CHAPTER XXI.

THE ANTIQUITY AND HISTORY OF THE MORTAR.

The mortar is the most ancient of pharmaceutical implements, its

earliest use carrying us back to prehistoric times, when the early

Briton bruised his grain in the hollow of a granite boulder. There

is little doubt indeed that mortars were employed for the purpose of

bruising and reducing hard bodies to powder, centuries before medicine

as an art was thought of or known.

The name is derived from the Latin word _mortarium_, which is probably

from the root _mordeo_, to bite, akin to the Sanscrit _mrid_, to grind

or to pound; the literal meaning of the word being a vessel in which

substances may be pounded with a pestle.

The origin of the mortar appears to have been identical with that of

the mill or quern as it was called in ancient times. The primitive

implement used by prehistoric nations for the purpose of crushing their

grain, was simply made by hollowing out a cup-shaped hole in a block

of stone or granite, and pounding the grain placed in this receptacle

with a smaller stone of suitable form. These grain-crushers, together

with stone rollers and pounders, have been found in the circular huts

of the Britons in several parts of North Wales.

This method was also used by the early Jews before the Christian

era for crushing their spices and gums, the knowledge of which they

doubtless gathered from the Egyptians during the captivity.

[Illustration: ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MORTAR.]

In many of the ancient Egyptian papyri we find directions given to

bruise certain herbs and roots, but no mention is made of the implement

used for that purpose; carvings in stone, however, are extant which

show the mortars used by the Egyptians were similar in form to those

employed several centuries later.

It is interesting to note that the mortar has also been known to

several Oriental and savage races from time immemorial; and in the

mortar employed by the pharmacist to-day we have an implement that

links us not only with prehistoric man, but also with the savage races

of the world. In Africa, mortars and pestles of wood have been used

from a period of unknown antiquity for the purpose of crushing grain.

The one illustrated in Fig. 1 is composed of wood, and was brought from

Central Africa. In India, stone mortars with wooden pestles have for

centuries been used for shelling and pounding rice. Fig. 2 represents a

Cingalese mortar of stone, from two to three feet in height, taken from

a drawing of the seventeenth century.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

Coming to the time of the Roman Empire, we have the first real evidence

of the use of the mortar for pharmaceutical purposes. Medicine and

pharmacy allied, in the time of Celsus, had become practical arts; and

we know from the preparations described by that author that practical

appliances were necessary. Thus the _malagma_ used as an application

to the skin was a kind of soft mass directed to be beaten up to the

consistency of a thick paste; and the ingredients of the catapotia were

often ordered to be bruised before being mixed.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.]

Roman mortaria composed of earthenware are very commonly found, and

many examples may be seen in most of our museums among other Roman

remains. They were chiefly made for domestic use, and although they

vary very little in pattern, the sizes are numerous. The larger ones

are, as a rule, very strongly made, and all have a thick divided rim

with a rounded moulding. The inside was roughened with splinters of

flint or hard stone, or hard-burnt earthenware, which was fixed on

with a kind of “slip” or liquid clay with which the Romans finished

their ware. A wooden pestle was used with these mortaria, which were no

doubt chiefly employed for triturating and mixing various condiments

for domestic use. The Roman mortarium shown in Fig. 3 is twenty-eight

inches in breadth, and bears the stamp of the maker’s name, showing it

to be the work of one Publius Raso.

Some of the smaller mortaria found are composed of a very white clay of

a vitreous character burnt hard like porcelain, and are nonabsorbent.

These were probably used for mixing more delicate condiments.

There were large manufactories for mortaria in Britain, situated

chiefly in the south of England, at the mouth of the Thames, and in

Essex and Staffordshire. From these factories there was a considerable

export trade to Rome and Gaul.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

Roman mortars of stone are much rarer, and the one depicted in Fig. 4

is a unique specimen, and was with little doubt at one time used for

pharmaceutical purposes. Composed of stone, with a solid square base,

it stands about twelve inches high, and is about eight inches broad.

The notches at the corners are evidently intended for fixing it down on

a wooden table or slab, to keep it steady when being used for pounding

or breaking up hard substances. Closely akin to mortars were the querns

or small mills used for grinding purposes from the Roman period. In

shape they somewhat resembled the mortar, but were covered in at the

top, having a hole in the centre through which the pestle was worked.

They were made of stone and wood. A beautiful example of a wooden quern

is depicted in Fig. 5.[8] It stands thirteen inches high, and is made

of very hard wood. It is an exquisite specimen of the turner’s art,

some of the side mouldings being of great delicacy, no thicker than a

fine needle, yet perfectly true in every particular. The pestle was

worked through the hole in the centre of the cover. These wooden querns

were used during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

[8] Now in the possession of Mr. E. W. Cox, to whom we are

indebted for the sketch.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.]

There is little doubt that marble succeeded stone as a material for

making mortars, and this brings us down to mediæval times, when the

apothecaries, combining the practice of medicine and pharmacy, became

wielders of the pestle.

The value of the mortar as a pharmaceutical implement was recognised by

these early practitioners, and was given the most prominent position

in their shops, and so the pestle and mortar became a symbol or trade

sign of pharmacy.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.]

The great bell-shaped mortar, which was of considerable capacity,

usually stood, mounted on a solid block of wood, near the centre of the

shop, the huge pestle, three feet or more in length, being suspended

from a long wooden spring beam by a chain and ring. One can readily

picture the youthful apprentice, clad in jerkin and trunk hose,

exercising his muscles with the ponderous pestle, and with what mingled

feelings he would essay the task of pounding half a hundred-weight

of aloes to begin his day’s work and give him an appetite for his

midday meal. These large mortars were usually bell-shaped in form, as

illustrated in Fig. 6, and composed of iron or bell-metal. The smaller

mortars of this period were made of brass, copper, and bell-metal, and

were occasionally ornamented with some symbol or device. Many were

very elegant in form, and they usually stood in bright array on the

counter. The pestles were made flat, top and bottom, so that either end

could be used for pounding.

[Illustration: FIG. 7.]

[Illustration: FIG. 8.]

The bell-metal mortar depicted in Fig. 7 dates from the time of Oliver

Cromwell, and bears the arms of the Commonwealth on both sides. It was

probably once the property of an official State apothecary. The brass

mortar shown in Fig. 8 is peculiar in shape, and is supported by four

short legs. It dates from the early part of the seventeenth century,

and round the middle are inscribed the letters of the alphabet. Fig. 9

represents a particularly handsome example of the brass mortar of the

seventeenth century. Copper mortars when polished have a very elegant

appearance, and are somewhat rare. A specimen is depicted in Fig. 10.

A very fine bell-shaped mortar of brass was found in Chester about two

years ago, and is now deposited in the museum of that city. It stands

nearly two feet high, and dates from the early part of the eighteenth

century.

Small brass mortars were also formerly used by housewives in the

stillroom, and for other domestic purposes, and may often yet be found

ornamenting the kitchen mantelshelf in old country houses.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.]

[Illustration: FIG 10.]

During the last and the early part of this century Italian marble was

largely employed for making mortars, but with the introduction of

wedgewood and composition ware, which is lighter, more durable, and

less liable to be acted on by chemicals, marble mortars have now almost

gone out of use with pharmacists.

Small antique mortars of bronze are still to be found in many French

pharmacies, often bearing some symbol or device, such as St. Michael

and the dragon.

PART II.

ALCHEMY AND PHARMACY IN LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.

CHAUCER.

Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_ present one of the most interesting

pictures of life and manners in the fourteenth century we have in

English literature. The father of English poetry was born in 1328, and

London is generally believed to have been his birthplace. It was his

fortune to live under the wing of that chivalrous and high-spirited

king, Edward III., a time when gallantry, prowess, and courage were

counted in the highest esteem. In his _Canterbury Tales_ he embodies

some vivid sketches of the times and characters among which he lived.

A physician of course forms one of his motley crew of pilgrims, who

beguile the monotony of their ride to Canterbury, to pay homage at the

shrine of Thomas à Becket, by the quaint stories related.

The pilgrim doctor is thus described:—

“With us there was a doctor of physic,

In all this world there was none him like

To speak of physic and of surgery,

For he was grounded in astronomy,

He kept his patient in a full great deal,

In houres by his magic natural.

