Cobweb gives Bottom the opportunity of alluding to the usefulness of
cobwebs for cut fingers. “In Twelfth Night” Sir Toby Belch jocularly
addresses Maria as “My nettle of India” (Act II., Sc. 5), probably
Indian hemp. We read of “parmaceti,” “the sovereign’st thing on earth
for an inward bruise,” and also of the “villainous saltpetre” in Act
I., Sc. 3, of “Henry IV.” Part I.; in the second part (Act I., Sc. 2)
there is an allusion to the fashion of diagnosis by the examination of
a person’s water; and in Act IV., Sc. 4, we find mention of the deadly
character of aconitum, and in the same scene of gold “preserving life
in medicine potable.” In “Antony and Cleopatra,” the Queen greets
Antony’s messenger with the remark that though so much unlike him yet
that “coming from him, that great medicine hath with his tinct gilded
thee” (Act I., Sc. 5), evidently an allusion to the tincture of gold.
Another reference to potable gold is found in “All’s Well that Ends
Well.”
The plantain for a broken shin is called for by Costard in “Love’s
Labour’s Lost” (“plantain, a plain plantain; no salve, sir, but a
plantain,” Act III., Sc. 1); plantain leaf for a broken shin is also
recommended by Romeo (Act I., Sc. 2). In the same scene occur the words
so dear to homeopaths: “One fire burns out another’s burning.” In “King
John” (Act V., Sc. 2,) revolt is likened to a plaster which will heal
“inveterate canker of the wound by making many.”
In “Henry VI.,” part II. (Act V., Sc. 1) York quotes the legend of
Achilles’ spear “able to kill or cure”; while in “Hamlet” (Act IV., Sc.
7) Laertes declares that he will anoint his sword with unction bought
of a mountebank;
“No mortal that but dips 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
That is but scratched withal.”
The action of drugs as charms is much in evidence in “Othello.” The
father of Desdemona accuses the Moor of having
“Practised on her with foul charms,
Abused her delicate youth with drugs or minerals
That awaken motion.”
And again Brabantio tells the Duke that Desdemona has been stolen from
him
“And corrupted
By spells and medicines bought of mountebanks.”
These allusions all occur in scenes 2 and 3 of the first Act; in the
latter also Iago promises Roderigo that Desdemona shall soon be to
Othello “bitter as coloquintida.” At the end of this play Othello
describes his “subdued eyes dropping tears as fast as the Arabian trees
their medicinal gum.”
Autolycus refers to aqua vitæ as a restorative in the “Winter’s Tale”
(Act IV., Sc. 3), as does the nurse in “Romeo and Juliet” when she
finds her mistress dead (Act IV., Sc. 5). The “popinjay” takes snuff in
“Henry IV.” (part I., Act I., Sc. 3), Cleopatra calls for mandragora to
drink “that I might sleep out this great gap of time my Antony is away”
(“Ant. and Cleop.,” Act I., Sc. 5). “Not poppy nor mandragora, nor all
the drowsy syrups of the world,” said Iago, shall medicine Othello
against the poison he has given him (“Othello,” Act III., Sc. 3).
“Sleepy drinks” are mentioned in the “Winter’s Tale,” (Act I., Sc. 1),
and in the same play (“Winter’s Tale,” Act II., Sc. 1) Shakespeare uses
the word “land-damn,” which some of his commentators have been disposed
to identify with laudanum. The King of Sicily grossly insults his wife,
Hermione, declaring her to be an adultress, Antigonus warmly defends
her and assures the King that he has been “abused by some putters-on
who will be damn’d for’t,” and he adds,
“Would I knew the villain,
I would land-damn him.”
The idea is that this may be a misprint for laudanum, meaning, “I would
poison him.” It must be added that this explanation does not find
much favour, and perhaps it is rather far-fetched. It is mentioned
by Stevens as having been proposed by Dr. Farmer, but Furness thinks
that Stevens was poking fun at the solemn nonsense of his learned
friend. But the other interpretations are not much better. There is,
it appears, an old dialect word “lan-dan” which meant following a man
with kettles and other rough music. Another suggested meaning is an
association with an old Saxon word (hland) for urine, conveying the
notion that the villain is to be made ill by a suppression of urine.
