Malcolm._ I thank you, doctor.
_Macduff._ What's the disease he means?
_Malcolm._ '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;
Hanging 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."
This reference, which has nothing to do with the progress of the drama,
is introduced, obviously, in compliment to King James, who fancied
himself endowed with the Confessor's powers.[614] The poet found
authority for the passage in Holinshed (vol. i. p. 279): "As hath bin
thought, he was enspired with the gift of prophecie, and also to haue
hadde the gift of healing infirmities and diseases. Namely, he vsed to
help those that were vexed with the disease, commonly called the kyngs
euill, and left that vertue as it were a portion of inheritance vnto his
successors the kyngs of this realme." Edward's miraculous powers were
believed in, we are told, by his contemporaries, or at least soon after
his death, and were expressly recognized by Pope Alexander III., who
canonized him. In Plot's "Oxfordshire" (chap. x. sec. 125) there is an
account, accompanied with a drawing, of the touch-piece supposed to have
been given by this monarch. James I.'s practice of touching for the evil
is frequently mentioned in Nichols's "Progresses." Charles I., when at
York, touched seventy persons in one day. Indeed, few are aware to what
an extent this superstition once prevailed. In the course of twenty
years, between 1660 and 1682, no less than 92,107 persons were touched
for this disease. The first English monarch who refused to touch for the
king's evil was William III., but the practice was resumed by Queen
Anne, who officially announced, in the _London Gazette_, March 12, 1712,
her royal intention to receive patients afflicted with the malady in
question. It was probably about that time that Johnson was touched by
her majesty, upon the recommendation of the celebrated physician Sir
John Floyer, of Lichfield. King George I. put an end to this practice,
which is said to have originated with Edward the Confessor, in
1058.[615] The custom was also observed by French kings; and on Easter
Sunday, 1686, Louis XIV. is said to have touched 1600 persons.
[614] See Beckett's "Free and Impartial Enquiry into the
Antiquity and Efficacy of Touching for the King's Evil," 1722.
[615] See "Notes and Queries," 1861, 2d series, vol. xi. p. 71;
Burns's "History of Parish Registers," 1862, pp. 179, 180;
Pettigrew's "Superstitions Connected with Medicine and
Surgery," 1844, pp. 117-154.
_Lethargy._ This is frequently confounded by medical men of former
times, and by Shakespeare himself, with apoplexy. The term occurs in the
list of diseases quoted by Thersites in "Troilus and Cressida" (v.
1).[616]
[616] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 235.
_Leprosy._ This was, in years gone by, used to denote the _lues
venerea_, as in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 8):
"Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt,--
Whom leprosy o'ertake!
* * * * *
Hoists sails and flies."
_Leech._ The old medical term for a leech is a "blood-sucker," and a
knot would be an appropriate term for a number of clustering leeches.
So, in "Richard III." (iii. 3), Grey, being led to the block, says of
Richard's minions:
"A knot you are of damned blood-suckers."
In "2 Henry VI." (iii. 2) mention is made by Warwick of the
"blood-sucker of sleeping men," which, says Dr. Bucknill, appears to
mean the vampire-bat.
_Measles._ This word originally signified leprosy, although in modern
times used for a very different disorder. Its derivation is the old
French word _meseau_, or _mesel_, a leper. Thus, Cotgrave has "Meseau, a
meselled, scurvy, leaporous, lazarous person." Distempered or scurvied
hogs are still said to be measled. It is in this sense that it is used
in "Coriolanus" (iii. 1):
"As for my country I have shed my blood,
Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs
Coin words till their decay, against those measles,
Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought
The very way to catch them."
_Pleurisy._ This denotes a plethora, or redundancy of blood, and was so
used, probably, from an erroneous idea that the word was derived from
_plus pluris_. It is employed by Shakespeare in "Hamlet" (iv. 7):
"For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
Dies in his own too-much."
In the "Two Noble Kinsmen" (v. 1) there is a similar phrase:
"that heal'st with blood
The earth when it is sick, and cur'st the world
O' the plurisy of people."
The word is frequently used by writers contemporary with Shakespeare.
Thus, for instance, Massinger, in "The Picture" (iv. 2), says:
"A plurisy of ill blood you must let out
By labour."