Well could he fortune the ascendant,

Of his images for his patient

He knew the cause of every malady,

Were it of cold, or hot, or moist, or dry,

And where engendered and of what humour,

He was a very perfect practisour.

The cause-y-know and of his harm the root

Anon he gave to the sick man his boot.

Full ready had he his apothecaries,

To send his drugges and his lectuaries

For each of them made other for to win

Their friendship was not newe to begin.

Well knew he the old Æsculapius,

And Dioscorides, and eke Rufus,

Old Hippocras, Hali, and Gallien,

Serapion, Rasis, and Avicen

Averrois, Damascene, and Constantin,

Bernard, and Gatisden, and Gilbertin.

Of his diet measurable was he,

For it was of no superfluity,

But of great nourishing and digestable;

His study was but little on the Bible,

In sanguine and in perse he clad was, all

Lined with taffata and with sendall,

And yet he was but easy of dispence,

He kept that he won in the pestilence.

For gold in physic is a cordial,

Therefore he loved gold in special.”

One can thus picture the ancient physician riding his steady jennet,

clad in doublet and hose of red and blue, with cloak of sendall, a fine

silk material, all lined with taffata. In telling the stars and casting

horoscopes he would be learned, as astrology entered very largely into

his practice, and brought many big fees. So learned a leech would

doubtless have a large practice, and the apothecaries evidently vied

with one another in preparing his prescriptions. The names of ancient

philosophers with whom he was familiar is quite formidable, nearly all

the old authors being enumerated. It is satisfactory to know he was no

glutton, and had an easy conscience. That he was a wise and careful

man is evident from the fact that when an epidemic came he lived but

moderately, and saved extra money that flowed in during the plague time.

The closing couplet is a pretty bit of wit, and alludes to the frequent

use of gold in medicine in ancient times.

Among the pilgrims also was a cook—

“To boil the chickens and the marrow bones,

And powder marchant tart and garlingale”.

The former ingredient, probably a kind of baking powder, is now

unknown, and the use of galingal in cookery has been quite forgotten.

This aromatic condiment was commonly used as a culinary spice in the

middle ages. Reference is made to the drug in the writings of Ibn

Khurdadbah, the Arabian geographer, in the year 869. It was used mixed

with cloves and cardamoms, and also employed in medical practice as

early as the ninth century.

In the course of the knight’s romantic tale, Palamon, a gallant young

knight, escapes from a prison in which he has been immured for seven

years, by drugging the jailer:—

“Soon after the midnight, Palamon

By helping of a friend brake his prison

And fled the city, fast as he might go,

For he had given drink his gaoler so,

Of a clary made of a certain wine

With narcotise and opie of Thebes fine,

That all the night through that men would him shake,

The gaoler slept he mighte not wake”.

Clary was Hippocras wine made with spices, probably chosen in order

to mask the taste of the opium and other narcotics, of which it was

evident Palamon must have given the unfortunate jailer a large dose

if he slept through the vigorous shaking which is said to have been

administered. The opium of Thebes was much used in the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries. Prosper Alpinus, who visited Egypt in 1580-83,

states that opium or meconium was in his time prepared in the Thebäid

from the expressed juice of poppy-heads, and it was called _Opium

Thebaïcum_. Later in the story a sharp encounter occurs between two

bands of knights, in which:—

“All were they sorely hurt and namely one,

That with a spear was thirled his breast bone,

To other wounds and to broken arms,

Some hadden salves and some hadden charms,

And pharmacies of herbs eke sage,

They dranken, for they would their lives have.”

The carrying of salves by knights to battle probably originated with

the Crusaders, who carried, prepared and blessed, unguents to dress

their wounds. Other warriors scorned to encumber themselves with the

healing medicines, and relied on the charm or talisman which almost

every knight carried on going to war. Some would trust to the simple

herb or decoction, and sage which is here mentioned was supposed to

have special healing virtue.

In the Miller’s tale we are introduced to one Hendy Nicholas, a poor

scholar or tutor who lived at Oxford, and

“Had learned art, but all his fantasy

Was turned for to learn astrology”.

Nicholas was a sly fellow to boot, and somewhat of a beau or a fop of

his time and evidently having a turn for science, he practised it in

his leisure, and was consulted by the farmers of the neighbourhood as

to the state of the weather, or in prognosticating the future for their

wives. He had a laboratory at his lodgings, which is described in the

following words:—

“A chamber had he in that hostelry,

Alone withouten any company,

Full fetisly-y-dight with herbs swoot,

And he himself was sweet as is the root

Of liquorice or any setewale.

His almagest, and books great and small,

His astrolobe belonging to his art,

His augrim stones layed fair apart,

On shelves couched at his beddes head.

His press-y-covered with a falding red,

And above all them lay a gay psaltry,

On which he made at nightes melody

So sweetely that all the chamber rang,

And Angelus a virginem he sang;

And after that he sung the Knight’s note;

Full often blessed was his merry throat.

And thus this sweete clerk his time spent,

After his friendes finding, and his rent.”

One can easily imagine from this sketch the astrologer sitting arrayed

in his laboratory, the room filled with the perfume of fragrant herbs,

with a manner that vied with the sweetness of liquorice or valerian

root. Prominent among the many books with which he is surrounded

is the _Almagest_, the book of Ptolomy, which formed the canon of

astrological science in the middle ages. In one corner his bed, and

above on a shelf his astrolobe, with which he told the stars, and the

augrim stones, probably pieces of slate marked with figures used by

astrologers in their art. Then there was the press or chest covered

with a red cloth, and hanging above it his psaltery gaily decked with

ribbons, on which he accompanied himself when he sang, at which he

was evidently an adept. Later in the story the astrologer and man of

science becomes smitten by Cupid, and one fine morning goes forth at an

early hour to serenade a comely maid (unfortunately for him, married)

of whom he is enamoured, and we are told—

“When that the first cock hath crowed, anon

Up rose this jolly lover Absolon,

And him arrayed gay at point devise,

But first he chewed grains and liquorice,

To smelle sweet ere he combed his hair.

Under his tongue a true love he bear,

For thereby thought he to be gracious.”

Like unto other votaries at the shrine of Venus, our astrologer took

pains to make himself look to the best advantage, and evidently

bestowed the greatest care on his dress. To perfume his breath and

make himself acceptable to his lady love, he chewed grains of paradise

and liquorice. The former was a favourite spice in early times, but

now rarely used. It has a strong aromatic taste, which is imparted

by an essential oil it contains. The “true love” is thought to mean

some charm or sweetmeat in the form of a “true lover’s knot,” which he

placed under his tongue for the same purpose, and thus this ancient

gallant went forth to woo.

That belladonna was used in Chaucer’s time as a narcotic may be

gathered from a passage in the Reeve’s tale, which runs:—

“To bedde went the daughter right anon,

To bedde went Alein and also John.

There was no more, needed them no dwale.”

Dwale was an old name for the nightshade, and we may infer its

properties were known, as it was used to produce sleep at this period.

In the Nun’s Priest’s tale we are given a receipt for bad dreams and

melancholy, which gives an example of the housewife’s knowledge of the

herbs and simples which grew in her garden:—

“Through in this town is no apothecary,

I shall myself two herbes teache you,

That shall be for your health and for your prow,

And in our yard the herbs shall I find,

The which have of their property by kind,

To purge you beneath and eke above,

Sire, forget not this for Godde’s love.

Ye be full coleric of complexion,

Ware that the sun in his ascension,

You finde not replete of humours hot,

And if it do I dare well lay a groat,

That ye shall have a fever tertiane,

Or else an ague that may be your bane.

A day or two ye shall have digestives,

Of wormes, ere ye take your laxatives

Of laurel, centaury, and fumetére,

Or else of elderberry that groweth there,

Of catapuce, or of the gaitre berries,

Or herb ivy growing in our yard that merry is.

Pick them right as they grow and eat them in,

Be merry husband for your father’s kin.

Dreade no dream. I can say you no more.”