Both these explanations seem ludicrously insufficient to express the
anger of the speaker. Damn him up with land, that is, bury him alive,
is gruesome enough, but this is an obscure way of expressing the
proposal. Johnson disposes of the term by the theory that it was “a
word which caprice brought into fashion, and reason and grammar drove
irrevocably away. It has also been assumed, and this looks likely, that
the punctuation has got misplaced and that the sentence should read “I
would--Lord damn him.”
Shakespeare’s favourite daughter Susannah was married to Dr. John
Hall, and it is possible that the doctor and his wife lived with the
poet in his later years at Stratford. Dr. Hall was a practitioner of
some eminence, and wrote a book in Latin (translated into English in
1657 by James Cook) entitled “Select Observations ... Cures Empirical
and Historical on Very Eminent Persons in Desperate Disorders.” The
following, which is Observation 60, is worth quoting for the picture it
gives of pharmacy in the Elizabethan age.
“Talbot, the first born of the Countess of Salisbury, aged about one
year, being miserably afflicted with a fever 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 burnt, prepared in the form of a julep.
To the pulse was applied Ung Populeon ʒii mixed with spiders’ webs, and
a little powder of nutshells. It was put to one pulse of one wrist one
day, to the other the next. To the stomach was applied mithridate; to
the bowel the emplaster against worms. And thus he became well in three
days, for which the Countess returned me many thanks and gave me great
reward.”
THE APOTHECARY IN “ROMEO AND JULIET”
is a favourite illustration of the scrupulous care which Shakespeare
bestowed on the revision of his dramas. The story on which the play
is founded is well known to students. It was written by an Italian
novelist, Luigi da Porto, of Vicenza, and was entitled “La Giuletta.”
This author died in 1529. In Girolamo de la Corte’s “History of
Verona,” published at Venice in 1549, it is given and stated to be a
true story. An English translation of it in rhyme by Arthur Brooke
appeared in 1562, and a prose translation by Painter some time later.
The version by Brooke is entitled “The Tragicall Historie of Romeus
and Juliet,” and it is from this that Shakespeare took not only the
incidents, but, as will be seen, some of his expressions. Brooke
describes Romeus in Mantua, resolved to die, and looking for a shop
where he may buy poison.
_Brooke’s Version, 1562._
And then from street to street he wand’reth up and down
To see if he in any place may find in all the town
A salve meet for his sore, an oil fit for his wound,
And seeking long, alas, too soon, the thing he sought he found,
An apothecary sat unbusied at his door,
Whom by his heavy countenance he guessed to be poor;
And in his shop he saw his boxes were but few,
And in his window of his wares there was so small a shew.
Wherefore our Romeus assuredly hath thought
What by no friendship could be got with money should be bought.
For needy lack is like the poor man to compel
To sell that which the city’s law forbiddeth him to sell.
Then by the hand he drew the needy man apart
And with the sight of glittering gold inflamed well his heart.
“Take fifty crowns of gold (quoth he) I give them thee
So that before I part from hence thou shalt deliver me
Some poison strong that may in less than half an hour
Kill him whose wretched hap shall be the poison to devour.”
The wretch by covetisse is won and doth assent
To sell the thing whose sale ere long too late he doth repent.
In haste he poison sought and closely he it bound
And then began in whisp’ring voice thus in his ear to round:
“Fair Sir (quoth he), be sure this is the speeding gear,
And more there is than you shall need; for half of that is there
Will serve, I undertake, in less than half an hour
To kill the strongest man alive. Such is the poison’s power.”
_Shakespeare’s First Rendering._
This is the rendering of the scene from Shakespeare’s first quarto
edition, 1597:
As I do remember
Here dwells a pothecarie whom oft I noted
As I past by, whose needie shop is stuft
With beggarly accounts of empty boxes.
And on the same an Aligarta hangs,
Olde ends of packthred, and cakes of roses
Are thinly strewed to make up a show.
Here as I noted thus with myselfe I thought:
Ah, if a man should need a poison now,
(Whose present sale is death in Mantua),
Here he might buy it. This thought of mine
Did but forerune my need; and hereabout he dwells.
Being holiday the beggar’s shop is shut.
What ho! Apothecary! Come forth I say.
_Ap._ Who calls? What would you, Sir?