_Mummy._ This was a preparation for magical purposes, made from dead
bodies, and was used as a medicine both long before and long after
Shakespeare's day. Its virtues seem to have been chiefly imaginary, and
even the traffic in it fraudulent.[617] The preparation of mummy is said
to have been first brought into use in medicine by a Jewish physician,
who wrote that flesh thus embalmed was good for the cure of divers
diseases, and particularly bruises, to prevent the blood's gathering and
coagulating. It has, however, long been known that no use whatever can
be derived from it in medicine, and "that all which is sold in the
shops, whether brought from Venice or Lyons, or even directly from the
Levant by Alexandria, is factitious, the work of certain Jews, who
counterfeit it by drying carcasses in ovens, after having prepared them
with powder of myrrh, caballine aloes, Jewish pitch, and other coarse or
unwholesome drugs."[618] Shakespeare speaks of this preparation. Thus
Othello (iii. 4), referring to the handkerchief which he had given to
Desdemona, relates how:
"it was dyed in mummy which the skilful
Conserv'd of maidens' hearts."
[617] See Pettigrew's "History of Mummies," 1834; also Gannal,
"Traité d'Embaumement," 1838.
[618] Rees's "Encyclopædia," 1829, vol. xxiv.
And, in "Macbeth" (iv. 1), the "witches' mummy" forms one of the
ingredients of the boiling caldron. Webster, in "The White Devil" (1857,
p. 5), speaks of it:
"Your followers
Have swallow'd you like mummia, and, being sick,
With such unnatural and horrid physic,
Vomit you up i' the kennel."
Sir Thomas Browne, in his interesting "Fragment on Mummies," tells us
that Francis I. always carried mummy[619] with him as a panacea against
all disorders. Some used it for epilepsy, some for gout, some used it as
a styptic. He further adds: "The common opinion of the virtues of mummy
bred great consumption thereof, and princes and great men contended for
this strange panacea, wherein Jews dealt largely, manufacturing mummies
from dead carcasses, and giving them the names of kings, while specifics
were compounded from crosses and gibbets leavings."
[619] Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his "Handbook Index to
Shakespeare," 1866, p. 332, calls it a balsamic liquid.
_Nightmare._ There are various charms practised, in this and other
countries, for the prevention of nightmare, many of which are
exceedingly quaint. In days gone by it appears that St. Vitalis, whose
name has been corrupted into St. Withold, was invoked; and, by way of
illustration, Theobald quotes from the old play of "King John"[620] the
following:
"Sweet S. Withold, of thy lenitie, defend us from extremitie."
[620] "Six Old Plays," ed. Nichols, p. 256, quoted by Mr. Aldis
Wright, in his "Notes to King Lear," 1877, p. 170.
Shakespeare, alluding to the nightmare, in his "King Lear" (iii. 4),
refers to the same saint, and gives us a curious old charm:
"Saint Withold footed thrice the old [wold];
He met the night-mare, and her nine-fold;
Bid her alight
And her troth plight,
And, aroint thee, witch, aroint thee!"
For what purpose, as Mr. Singer[621] has pointed out, the incubus is
enjoined to "plight her troth," will appear from a charm against the
nightmare, in Reginald Scot's "Discovery of Witchcraft," which occurs,
with slight variation, in Fletcher's "Monsieur Thomas" (iv. 6):
"St. George, St. George, our lady's knight,
He walks by day, so does he by night,
And when he had her found,
He her beat and her bound,
Until to him her troth she plight,
She would not stir from him that night."
[621] "Shakespeare," vol. ix. p. 413.
_Paralysis._ An old term for chronic paralysis was "cold palsies,"
which is used by Thersites in "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 1).[622]
[622] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 235.
_Philosopher's Stone._ This was supposed, by its touch, to convert base
metal into gold. It is noticed by Shakespeare in "Antony and Cleopatra"
(i. 5):
"_Alexas._ Sovereign of Egypt, hail!
_Cleopatra._ How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!
Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath
With his tinct gilded thee."