The patient seems threatened with a fever, and the good-wife, after

some wholesome advice, doses him with digestives for a day or two, and

afterwards with aperients. Laurel would doubtless refer to the leaves

of the cherry laurel, which, infused with wine, was an old digestive

tonic. Centaury, common in our fields, enjoyed a very early reputation.

The herb was so called because it is said that by its virtue the

centaur Chiron was healed when the poisoned arrow of Hercules had

accidentally wounded his foot. Fumitory, too, was grown by the

housewives, and was used as a tonic and a remedy for jaundice.

The curative properties of the elder-berry are still recognised as

astringent and sudorific, and take a place in domestic remedies.

Catapuce is the old name for spurge, a common herb formerly used for

its purgative properties; while the gaitre or dogwood-berries, and the

herb ivy, were also used as laxative medicines and liver stimulants.

In the Canon’s Yeoman’s tale we are introduced to a canon who practises

alchemy, and whom Chaucer makes the butt for some keen satire against

the followers of that science. “It seems,” says Tyrwhitt, “that some

sudden resentment had determined Chaucer to interrupt the regular

course of his work in order to insert a satire against the alchemists.

That their pretended science was much cultivated about this time, and

produced its usual evils, may fairly be inferred from the Act that was

passed soon after, whereas it was made a felony to multiply gold or

silver above the art of multiplication.” The description of the canon

as he joined the procession is somewhat amusing:—

“His hat hung at his back down by a lace,

For he had ridden more than trot or pace,

He hadde pricked like as he were wood.

A clote leaf he had laid under his hood,

For sweat and to keep his head from heat,

But it was joye for to see him sweat.

His forehead dropped as a stillatory

Were full of plantain or of paritory.”

To keep his head cool while riding hard he had placed a clote or

burdock leaf, which was formerly used as a poultice, in his hat or

hood, a common custom in some parts of the country at the present

time. To show the tone of the poet’s mind when he wrote this tale,

it may be noted how early the chemical hyperbole is introduced, in

comparing the canon’s perspiring forehead to a still which is in

operation, filled with plantain, or paritory, an old name for the

wallflower. The former plant had a large, thick, juicy leaf, and was

formerly used as an astringent, while the wallflower once enjoyed a

reputation as an anodyne. The yeoman, in proceeding with the story of

his master’s practises, first describes his duties as the philosopher’s

man:—

“I will speak of our work,

When we be there as we shall exercise

Our elvion craft, we seeme wonder wise,

Our termes be so clergial and quaint,

I blow the fire till that mine hearte faint.

Why should I tellen each proportion

Of things whiche that we work upon,

As on five or six ounces may well be

Of silver, or some other quantity?

And busy me to tell you the names,

As orpiment, burnt bones, iron squames,

That into powder grounden be full small,

And in an earthen pot how put is all.”

The poet here describes an old amalgam used in alchemy composed of red

lead, bone ash, and iron scales:—

“Of the care and woe

That we had in our matters subliming,

And in amalgaming, and calcining

Of quicksilver, called mercury crude,

For all our sleightes we can not conclude”.

The subliming of mercury was considered a most important process, and

was performed with much care.

The yeoman then goes on to enumerate other articles and apparatus used

by the craft, in a somewhat disjointed manner:—

“Yet I will tell them as they come to mind,

As bol armoniac, verdigris, borace,

And sundry vessels made of earth and glass,

Our urinals, and our descensories;

Phials, and croslets, and sublimatories,

Cucurbites and alembikes eke,

And other suche dear enough a leek”.

The descensorie was a kind of flask used in distilling _per descensum_,

while the croslet was an old name for the crucible. The cucurbite was

the retort used in distilling, and the alembike was the still itself.

The yeoman then continues:—

“Waters rubifying and bulle’s gall,

Arsenic, sal-ammoniac, and brimstone,

And herbs could I tell eke many a one,

As egremonie, valerian, and lunary;

And other such if that me list to tarry,

Our lampes burning both night and day,

To bring about our craft if that we may,

Our furnace eke of calcination,

And of waters albification”.

Egremonoine or agrimony, commonly called liverwort, was used in

early medical practice as an astringent tonic, lunary or moonwort

(_Botrychium Lunaria_) being possessed of similar medicinal

properties:—

“Clay made with horse and mannes hair, and oil

Of tartar. Alum, glass, barm, wort, and argoil,

Rosalgar and other matters imbibing,

And eke of our matters encorporing;

And of our silver citrination,

Our cementing and fermentation,

Our ingots, tests, and many things mo’.”

Among the other strange articles named, argoil was the potters’ clay

used as a luting to close the joints, seal the flasks, and exclude

the air. Rosalgar was the ancient name for flowers of antimony, much

esteemed by the philosophers. The term citrination refers to the yellow

colour, which, when it occurred through chemical action, proved the

philosopher’s stone.

We next have the alchemist’s creed, and the fundamental principles of

the old philosophy:—

“I will tell you as was one taught also,

The foure spirits and the bodies seven.

By order as oft I heard my lord them neven,

The first spirit quicksilver called is;

The second orpiment, the third y-wis

Sal-ammoniac, and the fourth brimstone,

The bodies sion eke lo them here anon;

Sol gold is, and Luna silver was threpe,

Mars iron, Mercury quicksilver, we clepe.

Saturnus is lead, and Jupiter is tin,

And Venus copper by my father’s kin.”

The metallic bodies were described in the works of alchemists by

the planet under whose influence they were supposed to operate, and

known by the alchemical symbol of that planet. Thus gold is called

Sol, represented by the symbol ☉, and copper is termed

Venus, represented by the symbol ♀. It appears to have been

a custom of the apothecaries from very early times to fill bottles

with coloured solutions which were marked with these symbols; thus, a

bottle containing a yellow solution signifying gold would be marked

☉, and a red one would be marked ♂, signifying iron.

These gradually became a kind of trade sign, and are probably the

origin of the coloured globes used as the insignia of the pharmacist or

compounder of medicines at the present time.

CHAPTER II.

SHAKESPEARE.

The bard of Avon, in the wide and general knowledge he displays of

the manners, ways, and customs of his own and other countries in his

plays, makes many allusions to drugs and herbs, and their use. In his

references to drugs, there is none perhaps on which greater difference

of opinion exists than that alluded to in the speech of the Ghost in

_Hamlet_, in which the apparition says:—

“Sleeping within mine orchard,

My custom always in the afternoon,

Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,

With juice of cursèd hebenon in a vial,

And in the porches of mine ear did pour

The leprous 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”.[9]

[9] _Hamlet_, act i., scene v.

It has always been a matter of individual speculation and dispute

as to the juice of what plant Shakespeare alludes to here as the

“cursed hebenon”. The meaning of the word hebenon is ebony-coloured,

or black, so that it might apply to any dark liquid. Most writers and

commentators seem to be of opinion that henbane is alluded to, but

judging from the rapid effect of the liquid, it would appear that

some more powerful poison is intended. The juice of henbane is not a

powerful poison, and it is but a feeble narcotic whose effects are

mainly sedative and soothing. It acts also as a neurotic, affecting

the brain and producing delirium. It will be seen that there is little

similitude between the actual effect of henbane and that of the poison

described by the poet. Others think it more probable that hemlock,

an ancient poison of the Greeks, is intended. Its action is much

more rapid and powerful, the spinal cord being chiefly affected, and

paralysis caused, ending in death. The drug is a powerful narcotic

and anodyne, and is also a paralysant. It was well known to the

apothecaries of Shakespeare’s day, its poisonous properties having been

observed from very early times. It should be taken into account, that

as a matter of fact the pouring of any poisonous liquid of vegetable

origin into the ear would have little or no immediate effect; and

unless the tympanum had been ruptured it would be almost impossible

for it to be absorbed into the system and at once prove fatal.

Paris says: “Might not the juice of cursed hebenon by which, according

to Shakespeare, the King of Denmark was poisoned, have been the

essential oil of tobacco?” In the first place, the learned commentator

Dr. Grey observes, that the word here used—hebenon—was more probably

designated by a metathesis, either of the poet or transcriber, for

henebon, _i.e._, henbane. Now, it appears from Gerade, the “tobaco”

was commonly called henbane of Peru—_Hyoscyamus Peruvianus_; and when

we consider how high the public prejudice ran against this herb in the

reign of James, it seems not unlikely that Shakespeare should have

selected it as an agent of extraordinary malignity. No preparation

of _hyoscyamus_ with which we are acquainted would produce death by

application to the ear, whereas the essential oil of tobacco might

possibly have such an effect.