_Rom._ Here’s twenty ducats.
Give me a dram of some such speeding gere
As will despatch the weary taker’s life
As suddenly as powder being fired
From forth a cannon’s mouth.
_Ap._ Such drugs I have, I must of force confesse,
But yet the law is death to those that sell them.
_Rom._ Art though so bare and full of poverty,
And dost thou fear to violate the law?
The law is not thy friend nor the law’s friend,
And therefore make no conscience of the law.
Upon thy back hangs ragged misery
And starved famine dwelleth in thy cheeks.
_Ap._ My poverty but not my will consents.
_Rom._ I pay thy poverty but not thy will.
_Ap._ Hold, take you this and put it
In any liquid thing you will, and it will serve,
Had you the lives of twenty men.
_Rom._ Hold, take this gold, worse poison to men’s souls
Than this which thou hast given me. Go hie thee hence,
Go, buy thee cloathes, and get thee into flesh:
Come cordial and not poison, go with me
To Juliet’s grave, for there must I use thee.
Shakespeare was a busy man in 1597, and in the years before as well as
about that date he was preparing novelties for his theatre. Later he
had more leisure, and it is interesting to notice how artistically he
fills out his original sketch with only just such details as make the
ideas more vivid. In the revised version of this scene, published in
1609, there are no new ideas, but scarcely a line is left untouched.
A comparison of title-pages in the two editions is amusing and at
the same time instructive. In 1597 it reads: “An Excellent Conceited
Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet as it hath been often (with great
applause) plaid publiquely.” In 1609 this is toned down to “The most
Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet as it hath been
sundri times publiquely Acted.” The omission of the parenthetic (“with
great applause”) is significant. The poet knows he no longer needs
meretricious advertisement. The scene as we have it in our modern books
is very similar to
_Shakespeare’s Revised Version (Third Quarto, 1609)._
_Rom._ I do remember an apothecary
And hereabouts he dwells--whom late I noted
In tatter’d weeds, with overwhelming brows,
Culling of simples; meager were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;
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 packthread, and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scatter’d to make up a show.
Noting this penury, to myself I said--
And if a man did need a poison now,
Whose sale is present death in Mantua,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.
O, this same thought did but fore-run my need;
And this same needy man must sell it me.
As I remember this should be the house;
Being holiday, the beggar’s shop is shut--
What ho! Apothecary!
_Ap._ Who calls so loud?
_Rom._ 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 life-weary taker may fall dead;
And that the trunk may be discharg’d of breath
As violently as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s womb.
_Ap._ Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua’s law
Is death to any he that utters them.
_Rom._ Art thou so bare, and full of wretchedness,
And fear’st to die? famine is in thy cheeks.
Need and oppression starveth in thy eyes,
Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back,
The world is not thy friend, nor the world’s law;
The world affords no law to make thee rich;
Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
_Ap._ My poverty but not my will consents.
_Rom._ I pray thy poverty and not thy will.
_Ap._ Put this in any liquid thing you will
And drink it off; and if you had the strength
Of twenty men, it would despatch you straight.
_Rom._ There is thy gold, worse poison to men’s souls
Doing more murders in this loathsome world
Than these poor compounds that thou may’st not sell.
I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.
Farewell; buy food, and get thyself in flesh.
Come cordial, and not poison; go with me
To Juliet’s grave, for there I must use thee.
[Illustration: THE APOTHECARY.
(Drawn by Miss K. Righton.)]
Two lines in the accepted version have been the subject of much
controversy, sometimes of an acrimonious character among critics. Both
sides quote one or other of the early editions in support of their
contentions. One of the lines is “Need and oppression starveth in thy
eyes.” It is fiercely held that “starveth” in this expression should
be “stareth.” And in the famous line “I pray thy poverty and not thy
will” ordinary readers naturally think “pay” should be substituted
for “pray.” The defenders of the quoted versions contemptuously reply
that it is because we are only commonsense people and not poets that
we cannot rise to the height of appreciating the meaning of the more
recondite phrases that makes us suggest the emendations.
HEBENON.