The alchemists call the matter, whatever it may be, says Johnson, by
which they perform transmutation, a medicine. Thus, Chapman, in his
"Shadow of Night" (1594): "O, then, thou _great elixir_ of all
treasures;" on which passage he has the following note: "The
philosopher's stone, or _philosophica medicina_, is called the _great
elixir_." Another reference occurs in "Timon of Athens" (ii. 2), where
the Fool, in reply to the question of Varro's Servant, "What is a
whoremaster, fool?" answers, "A fool in good clothes, and something like
thee. 'Tis a spirit: sometime 't appears like a lord; sometime like a
lawyer; sometime like a philosopher, with two stones moe than's
artificial one," etc.; a passage which Johnson explains as meaning "more
than the philosopher's stone," or twice the value of a philosopher's
stone; though, as Farmer observes, "Gower has a chapter, in his
'Confessio Amantis,' of the three stones that philosophers made."
Singer,[623] in his note on the philosopher's stone, says that Sir
Thomas Smith was one of those who lost considerable sums in seeking of
it. Sir Richard Steele was one of the last eminent men who entertained
hopes of being successful in this pursuit. His laboratory was at
Poplar.[624]
[623] "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. iii. p. 284.
[624] See Pettigrew's "Medical Superstitions," pp. 13, 14.
_Pimple._ In the Midland Counties, a common name for a pimple, which, by
rubbing, is made to smart, or _rubbed to sense_, is "a quat." The word
occurs in "Othello" (v. 1), where Roderigo is so called by Iago:
"I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense,
And he grows angry."
--Roderigo being called a quat by the same mode of speech as a low fellow
is now called a _scab_. It occurs in Langham's "Garden of Health," p.
153: "The leaves [of coleworts] laid to by themselves, or bruised with
barley meale, are good for the inflammations, and soft swellings,
burnings, impostumes, and cholerick sores or quats," etc.
_Plague._ "Tokens," or "God's tokens," were the terms for those spots on
the body which denoted the infection of the plague. In "Love's Labour's
Lost" (v. 2), Biron says:
"For the Lord's tokens on you do I see;"
and in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 10) there is another allusion:
"_Enobarbus._ How appears the fight?
_Scarus._ On our side like the token'd pestilence,
Where death is sure."
In "Troilus and Cressida" (ii. 3), Ulysses says of Achilles:
"He is so plaguy proud that the death tokens of it
Cry--'No recovery.'"
King Lear, too, it would seem, compares Goneril (ii. 4) to these fatal
signs, when he calls her "a plague sore." When the _tokens_ had appeared
on any of the inhabitants, the house was shut up, and "Lord have mercy
upon us" written or printed upon the door. Hence Biron, in "Love's
Labour's Lost" (v. 2), says:
"Write, 'Lord have mercy on us,' on those three;
They are infected, in their hearts it lies;
They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes."
The "red pestilence," referred to by Volumnia in "Coriolanus" (iv. 1),
probably alludes to the cutaneous eruptions common in the plague:
"Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome,
And occupations perish!"
In "The Tempest" (i. 2), Caliban says to Prospero, "The red plague rid
you."
_Poison._ According to a vulgar error prevalent in days gone by, poison
was supposed to swell the body, an allusion to which occurs in "Julius
Cæsar" (iv. 3), where, in the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, the
former declares:
"You shall digest the venom of your spleen,
Though it do split you."
We may also compare the following passage in "2 Henry IV." (iv. 4),
where the king says:
"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."
In "King John," Hubert, when describing the effect of the poison upon
the monk (v. 6), narrates how his "bowels suddenly burst out." This
passage also contains a reference to the popular custom prevalent in the
olden days, of great persons having their food tasted by those who were
supposed to have made themselves acquainted with its wholesomeness. This
practice, however, could not always afford security when the taster was
ready to sacrifice his own life, as in the present case:[625]
"_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?
_Hubert._ A monk, I tell you; a resolved villain."
[625] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 136.
The natives of Africa have been supposed to be possessed of the secret
how to temper poisons with such art as not to operate till several
years after they were administered. Their drugs were then as certain in
their effect as subtle in their preparation.[626] Thus, in "The Tempest"
(iii. 3), Gonzalo says:
"All three of them are desperate: their great guilt,
Like poison given to work a great time after,
Now 'gins to bite the spirits."
[626] Singer's "Shakespeare," vol. i. p. 65.