The term “distilment,” says Stevens, “is calculated to support this

conjecture. Surely the expression signifies that the preparation was

the result of a distillation.” It is a singular fact that the essential

oil of tobacco differs considerably in its physiological action from

an infusion made from the leaves, the former affecting the brain, and

the latter the heart.[10]

[10] Paris, _Pharmacologia_, p. 294.

Ellacombe states: “Before, and in the time of Shakespeare, other

writers had spoken of the narcotic and poisonous effects of heben,

hebenon, or hebona.”

Spenser says:—

“Faire Venus sonne,...

Lay now thy deadly heben bow apart”.

Gower and Marlowe also wrote of the juice of hebon. It may be taken for

granted that all these authors allude to the same tree.

Nicholson and Harrison, after a very exhaustive investigation of the

subject, agree that the true reading is hebona, and that hebona is the

yew. Their main arguments are based on the following three facts:—

1. That in nearly all the northern nations the name of the yew is more

or less like heben.

2. That all the effects attributed by Shakespeare to the action of

hebona are described by different medical writers as arising from yew

poisoning.

3. That the _post-mortem_ appearances after yew poisoning and snake

poisoning are similar.

Later on, in the play performed before the King, Lucianus thus speaks

of the poisonous medicine he uses:—

“Thoughts break, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing,

Confederate season, else no creature seeing,

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”.

Here allusion is made to a mixture of poisonous herbs gathered at

midnight, probably hemlock among others, as mentioned in the witches’

incantation in _Macbeth_, to which we shall refer later. With regard

to the gathering of herbs at night, the practice was common, it being

supposed that the properties of the plant collected at night were

stronger than in the daytime. That there is a certain amount of truth

in this is proved by the researches of Sachs and Brown, who have found

from their investigations that starch is formed in the leaves of plants

during the day, and is consumed during the night, so that the old

superstition of the increased activity of the midnight gathered herb

was not mythical.

Shakespeare’s well-known description of the poor apothecary of his

time, which he introduces in _Romeo and Juliet_, presents an excellent

picture of the needy practitioner in the sixteenth century:—

“I do remember an apothecary,

And hereabouts he dwells, whom 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 stuff’d, and other skins

Of ill-shaped 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 scattered to make up a show”.[11]

[11] _Romeo and Juliet_, act v., scene i.

One can readily picture the poverty-stricken appearance of the dark

little shop, littered and crowded with the stuffed skins of curious

fishes and alligators. One can almost smell the close musty odour

blended with the aromatic perfume of drugs and the old cakes of pressed

rose leaves, the manner in which they were formerly preserved for

medicinal purposes.

The fashionably-dressed Romeo enters, after having made a considerable

noise to rouse the attention of the old apothecary from his perchance

much-needed repose, and offers his bribe for the poison. Of the purpose

for which he requires it he makes little secret.

“ROMEO. 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 discharged of breath

As violently as hasty powder fir’d

Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s mouth.”

The Apothecary’s reply:—

“Such mortal drugs I have; but Mantua’s law

Is death to any he that utters them,”

would show that Shakspeare’s idea of the law respecting the sale of

poisons was a severe one, and much before his time. The law in England

at that time as regards the selling of poisons was very lax. But for

the poor apothecary the bribe was too tempting. Perchance he was

hungry, and there is something pathetic in his rejoinder,

“My poverty, but not my will, consents”.

And giving Romeo the poison:—

“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”.

The poet gives no indication of the nature of the poison beyond that

its effect was very rapid, as when the distracted lover drinks to his

lady love in the deadly draught he exclaims:—

“O true apothecary!

Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.”

In the early part of the sixteenth century the practice of the black

art was carried on throughout England, mostly by old women, who

also sold charms and love philtres. Shakespeare’s description of the

witches’ incantations in _Macbeth_ presents some idea of a seance, and

the gruesome articles in which they dealt. To know the properties of

the most poisonous herbs (often quite fictitious) was part of their

trade.

“Round about the cauldron go;

In the poison’d entrails throw.

Toad, that under coldest stone,

Days and nights hast thirty-one

Swelter’d venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

“Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing,

For a charm of powerful trouble;

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

“Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark;

Root of hemlock, digg’d i’ the dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew;

Gall of goat, and slips of yew,

Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse;

Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips;

Finger of birth-strangled babe,

Ditch-delivered by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab;

Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron,

For the ingredients of our cauldron.

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

The method here used by the witches to measure the time that the

cauldron should boil by singing their incantation is, according to Dr.

Lauder Brunton, an ancient mode of calculating time still used in some

parts of the country at the present day. By thus repeating several

verses they could regulate the time of boiling fairly well. The old

apothecaries used the moon as a method of calculating the time certain

processes should take, and the word “menstruum,” still commonly used,

was employed because certain drugs were allowed to macerate a month in

the liquid to extract the active constituents.

In the toad that had been lying under a stone for thirty-one days

and nights, we have another curious instance how the empirical

practitioners of mediæval times acted on a certain traditional

knowledge, which modern science has since proved to be correct.

We have again in the toad which has lain dormant for a month, the idea

that it was the best time for his use, when his venom would be most

active, besides the advantage also of catching him napping, when he

would have no opportunity of getting rid of the poisonous principle

contained in his skin. Dr. Lauder Brunton remarks with respect to this

practice: “I remember reading as a child a story of how King John was

poisoned by a friar who dropped a toad into his wine, but some books

of natural history forty or fifty years ago scouted the idea of toads

being poisonous at all. A little while ago, however, Dr. Leonard Guthie

sent me an interesting account of a wicked Italian woman whose husband

was dying of dropsy. He took so long about it that his wife became

tired of the process, and thought that she would help him on. She

accordingly caught a toad and put it in his wine, so that he should

drink the liquid and die, but instead of dying he, to her astonishment

and disgust, completely recovered. Forty years ago this story would

have been scouted as equally mythical with that of King John, but now

we know that it is precisely what the woman would have expected if she

had only been acquainted with the researches of modern pharmacology.

For the skin of a toad secretes a poison, the active principle of

which, phrynin, has an action very much resembling that of digitalis,

which is the remedy _par excellence_ for dropsy depending on heart

disease.”

Not less curious are the directions for gathering the poisonous

hemlock at night, which has recently been shown to be the time of

its greatest activity. These few instances show that the ancient

apothecaries had often much greater knowledge than we give them credit

for, and that some of the modern discoveries in modern science were

well known to them, even if they could not account for them.

In the _Taming of the Shrew_ allusion is made to the simples in vogue

at the time for hurts and bruises. The lord’s directions for the

treatment of Christopher Sly, who is found sleeping in the road on a

cold night after a drinking bout, are curious:—

“Balm his foul head with warm distilled waters,

And burn sweet wood to make the lodging sweet”.

The distilled aromatic waters, of which the apothecary manufactured a

considerable number, were much used in the middle ages for the purpose

of fomentation. The burning of sweet woods, such as aloe or sandal, to

take away evil smells, was a very ancient practice.

An old cure for melancholy is embodied in the following lines:—

“Your honour’s players, hearing your amendment,

Are come to play a pleasant comedy,

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”.

In _Measure for Measure_, the poet had evidently the dulcamara or

bitter-sweet in mind when he penned the lines:—

“I should not think it strange, for ’tis a physic

That’s bitter to sweet end”.

The dulcamara or bitter-sweet has the peculiar property, when first

taken into the mouth, of imparting a bitter flavour which gradually

changes to a sweet one, hence its name.

The knowledge of drugs and herbs possessed by the noble dames and

housewives is frequently mentioned by Shakespeare. The chatelaine of

his time was well acquainted with the medicinal properties of all the

simples and herbs, which she cultivated in her own garden. Her skill

and experience were always at the service of her household and of

dependants for miles around.

The Queen, wife of Cymbeline, gives evidence of this in her

conversation with Cornelius the physician:—

“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

(_presenting a small box_),

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 do wonder, doctor,

Thou ask’st me such a question. Have I not been

Thy pupil long? Hast thou not learned 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,

To try the vigour of them, and apply

Allayments to their act, and by them gather

Their several virtues, and effects.