The “juice of cursed Hebenon,” which according to the Ghost, was the
poison chosen by Hamlet’s wicked uncle to kill his father by dropping
some of it into his ears during his afternoon nap, has been much
discussed by commentators. Authorities generally favour either henbane
or ebony (hebenus). Some occasional opinions may be found suggesting
other poisons, but they do not carry much weight. Dr. Paris, for
example, in “Pharmacologia” proposes the essential oil of tobacco,
quoting in support of his opinion the authority of Gerard, who says
it was “commonly called the henbane of Peru.” Dr. Bucknill remarks
that the poet could not have meant henbane because that herb is not a
virulent poison, and would not have had the effect attributed to it.
But no dramatist would care to have his fancies subjected to the test
of science in this way. Possibly Shakespeare would hardly have cared to
justify the introduction of the ghost by strict evidence. Dr. Bucknill
decides that as no poison will fit the description the term was used
as a generic one for a drug producing “hebetudo animi.” In Beisley’s
“Shakespeare’s Garden” it is suggested that hebenon may have been a
misprint for eneron, nightshade, which Dyce, a prominent authority,
politely dismisses as a “villainous conjecture.”
A plausible German interpretation of hebenon is that it is derived
from _Eibenbaum_, the yew-tree. Eibe was the Saxon name for the
yew, and its poisonous properties were recognised from very ancient
times. It is probable that some of the quotations which have been
credited to ebony may have been really due to the yew. Spenser, for
example, writes: “Lay now thy Heben bow aside”; “A speare of Heben
wood” and “trees of bitter gall and Heben sad.” These references are
more likely to be to the yew than to the ebony: and certainly could not
have been applied to the henbane weeds. Gower (1390) has “Of hebanus
the sleepy tree.” In Marlowe’s “Jew of Malta” (1592, contemporary with
Shakespeare), several deadly things are grouped thus:--
“The blood of Hydra, Lerna’s bane,
The juice of Hebon, and Cocytus’ breath.”
There is no tradition of poisonous properties associated with ebony,
as there is with both henbane and yew, but in regard to henbane, a
remarkable passage has been found in Holland’s translation of Pliny
which was published in London just about the time when Shakespeare
was writing “Hamlet.” Pliny, dealing with henbane, says (in this
translation): “An oile is made of the seed thereof which if it be but
dropped into the eares is ynough to trouble the braine.” Shakespeare
must have been a voracious reader, he probably got Holland’s book as
soon as it came out, and finding this passage, adopted the suggestion.
He was no doubt familiar with the word hebon or hebonus, and chose
that for his verse, perhaps without caring very much whether it was a
correct interpretation of henbane or not. As a matter of fact, in the
earlier editions of “Hamlet” the word appears as hebona. In the folios,
which came later, hebonon is substituted, no doubt out of consideration
for euphony.
It is notable that the player who enacts the murder of the King (Act
III., Sc. 2) describes the poison as a
“Mixture rank of midnight weeds collected,
With Hecat’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected.”
This of course does not correspond with the suggestion that the juice
of hebenon was the product of some one poisonous plant.
XIX
SOME NOTED DRUGS.
Who was the first cultivator of corn? Who first tamed and
domesticated the animals whose strength we use, and whom we make
our food? Or who first discovered the medicinal herbs which from
the earliest times have been our resource against disease?
CARDINAL NEWMAN: Sermon on _The World’s Benefactors_.
The most valuable and original records of the history of drugs are
to be found in “Pharmacographia” by F. A. Flückiger of Strasburg and
Daniel Hanbury of London (published by Macmillan & Co.). I have as a
rule avoided copying details from that work, although I have dealt with
no subject without referring to it. In this section, however, the drugs
named are of course treated in “Pharmacographia,” and necessarily the
facts given must to some extent correspond. But comparison would show
that I have only selected subjects which were capable of discussion
from a somewhat different point of view from that which guided Messrs.
Flückiger and Hanbury.[1]
ALOES.
Dioscorides is the earliest medical writer to mention aloes as a
medicine. According to him it should be given in doses of from half a
drachm to one drachm as a gentle purge, or of three drachms if its full
cathartic effect were required. The drug is not named by Hippocrates
nor by Theophrastus.