The belief in slow poisoning was general in bygone times, although no
better founded on fact, remarks Dr. Bucknill,[627] than the notion that
persons burst with poison, or that narcotics could, like an alarum
clock, be set for a certain number of hours. So, in "Cymbeline" (v. 5),
Cornelius relates to the king the queen's confession:
"She did confess, she had
For you a mortal mineral; which, being took,
Should by the minute feed on life, and, lingering,
By inches waste you."
[627] "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 226.
_Pomander._ This was either a composition of various perfumes wrought in
the shape of a ball or other form, and worn in the pocket or hung about
the neck, and even sometimes suspended to the wrist; or a case for
containing such a mixture of perfumes. It was used as an amulet against
the plague or other infections, as well as for an article of luxury.
There is an allusion to its use in the "Winter's Tale" (iv. 3), by
Autolycus, who enumerates it among all his trumpery that he had sold.
The following recipe for making a pomander we find in an old play:[628]
"Your only way to make a pomander is this: take an ounce of the purest
garden mould, cleans'd and steep'd seven days in change of motherless
rose-water. Then take the best labdanum, benjoin, with storaxes,
ambergris, civet, and musk. Incorporate them together, and work them
into what form you please. This, if your breath be not too valiant, will
make you smell as sweet as any lady's dog."
[628] Quoted in Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 671.
_Rheumatism._ In Shakespeare's day this was used in a far wider sense
than nowadays, including, in addition to what is now understood by the
term, distillations from the head, catarrhs, etc. Malone quotes from the
"Sidney Memorials" (vol. i. p. 94), where the health of Sir Henry Sidney
is described: "He hath verie much distempored divers parts of his bodie;
as namelie, his heade, his stomack, &c., and thereby is always subject
to distillacions, coughes, and other rumatick diseases." Among the many
superstitions relating to the moon,[629] one is mentioned in "A
Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 1), where Titania tells how the moon,
"Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound."
[629] See p. 74.
The word "rheumatic" was also formerly used in the sense of choleric or
peevish, as in "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), where the Hostess says: "You two
never meet but you fall to some discord: you are both, in good troth, as
rheumatic as two dry toasts." Again, in "Henry V." (ii. 3), the Hostess
says of Falstaff: "A' did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then
he was rheumatic,[630] and talked of the whore of Babylon."
[630] Malone suggests that the hostess may mean "then he was
lunatic."
_Serpigo._ This appears to have been a term extensively used by old
medical authors for any creeping skin disease, being especially applied
to that known as the _herpes circinatus_. The expression occurs in
"Measure for Measure" (iii. 1), being coupled by the Duke with "the
gout" and the "rheum." In "Troilus and Cressida" (ii. 3), Thersites
says: "Now, the dry serpigo on the subject."
_Sickness._ Sickness of stomach, which the slightest disgust is apt to
provoke, is still expressed by the term "queasy;" hence the word denoted
_delicate_, _unsettled_; as in "King Lear" (ii. 1), where it is used by
Edmund:
"I have one thing, of a queasy question,
Which I must act."
So Ben Jonson employs it in "Sejanus" (i. 1):
"These times are rather queasy to be touched."
_Sigh._ It was a prevalent notion that sighs impair the strength and
wear out the animal powers. Thus, in "2 Henry VI." (iii. 2), Queen
Margaret speaks of "blood-drinking sighs." We may, too, compare the
words of Oberon in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (iii. 2), who refers to
"sighs of love, that cost the fresh blood dear." In "3 Henry VI." (iv.
4), Queen Elizabeth says:
"for this I draw in many a tear,
And stop the rising of blood-sucking sighs."
Once more, in "Hamlet" (iv. 7), the King mentions the "spendthrift sigh,
that hurts by easing." Fenton, in his "Tragical Discourses" (1579),
alludes to this notion in the following words: "Your scorching sighes
that have already drayned your body of his wholesome humoures."
It was also an ancient belief that sorrow consumed the blood and
shortened life. Hence Romeo tells Juliet (iii. 5):
"And trust me, love, in my eye so do you:
Dry sorrow drinks our blood."
_Small-pox._ Such a terrible plague was this disease in the days of our
ancestors, that its name was used as an imprecation. Thus, in "Love's
Labour's Lost" (v. 2), the Princess says: "A pox of that jest."