“CORNELIUS. Your highness

Shall from this practice but make hard your heart:

Besides, the seeing these effects will be

Both noisome and infectious.

“QUEEN. Oh content thee.

_Enter_ PISANIO.

(_aside_) Here comes a flattering rascal; upon him

Will I first work: he’s for his master,

And enemy to my son. How now, Pisanio?

Doctor, your service for this time is ended;

Take your own way.

“CORNELIUS. (_aside_) I do suspect you, madam,

But you shall do no harm.

I do not like her. She doth think she has

Strange lingering poisons. I do not 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 a while:

Which first, perchance, she’ll prove on cats and dogs,

Then afterwards 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. She is fool’d

With a most false effect; and I the truer

So to be false with her.”[12]

[12] _Cymbeline_, scene vi.

The caution of the physician is well described, and his resort to

subterfuge in order to checkmate the evil design of his wily mistress

and old pupil, whom he evidently distrusts.

The Queen is supposed to have possessed considerable knowledge and

skill in the use of drugs, and her conserves had evidently a great

reputation. Her scientific ideas were in advance of the age she lived

in when she states her desire to make physiological experiments on

animals to advance her knowledge; but the clear acumen of Cornelius saw

through the apparently laudable spirit of research that imbued his

pupil, and he supplied her with drugs of less potency.

The following allusions are made to the apothecary:—

“CARDINAL BEAUFORT. Bid the apothecary

Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.”[13]

And again, in _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_, Cerimon says:—

“Your master will be dead ere you return;

There’s nothing can be minister’d to nature,

That can recover him. Give this to the apothecary,

And tell me how it works.”[14]

[13] _Henry VI._, part iii., act ii., scene iii.

[14] _Pericles_, act iii., scene ii.

This lord of Ephesus was evidently something of an amateur physician,

as he tells us later that

“’Tis known I ever

Have studied physic, through which secret art,

By turning o’er authorities, I have

(Together with my practice) made familiar

To me and to my aid the blest infusions

That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones;

And can speak of the disturbances that nature

Works, and of the cures; which doth give me

A more content in course of true delight

Than to be thirsty after tottering honour”.

The lines—

“One whose subdu’d eyes,

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum,”[15]

spoken by Othello, refer to the manner in which many of the medicinal

gums are collected in the East. Small slits or punctures are made in

the bark of the tree, through which the semi-liquid gum slowly oozes.

It then coagulates in the form of a tear, and is at length scraped off

and collected.

[15] _Othello_, act v., scene ii.

“Set ratsbane by his porridge.”[16]

[16] _King Lear_, act iii., scene iv.

“I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to

stop it with security.”[17]

[17] _Henry IV._, part ii., act i., scene ii.

“I would the milk

Thy mother gave thee, when thou suck’dst her breast,

Had been a little ratsbane for my sake.”[18]

[18] _Henry VI._, act v., scene iv.

Ratsbane, mentioned in the three preceding quotations, was an old

name for arsenic, which in Shakespeare’s time was commonly used for

poisoning rats, hence the name.

“I have bought the oil, the balsamum, and aqua vitæ,”[19]

says Dromio of Syracuse. These were the medical comforts for the barque

of Epidamnum, and show that sailing vessels in those days carried a

certain amount of medicine. The oil may have been one of the many

panaceas of the time for “purging the body of bile or humour,” while

balsams there were by the score, of Hungary, and aromatics for “wind

and pain”. The _aqua vitæ_ alluded to was probably brandy, which would

serve to keep the courage of the voyagers up and the cold out.

[19] _Comedy of Errors_, act iv., scene i.

Proteus, in the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, exclaims:—

“When I was sick you gave me bitter pills;

And I must minister like to you”.[20]

[20] _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act ii., scene iv.

In _Lucrece_ the bard shows he knew something of the counteracting

effects of certain drugs from the following lines:—

“The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted

In a pure compound; being so applied,

His venom in effect is purified”.[21]

[21] _Lucrece_, v., 76.

“KING HENRY. The united vessel of their blood,

Mingled with venom of suggestion,

As, for a purpose, the age will pour it in,

Shall never leak, though it do work as strong

As aconitum or rash gunpowder.”[22]

[22] _King Henry IV._, part ii., act iv., scene iv.

The aconite or monkshood, formerly called wolf’s bane, gives us one

of the most powerful vegetable poisons, its properties having long

been known and employed in medical practice. It was used by the early

Greeks and Romans, and is probably even of still greater antiquity.

On account of its rapid and deadly action, Shakespeare compares it to

gunpowder. Some commentators are of the opinion that aconite was the

poison sold by the apothecary to the lovesick Romeo.

A curious old tradition is alluded to by Falstaff when speaking of the

chamomile, in the following sentence:—

“Though the camomile, the more it is trodden on the faster it

grows, yet youth, the more it is wasted the sooner it wears”.[23]

[23] _King Henry IV._, part i., act ii., scene iv.

The chamomile has an ancient reputation for its medicinal properties as

a stomachic and febrifuge.

Its growth is said to be improved by being pressed or trampled into the

earth.

“SHALLOW. Nay, you shall see my orchard, where, in an arbour, we

will eat a last year’s pippin of my own graffing, with a dish of

caraways and so forth.”[24]

[24] _King Henry IV._, part ii., act v., scene iii.

Carraway seeds were very largely used in Shakespeare’s time as a spice

and condiment. The essential oil they yield has carminative properties.

The seeds were often served with roast apples, a custom still said to

be kept up at Trinity College, Cambridge.

“IAGO. The food that to him now is as luscious as locusts, shall be

to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida.”[25]

The coloquintida mentioned, is the old name for colocynth, a drug

largely used in medicine at the present time. It was employed by the

Greek and Roman physicians as a purgative, and was known in Britain as

early as the eleventh century. It has a drastic, bitter taste, and is

commonly known as bitter apple.

[25] _Othello_, act i., scene iii.

Shakespeare makes several allusions to the elder, a tree concerning

which there are many old traditions. One of them will suffice.

“HOLOFERNES. Begin, sir, you are my elder.

“BIRON. Well followed; Judas was hanged on an elder.”[26]

[26] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, act v., scene ii.

The _sambucus nigra_, or black elder, has long been used in medicine as

a discutient, yet tradition gives it an evil name. Judas was supposed

to have hanged himself on an elder tree, which doubtless brought it

into disrepute, although its flowers distilled with water make an

excellent cosmetic.

“OPHELIA. There’s fennel for you and columbines.”[27]

[27] _Hamlet_, act iv., scene v.

This herb was greatly valued by the old apothecaries, and was known

also to the ancients. There was an old belief that the fennel in flower

predicted an early summer. Its chief use now is as a flavouring agent.

Several allusions are also made to ginger.

“CLOWN. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies; mace;

dates—none, that’s out of my note; nutmegs, seven; a race or two

of ginger, but that I beg.”[28]

Ginger was known and used by the Greeks and Romans as a spice, and was

esteemed by physicians in England at the time of the Norman Conquest.

Its hot, burning taste is due to a resinous principle contained in the

root, and is still used in medicine.

[28] _Winter’s Tale_, act iv., scene iii.

The mandrake or mandragora is frequently mentioned in the plays. Thus

says

“IAGO. Not poppy, nor mandragora,

Nor all the drowsy syrup of the world,

Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep

Which thou owedst yesterday.”[29]

Also—

“JULIET. And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,

That living mortals, hearing them, run mad,”[30]

alluding to the old tradition that the mandrake groaned when pulled

up by the roots, and the person who did it would surely die soon.

The mandragora, to which wonderful properties were ascribed by the

ancients, is not now used in medicine.

[29] _Othello_, act iii., scene iii.

[30] _Romeo and Juliet_, act iv., scene iii.

“LAFEU. Go to, sir, you were beaten in Italy for picking a kernel

out of a pomegranate.”[31]

[31] _All’s Well that Ends Well_, act ii., scene iii.