Celsus describes it as specially valuable for city men and men of
letters (urbani et literarum cupidi); he says it is an ingredient in
all purgatives, and it is clear from the later Greek and Roman writers
how highly this remedy was esteemed. In “Pharmacographia” Hanbury
refers to the legend of Alexander the Great visiting the Island of
Socotra at the instance of Aristotle particularly on account of the
aloes grown there. It is said that Alexander left a colony of Ionians
on the island in order to ensure a sufficient supply of the drug.
Undoubtedly there were Greek Christians there in Mohammedan times and
it is probable that the Arabs invented the Alexandrian origin of them.
[Illustration: THE ALOE IN FLOWER.]
[Illustration: A MEDICINAL ALOE GROWING UNDER GLASS IN THE CHELSEA
PHYSIC GARDEN.
[This photograph was published in “London Botanic Gardens” by
P. E. F. Perrédès, B.Sc., F.L.S., published by the Wellcome
Chemical Research Laboratories, and is kindly lent for this book
by the Director of those Laboratories, Dr. Frederick B. Power].
]
The fame of aloes was well maintained by the Arabian physicians, and
the old Greek and Roman formulas for aloetic compounds were passed
on to the Middle Ages by Mesué of Damascus, together with some new
ones. It was one of the drugs recommended to Alfred the Great by the
Patriarch of Jerusalem.
In 1622 Mindererus published a treatise on a special compound of aloes
which he had devised. Raymond Minderer was the most famous physician
of his time. He lived at Augsburg, and was the appointed medical
adviser to the Duke of Bavaria and the great house of the Fuggers, the
Rothschilds of the period. Minderer’s book was entitled “Aloedarium,”
and it described in loving detail each of the nine ingredients of what
is supposed to have been the lineal ancestor of our modern compound
rhubarb pill. The components were:--
Aloes 3 ounces, Marum (herb mastic), and Saffron, of each 3 scruples,
Agaric, Costus, and Myrrh, of each 3 half-drachms, Ammoniacum, 3
drachms, Rhubarb, 3 two-drachms (ʒvi), and Lign Aloes, 3 half-scruples.
These drugs were each separately macerated in appropriate liquids, the
aloes in rose water, the myrrh in rue vinegar, and so forth. Mindererus
recommended these pills not so much as a purgative, but as a general
tonic, especially useful to strong, fair, well-fed persons.
Following Minderer’s book, and indeed slavishly copying it, came a
treatise by Dr. William Marcquis of Antwerp, entitled “Aloe Morbifuga.”
The only notable feature of this work is that its author is clear about
the importance of that part of the aloes which is soluble in water as
the constituent of the drug in which the purgative properties reside.
He was, in fact, the originator of our aqueous extract of aloes.
CASTOR OIL.
The supposed identity of the Palma Christi tree, from the seeds of
which castor oil is obtained, with the Hebrew “kikaion” is mentioned in
the note on Jonah’s “gourd” in the section “Pharmacy in the Bible.” It
is not doubtful that the plant was the same as the “kiki” of Herodotus,
and the “kiki” or “kroton” of Dioscorides. Avicenna quotes a reference
to the seeds from Dioscorides, from which, he says, is pressed the oil
of kiki “which is the oil of Alkeroa.” Other Arab authors use the term
“al-keroa” for the Greek “kiki.” A frequent Latin name for the Palma
Christi was “kikinum,” or “cicinum.”
[Illustration: CASTOR OIL PLANT.]
The earliest allusion to the oil is found in Herodotus (“Hist.
Euterpe,” sec. 94), where we read “The inhabitants of the marshy
grounds in Egypt make use of an oil which they term the ‘kiki,’
expressed from the Sillicyprian plant. In Greece this plant springs
spontaneously without any cultivation; but the Egyptians sow it on the
banks of the river and the canals; it there produces fruit in great
abundance, but of a very strong odour. When gathered they obtain from
it, either by friction or pressure, an unctuous liquid which diffuses
an offensive smell, but for burning it is equal in quality to the oil
of olives.”
From this and other references it is clear that the Egyptians held
the Palma Christi plant in high esteem, and this would hardly have
been the case if it was only used for the extraction of an inferior
burning oil. As is stated in another section, Ebers guesses that an
aperient medicine made from the fruit of the kesebt tree may have
meant the ricinus seeds. The seeds of the Palma Christi, too, have been
frequently found in sarcophagi; evidence that they had acquired a high
reputation of some kind.