_Saliva._ The color of the spittle was, with the medical men of olden
times, an important point of diagnosis. Thus, in "2 Henry IV." (i. 2),
Falstaff exclaims against fighting on a hot day, and wishes he may
"never spit white again," should it so happen.[631]
[631] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 150.
_Sterility._ The charm against sterility referred to by Cæsar in "Julius
Cæsar" (i. 2) is copied from Plutarch, who, in his description of the
festival Lupercalia, tells us how "noble young men run naked through the
city, striking in sport whom they meet in the way with leather thongs,"
which blows were commonly believed to have the wonderful effect
attributed to them by Cæsar:
"The barren, touched in this holy chase,
Shake off their sterile curse."
_Suicide._ Cominius, in "Coriolanus" (i. 9), arguing against Marcius's
overstrained modesty, refers to the manner in which suicide was thought
preventable in olden times:
"If 'gainst yourself you be incens'd, we'll put you,
Like one that means his proper harm, in manacles,
Then reason safely with you."
_Toothache._ It was formerly a common superstition--and one, too, not
confined to our own country--that toothache was caused by a little worm,
having the form of an eel, which gradually gnawed a hole in the tooth.
In "Much Ado About Nothing" (iii. 2), Shakespeare speaks of this curious
belief:
"_Don Pedro._ What! sigh for the toothache?
_Leonato._ Where is but a humour, or a worm."
This notion was, some years ago, prevalent in Derbyshire,[632] where
there was an odd way of extracting, as it was thought, the worm. A small
quantity of a mixture, consisting of dry and powdered herbs, was placed
in some small vessel, into which a live coal from the fire was dropped.
The patient then held his or her open mouth over the vessel, and inhaled
the smoke as long as it could be borne. The cup was then taken away, and
in its place a glass of water was put before the patient. Into this
glass the person breathed hard for a few moments, when it was supposed
the grub or worm could be seen in the water. In Orkney, too, toothache
goes by the name of "the worm," and, as a remedy, the following charm,
called "wormy lines," is written on a piece of paper, and worn as an
amulet, by the person affected, in some part of his dress:
"Peter sat on a marble stone weeping;
Christ came past, and said, 'What aileth thee, Peter?'
'O my Lord, my God, my tooth doth ache.'
'Arise, O Peter! go thy way; thy tooth shall ache no more.'"
[632] See "English Folk-Lore," p. 156.
This notion is still current in Germany, and is mentioned by Thorpe, in
his "Northern Mythology" (vol. iii. p. 167), who quotes a North German
incantation, beginning,
"Pear tree, I complain to thee;
Three worms sting me."
It is found, too, even in China and New Zealand,[633] the following
charm being used in the latter country:
"An eel, a spiny back
True indeed, indeed: true in sooth, in sooth.
You must eat the head
Of said spiny back."
[633] See Shortland's "Traditions and Superstitions of the
New-Zealanders," 1856, p. 131.
A writer in the _Athenæum_ (Jan. 28, 1860), speaking of the Rev. R. H.
Cobbold's "Pictures of the Chinese, Drawn by Themselves," says: "The
first portrait is that of a quack doctress, who pretends to cure
toothache 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 operation 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." We
may further note that John of Gatisden, one of the oldest medical
authors, attributes decay of the teeth to "a humour or a worm." In his
"Rosa Anglica"[634] he says: "Si vermes sint in dentibus, Rx semen porri,
seu lusquiami contere et misce cum cera, pone super carbones, et fumus
recipiatur per embotum, quoniam sanat. Solum etiam semen lusquiami valet
coctum in aqua calida, supra quam aquam patiens palatum apertum si
tenuerit, cadent vermes evidenter vel in illam aquam, vel in aliam quæ
ibi fuerit ibi posita. De myrrha et aloe ponantur in dentem, ubi est
vermis: semen caulis, et absinthium, per se vermes interficit."
[634] Liber Secundus--"De Febribus," p. 923, ed. 1595.
_Tub-fast._ In years past "the discipline of sweating in a heated tub
for a considerable time, accompanied with strict abstinence, was thought
necessary for the cure of venereal taint."[635] Thus, in "Timon of
Athens" (iv. 3), Timon says to Timandra:
"Be a whore still! they love thee not that use thee;
Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.