The medicinal properties of the pomegranate have been known from very

ancient times, frequent mention of it being made in the Bible. A

decoction of the root is recommended by Celsus, Dioscorides, and Pliny

for tapeworm; and it is still used as an astringent.

The poppy is mentioned by Iago in the quotation previously given, as

being known for its narcotic properties.

“MACBETH. What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug

Would scour these English hence?”[32]

[32] _Macbeth_, act v., scene iii.

Rhubarb was known to the Chinese 2700 B.C., and has been used for its

purgative properties from the earliest times. It is said to take its

name from the river Rhu, now the Volga, on whose banks it grows.

“PERDITA. For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep

Seeming and savour all the winter long;

Grace and remembrance be to you both.”[33]

[33] _Winter’s Tale_, act iv., scene iv.

Rosemary has been esteemed for centuries for its refreshing and

aromatic perfume, due to the essential oil it contains, and which even

now has a reputation as an application for the hair. It is mentioned by

Pliny, and has been cultivated in Britain since the time of the Norman

Conquest. On account of its evergreen leaves it was considered an

emblem of constancy, and was frequently carried at wedding and funeral

ceremonies. It was customary in France at one time, to place a bunch of

rosemary in the hands of the dead. The old apothecaries had great faith

in the oil as an embrocation, and it was largely used to place among

clothes as a preventive of moths.

“OPHELIA. There’s rue for you; and here’s some for me: we may call

it herb grace o’ Sundays: O, you must wear your rue

with a difference.”[34]

[34] _Hamlet_, act iv., scene v.

Some curious traditions are attached to rue, or, as it was formerly

called, the herb of grace, probably on account of its being often worn

as an amulet to ward off disease, and also used by the old Romanists in

the exorcisms. It has ever been regarded as a symbol of sorrow or pity,

as its name implies. The word is probably derived from the same root

as Ruth, meaning sorrow and remorse, while “to rue” was to be sorry for.

In ancient times it was supposed to be useful for almost every disease,

its properties being due to an essential oil still used in pharmacy.

It was largely employed in affections of the eye and for its antiseptic

properties as a preservative to ward off decay.

The plant is not a native of England, but has been cultivated in this

country for more than 800 years, and was extensively grown in the old

herb gardens.

Euphrasie and rue were often used together as a curative application

for the eyes. In _Paradise Lost_ Milton says:—

“Then purged with euphrasie and rue

The visual nerve, for he has much to see”.

Rue was employed also to take away warts, the freshly cut stem being

rubbed over the excrescence, and the following couplet repeated:—

“Ashen true, ashen tree,

Pray bury these warts of me”.

Another old rhyme runs:—

“What savour is better, if physicke be true

For places infected than wormwood or rue”.

“CLOWN. I must have saffron to colour the warden pies.”[35]

[35] _Winter’s Tale_, act iv., scene iii.

Saffron was formerly much prized as a medicine, a condiment, and a

dye. It is said to have been introduced into England in the reign of

Edward III., and was cultivated in the neighbourhood of Walden, in

Essex, to which it gave its name. The quality of English saffron was

renowned in Shakspeare’s time. It was used by the monks in mediæval

days in illuminating their missals, and dyeing materials, as well as

being esteemed as a febrifuge and cordial.

“MACBETH. What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug

Would scour these English hence?”[36]

[36] _Macbeth_, act v., scene iii.

The well-known purgative properties of senna leaves were held in great

repute by the old apothecaries. The drug was introduced into Europe

about the ninth or tenth century by the Arabs, and it soon attained a

reputable position in medical practice. The best variety was originally

supposed to have been brought from Mecca.

“ROSALINE. To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain.”[37]

[37] _Love’s Labour’s Lost_, act v., scene ii.

Wormwood has always had a high reputation as a medicine, and was

chiefly used as a tonic. It yields an essential oil with an extremely

bitter taste, which is yet largely used in France in the manufacture

of absinthe.

In one of his Sonnets, Shakespeare alludes to the old alembic of the

alchemist in the following lines:—

“What potions have I drunk of Syren tears,

Distill’d from limbecks foul as hell within”.

And in the following verse he deals with some theories of medical

treatment:—

“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 assur’d,

And brought to medicine a healthful state

Which, rank of goodness, would by ill be cur’d.

But thence I learn, and find the lesson true,

Drugs poison him that so fell sick of you.”[38]

[38] _Sonnets_, verses 118, 119.

CHAPTER III.

SPENSER.

Edmund Spenser was born in London towards the close of the year 1552,

and in his after career, added lustre to an age which for brilliancy

in literature has never been equalled in the history of this country.

He lived for some time in Lancashire in his early days, but in 1578

quitted the country for the court. It was probably his friend Sir

Walter Raleigh who introduced him to court-favour and Queen Elizabeth.

In 1589 he published the _Faerie Queen_, a poem which will ever live in

English literature.

There are few allusions in the works of Edmund Spenser to medicinal

plants, although he frequently mentions salves and other methods of

administration used in the leechcraft of his time, as instanced in the

following quotations:—

“Eftsoons he gan apply relief

Of salves and med’cines which has passing prefe”.[39]

[39] _The Faerie Queen_, book i., canto x.

“With wholesome read of sad sobriety,

To rule the stubborn rage of passion blind,

Give salves to every sore, but counsel to the mind.”[40]

[40] _The Faerie Queen_, book vi., canto vi.

In the first book of the _Faerie Queen_ Spenser makes an interesting

allusion to trees and their uses in his time, in the following lines:—

“Much gave they praise the trees so straight and high:

The sailing pine; the cedar proud and tall;

The vine-prop elm; the poplar never dry;

The builder oak, sole king of forests all;

The aspen good for staves; the cypress funeral;

The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors

And poets sage; the fir that weepeth still;

The willow, worn of forlorn paramours;

The yew, obedient to the binder’s will;

The birch for shafts; the sallow for the mill;

The myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound;

The warlike beech; the ash for nothing ill;

The fruitful olive, and the plantane round;

The carver holm; the maple, seldom inward sound”.[41]

[41] _The Faerie Queen_, book i., canto i.

The sailing pine was doubtless so called on account of it being so

largely used for the masts of ships. The wood of the aspen tree was

often used for making staves on account of its toughness. He alludes

also to the ancient use of the cypress at funeral rites, and the

wearing of the willow as a badge of the unfortunate; the yew, chiefly

employed for making the long bows; the birch, for the strongest arrows;

and the sallow, which when plaited formed the sails of the windmills.

Incisions are cut in the bark of the myrrh tree in order that the gum

should exude as from an open wound.

Beech was used for the shafts of spears and axes, and the carver holm

or cutting holly was so called from its prickles.

In the sixth canto we have mention of the flower-de-luce:—

“The lily, lady of the flowering field,

The flow’r-de-luce her lovely paramour”.[42]

Flower-de-luce was the old name for the iris, and is also the French

_fleur-de-lis_, and the origin of that symbol. The roots of many of the

iris species have long been used in medicine for their cathartic and

emetic properties. That of the _I. florentina_ is well known for its

sweet violet smell, and from early times has been employed to sweeten

the breath and as an ingredient in tooth powders. Another old name for

this plant was “The flower of delights”.

[42] _The Faerie Queen_, book ii., canto vi.

In the seventh canto the poet shows he was well acquainted with some

medicinal plants, and gives us quite a group of “herbs of ill favour”.

“There mournful cypress grew in greatest store;

And trees of bitter gall; and ebon sad;

Dead sleeping poppy, and black hellebore;

Cold coloquintida, and tetra mad;

Mortal samnitis; and cicuta bad,

With which th’ unjust Athenians made to die

Wise Socrates, who, thereof quaffing glad,

Pour’d out his life and last philosophy

To the fair Critias, his dearest belamy!”[43]

Here we have mention of the narcotic poppy and the black hellebore,

a drastic purgative with which tradition states Melampus, the great

soothsayer and physician, cured the daughters of Prœtus, King of

Argos, of madness. Also the colocynth or bitter apple; tetra mad, an

old name for the belladonna or deadly nightshade; savin, here called

mortal samnitis, a plant possessing powerful properties, used in

medicine from the time of the Romans; and the cicuta or hemlock, which

formed the active ingredient in the poison cup of the Greeks.