Make use of thy salt hours: season the slaves
For tubs and baths: bring down rose-cheeked youth
To the tub-fast, and the diet."
[635] Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 906.
As beef, too, was usually salted down in a tub, the one process was
jocularly compared to the other. So, in "Measure for Measure" (iii. 2),
Pompey, when asked by Lucio about his mistress, replies, "Troth, sir,
she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub." Again,
in "Henry V." (ii. 1), Pistol speaks of "the powdering-tub of infamy."
_Vinegar._ In Shakespeare's day this seems to have been termed "eisel"
(from A. S. _aisel_), being esteemed highly efficacious in preventing
the communication of the plague and other contagious diseases. In this
sense it has been used by Shakespeare in Sonnet cxi.:
"like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel, 'gainst my strong infection."
In a MS. Herbal in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, occurs
"acetorum, ance vynegre or aysel." The word occurs again in "Hamlet"
(v. 1), where Laertes is challenged by Hamlet:
"Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?"
The word woo't, in the northern counties, is the common contraction of
_wouldst thou_, which is the reading of the old copies. In former years
it was the fashion with gallants to do some extravagant feat, as a proof
of their love, in honor of their mistresses, and, among others, the
swallowing of some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent. Hence,
in the above passage, some bitter potion is evidently meant, which it
was a penance to drink. Some are of opinion that _wormwood_ is alluded
to; and Mr. Singer thinks it probable that "the propoma called
absinthites, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use, may have
been in the poet's mind, to drink up a quantity of which would be an
extreme pass of amorous demonstration." It has been suggested by a
correspondent of "Notes and Queries,"[636] that the reference in this
passage from "Hamlet" is to a Lake Esyl, which figures in Scandinavian
legends. Messrs. Wright and Clark, however, in their "Notes to Hamlet"
(1876, p. 218), say that they have consulted Mr. Magnusson on this
point, and he writes as follows: "No such lake as Esyl is known to Norse
mythology and folk-lore." Steevens supposes it to be the river
Yssell.[637]
[636] See 4th series, vol. x. pp. 108, 150, 229, 282, 356.
[637] See Dyce's "Shakespeare," vol. vii. p. 239.
_Water-casting._ The fanciful notion of recognizing diseases by the mere
inspection of the urine was denounced years ago, by an old statute of
the College of Physicians, as belonging to tricksters and impostors, and
any member of the college was forbidden to give advice by this so-called
"water-casting" without he also saw the patient. The statute of the
college runs as follows: "Statuimus, et ordinamus, ut nemo, sive socius,
sive candidatus, sive permissus consilii quidquam impertiat
veteratoriis, et impostoribus, super urinarum nuda inspectione, nisi
simul ad ægrum vocetur, ut ibidem, pro re natû, idonea medicamenta ab
honesto aliquo pharmacopoea componenda præscribat." An allusion to this
vulgar error occurs in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (ii. 1), where,
after Speed has given to Valentine his amusing 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:
"_Valentine._ Are all these things perceived in me?
_Speed._ They are all perceived without ye.
_Valentine._ 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
but is a physician to comment on your malady."
This singular pretence, says Dr. Bucknill,[638] 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 inspection of the urine. However this may be, the practice is of
very ancient date." Numerous references to this piece of medical
quackery occur in many of our old writers, most of whom condemn it in
very strong terms. Thus Forestus, in his "Medical Politics," speaks of
it as being, in his opinion, a practice altogether evil, and expresses
an earnest desire that medical men would combine to repress it.
Shakespeare gives a further allusion to it in the passage where he makes
Macbeth (v. 3) say:
"If thou couldst, 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."
[638] "The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," 1860, pp. 1-64.
And in "2 Henry IV" (i. 2) Falstaff asks the page, "What says the doctor
to my water?" and, once more, in "Twelfth Night" (iii. 4), Fabian,
alluding to Malvolio, says, "Carry his water to the wise woman."
It seems probable, too, that, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. 3),
the term "mock-water," employed by the host to the French Dr. Caius,
refers to the mockery of judging of diseases by the water or
urine--"mock-water," in this passage, being equivalent to "you pretending
water-doctor!"