[43] _The Faerie Queen_, book ii., canto vii.

In the _Shepherd’s Calendar_ we have another allusion to the black

hellebore:—

“Here grows melampode ev’rywhere,

And terebinth, good for goats;

The one my madding kids to smear,

The next to heal their throats”.[44]

The ancient name for hellebore was melampus root, hence the name

melampode, which doubtless arose from the old tradition. By terebinth

the poet probably means one of the species of pine from which

turpentine is obtained.

[44] _Shepherd’s Calendar_—July.

CHAPTER IV.

GOETHE.

The Faust-legend around which Goethe wove his great tragedy, was one

of those floating traditions which were common in the romantic lore

of many countries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and

which seem to have originated in the general belief in occult forces.

The Johann Faust of the popular stories was undoubtedly an individual

of that name, born towards the close of the fifteenth century in the

little town of Knittlingen, near Maulbronn, in Würtemberg. His parents

were poor, but he was enabled by the bequest of a rich uncle to study

medicine. He attended the University of Cracow (where he probably

received his doctor’s degree), studied magic which was there taught

as an accepted branch of knowledge, and appears to have afterwards

travelled for many years through Europe. Manlius, the disciple of

Melancthon, quotes the latter as having said: “This fellow Faust

escaped from our town of Wittenberg, after our Duke John had given the

order to have him imprisoned. He also escaped from Nuremberg under the

like circumstances. This sorcerer Faust, an abominable beast, a common

sewer of many devils, boasted that he, by his magic arts had enabled

the Imperial armies to win their victories in Italy.” It was probably

the famous battle of Pavia fought in 1525 of which Faust spoke, as

the time of his visit to Wittenberg appears to have been about the

year 1530. Further evidence of the existence of such a character is to

be found in the _Index Sanitatis_ of the physician, Philip Begardi,

published at Worms in 1539, and in the _Sermones Conviviales_ of Johann

Gast, who gives an account of a dinner given by Faust at Basle at which

he was present. The original form of the legend is contained in a work

published by Spiess in Frankfurt in 1587, entitled the _History of Dr.

Joh. Faust, the Notorious Sorcerer and Black-artist, etc., etc._ This

book was first translated into English in 1590, and from it Marlowe

doubtless obtained the material for his tragedy of “Dr. Faustus,” which

appears to have been first performed in London in 1593, the year of his

death.

In the first act of Goethe’s tragedy we are introduced to Faust, who

is sitting in his lofty-arched Gothic chamber or laboratory, his desk

piled high with the works of noted writers on magic and astrology.

“And this one Book of Mystery

From Nostradamus’ very hand,

Is’t not sufficient company?”

Nostradamus, the famous astrologer, was born at St. Remy, in Provence,

in the year 1503. His real name was Michel de Notre Dame. For some

time he practised as a physician, but finally devoted himself to

astrology, and published in 1555 a collection of prophecies in rhymed

quatrains, entitled _Les Prophecies de Michel Nostradamus_, which

created an immediate sensation, and found many believers, especially as

the death of Henry II. of France seemed to verify one of his mystical

predictions. He was appointed physician to Charles IX., and continued

the publication of his prophecies, asserting, however, that the study

of the planetary aspects was not alone sufficient, but that the gift of

second sight, which God grants only to a few chosen persons, is also

necessary.

He died in the year 1566.

In the following lines allusion is made to two popular forms of

divination.

“CITIZEN’S DAUGHTER. Come, Agatha! I shun the witch’s sight

Before folks, lest there be misgiving!

’Tis true, she showed me, on Saint Andrew’s Night,

My future sweetheart, just as he were living.

“THE OTHER. She showed me mine, in crystal clear,

With several wild young blades, a soldier-lover”.

St. Andrew’s Night is celebrated in some parts of Germany by forms

of divination very similar to those which are practised in Scotland

on Hallow E’en. The maidens believe that by calling upon St. Andrew,

undressed, before getting into bed, their future sweetheart will appear

to them in a dream. Another charm is practised by pouring melted lead

through the wards of a key, wherein there is the form of a cross, into

a basin of water brought between eleven o’clock and midnight: the

cooling lead will then take the form of tools which indicate the trade

of the destined lover.

Crystal gazing, which we have described in a previous chapter, was also

a common method of foretelling future events, and young maidens were

supposed to be specially successful in its practise.

Faust’s description of the preparation of a panacea is a good

illustration of the fantastic language employed by the alchemists:—

“Who, in his dusky work-shop bending,

With proved adepts in company,

Made, from his recipes unending,

Opposing substances agree.

There was a Lion red, a wooer daring,

Within the Lily’s tepid bath espoused,

And both, tormented then by flame unsparing,

By turns in either bridal chamber housed.

If then appeared, with colours splendid,

The young Queen in her crystal shell,

This was the medicine—the patient’s woes soon ended,

And none demanded—who got well?”

Goethe is said to have drawn this description partly from Paracelsus,

and partly from Welling’s _Opus Mago Cabbalisticum_. The “Lion red” is

cinnabar, called a “wooer daring” on account of its action in rushing

to an intimate union with other bodies. “The Lily” is a preparation of

antimony, which bore the name of Lilium Paracelsi. Red, moreover, is

the masculine, and white the feminine colour. The retort containing

these substances was first placed in a “tepid bath” and gradually

heated, then “tormented by flame unsparing,” the two were driven from

one “bridal chamber” to another, that is, their wedded fumes were

forced by the heat into an alembic. If then the “Young Queen,” the

sublimated compound, appeared with a brilliant colour in the alembic

the proper result was obtained and this signified the true medicine.

In scene iii. Mephistopheles says:—

“My steps by one slight obstacle controlled,—

The wizard’s foot, that on your threshold is”.

The wizard’s foot or pentagram, was supposed to possess an especial

potency against evil spirits, and was often chalked on the door-steps

to protect the household from their influence. It consisted of a

five-rayed star, thus:—

[Illustration]

The belief in its efficacy doubtless sprang from the circumstance that

it resolves itself into three triangles, and thus a triple symbol of

the Trinity. Paracelsus ascribes a similar, though a lesser degree

of virtue to the hexagram. Another peculiarity of the pentagram is,

that it may be drawn complete from one point, without lifting the pen,

and therefore belongs to those _involuntary_ hieroglyphics which we

sometimes make in moments of abstraction. In scene xiii. where Margaret

plucks a star-flower, and pulls off the leaves one after the other,

murmuring—

“He loves me—loves me not”

we have an illustration of a favourite mode of amorous divination by

means of flowers still practised by country maidens.

The custom is of great antiquity and is mentioned by Theocritus. The

single daisy is a favourite flower for the purpose.

The following allusion to the red mouse refers to an ancient

superstition concerning one of the many forms of diabolical possession.

The “evil one” was supposed to enter the body in the form of a red

mouse.

“MEPHISTOPHELES. Wherefore forsakest thou the lovely maiden,

That in the dance so sweetly sang?

“FAUST. Ah! in the midst of it there sprang

A red mouse from her mouth—sufficient reason.”

In the second part of the work we are introduced to an astrologer who,

prompted by Mephistopheles, delivers himself as follows:—

“The Sun himself is gold of purest ray;

The herald, Mercury, serves for love and pay;

Dame Venus has bewitched you all, for she,

Early and late, looks on you lovingly;

Chaste Luna has her whims, no two alike;

Mars threatens you, although he may not strike,

And Jupiter is still the splendid star.

Saturn is great, though seeming small and far;

As metal, him we don’t much venerate,

Of value slight, though heavy in his weight.

Now, when of Sol and Luna unions had,—

Silver with gold,—then is the world made glad:

All else, with them, is easy to attain,—

Palaces, gardens, cheeks of rosy stain;

And thus procures this highly learned man,

Who that can do which none of us e’er can.”

The astrologer here alludes to the seven principal metals, to which

the early alchemists attached the names of seven planets. The Sun was

gold, the Moon silver, Mercury quicksilver, Venus copper, Mars iron,

Jupiter tin, and Saturn lead.

In the same act, reference is made to an old tradition that is still

believed in some parts of Germany.

“Lo! at hand there

Is ancient juice of strength divine.

Yet trust to him who’s knowledge gotten,

The wood o’ the staves has long been rotten,

A cask of tartar holds the wine.”

It is a general belief in the wine districts, that when a cask of wine

has been kept for centuries, the crust of argol or crude cream of

tartar which is gradually deposited, may acquire such a consistency

as to hold the liquid when the staves have rotted away. The wine thus

becomes its own cask, and preserves itself in a thick oily state. It is

then said to possess wonderful medicinal virtues.

Later on Mephistopheles is asked by a blonde beauty for a cure for her

complexion.

“One word, sir! Here you see a visage fair,—

In sorry summer I another wear!

There sprout a hundred brown and reddish freckles,

And vex my lily skin with ugly speckles.

A cure!

“MEPHISTOPHELES. ’Tis pity! shining fair, yet smitten,—

Spotted, when May comes, like a panther-kitten!

Take frog’s spawn, tongues of toads, which contribute,

Under the full moon deftly distillate,

And when it wanes, apply the mixture:

Next spring, the spots will be no more a fixture.

“A BRUNETTE. To sponge upon you, what a crowd’s advancing!

I beg a remedy: a frozen foot

Annoys me much, in walking as in dancing;

And awkwardly I manage to salute.

“MEPHISTOPHELES. A gentle kick permit, then, from my foot!

“THE BRUNETTE. Well,—that might happen when the two are lovers.

“MEPHISTOPHELES. My kick a more important meaning covers;

_Similia similibus_, when one is sick,

The foot cures foot, each limb its hurt can palliate;

Come near! Take heed! and pray you don’t retaliate!”

Frog’s spawn and toad’s tongues formed an old remedy for spots on the

skin, and in the “gentle kick” we have a satire on the homœopathic

theory of medicine.

CHAPTER V.

LE SAGE.

Le Sage draws a vivid picture of the medical practitioner of his day in

his well-known work _Gil Blas_. Doctor Sangrado, bigoted, obstinate,

and dominated by one idea, was doubtless very true to nature, and

a type of physician not unfrequently met with even later than the

seventeenth century. The character is supposed to have been drawn from

that of Doctor Hecquet, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, a man

extremely thin and spare in body, and who is said never to have drank

anything but water.

Le Sage describes his physician as “a tall, meagre, pale man, who had

kept the shears of Clotho employed during forty years. He had a very

solemn appearance, weighed his discourse, and gave an emphasis to his

expressions: his reason was geometrical, and his opinions extremely

singular.” All the city looked upon him as another Hippocrates. The

licentiate Sedillo, a fat clerical epicurean, having fallen sick with

the fever and gout, this great physician was called in, and after

examining his patient delivered himself of the following diagnosis:

“The business here is to supply the defect of obstructed perspiration;

others in my place would doubtless prescribe saline draughts,

diuretics, diaphoretics, and such medicines as abound with mercury and

sulphur; but cathartics and sudorifics are pernicious drugs invented by

quacks, and all the preparations of chemistry are only calculated to do

mischief,” said this disciple of Æsculapius.

“You must renounce all palatable food; and do you drink wine?”

“Yes,” said the poor canon; “wine and water.”

“Oh! watered as much as you please,” replied the physician: “what an

irregularity is here! what a frightful regimen! You ought to have been

dead long ago. If you had drunk nothing but pure water all your life,

and had been satisfied with simple nourishment, such as, for example,

boiled apples, peas, and beans, you would not now be tormented with

gout, and all your limbs would perform their functions with ease.”

The poor canon promised to obey in all these things, but the doctor

hadn’t finished yet, for he sent for a surgeon, and ordered him to let

“six good porringers of blood as the first effort” to supply the want

of perspiration.

“And return in three hours, and take as much more, and repeat the same

to-morrow,” said this veritable leech to the surgeon, “for a patient

cannot be bled too much.”

Besides this, the unfortunate patient was dosed incessantly with

warm water, two or three pints in as many draughts, “for,” said the

physician, “water is the true specific in all distempers what-ever”.

Little wonder that in less than two days, Gil Blas tells us, the old

canon was reduced to the last extremity, and soon after breathed his

last, much to the regret of the physician, who declared it was because

he had not lost blood enough, nor drank a sufficient quantity of water.

The mercurial Gil Blas shortly after took service with this learned

medico, and kept his books, which he declares might have been with

great justice styled a register of the dead; for almost all the people

whose names it contained died soon afterwards.

But after being about a week with the physician, Gil Blas was seized

with a cramp which he attributed to the quantity of the “universal

dissolvent” he was compelled to imbibe, and had to consult his master.

“Why, truly, Gil Blas, I am not at all surprised that thou dost not

enjoy good health,” said the hydropathist. “Thou dost not drink enough,

my friend. Water taken in small quantities serves only to disentangle

the particles of the bile, and give them more activity, whereas

they should be drowned in a copious dilution. I will warrant the

consequence, and if thou wilt not take my word, Celsus himself shall be

thy security.”

It need hardly be wondered at that Gil Blas soon came to believe that

he also had a natural talent for the medical profession, which was so

easy to acquire and lucrative to practise, and was rapidly promoted as

assistant to his master.

“Listen, my child,” said the doctor one day, “I will immediately

disclose to thee the whole extent of that salutary art which I have

professed so many years. Know, my friend, all that is required is to

bleed thy patients and make them drink warm water. This is the secret

of curing all the distempers incident to man. I have nothing more to

impart; thou knowest physic to the very bottom.”

Thus the _ci-devant_ valet soon robed himself in a physician’s gown

and long _perruque_, then went forth to practise, but resolved to

drink wine every day, of which he said he drank huge draughts, and

(no disparagement to the Roman oracle) “the more I filled my stomach,

the less did that organ complain of the injury it received”. So he

bled and watered the community. But the time soon came when this young

practitioner met with a reverse. When called in to consultation with

a Spanish doctor of another school, a dispute arose on the subject of

the water-cure, which ended in a pitched battle being fought between

the rival medicos over the unfortunate patient, and they were not

separated until each had lost a handful of hair. This ended in the

discharge of Gil Blas, who immediately took the opportunity of imbibing

a considerable quantity of wine at the first tavern he came across, and

returned to his patron in a condition of considerable elevation.

The wine having made him thirsty, he consumed a large quantity of water

while telling his story.

“I see, Gil Blas, thou hast no longer an aversion to water,” said the

physician. “Heaven be praised! thou drinkest it now like nectar! a

change that does not at all surprise me, my friend.”

“Sir,” replied Gil Blas, “there’s a time for all things; I would not

at present give a pint of water for a hogshead of wine.”

That Le Sage had a very poor opinion of the professors of the art of

medicine in his time may be gathered from the following conversation

which Gil Blas holds with his employer: “Scarcely a day passed in which

we did not visit eight or ten patients each, from whence it may be

easily conceived what a quantity of blood was spilt and water drank.

But I do not know how it happened, all our sick died. We very seldom

had occasion to make three visits to one patient; at the second we were

either told that he had just been buried, or we found them at the last

gasp; and as I was but a young physician who had not yet had time to be

inured to murder, I began to be very uneasy at the fatal events which

might be laid to my charge.” And so he at last gave it up, after being

threatened with his life by a gallant, whose wife had succumbed to his

drastic treatment.

Towards the close of the story Gil Blas has an interview with his

former master, who describes to his old pupil the change that had

taken place in the practice of medicine in a few years, which forms an

interesting account of the transition through which the medical art was

passing towards the end of the seventeenth century.

“Ah, my son,” says the worthy doctor, “what a change has happened in

physic within these few years. There are in this city, physicians,

or such as call themselves so, who are yoked to the triumphal car of

antimony—_currus triumphalis antimonii_. Truants from the school

of Paracelsus, adorers of kermes, accidental curers who make the

whole science of medicine consist in knowing how to prepare chymical

drugs. What shall I tell you! Everything is turned topsy-turvey in

their method. Bleeding at the foot, for example, hitherto so seldom

practised, is now almost the only bleeding in use. Those purgatives

which were formerly gentle and benign are now changed for emetics and

kermes.

“I published a book against this brigandage of medicine, but it was no

use. The surgeons, mad with ambition of acting as physicians, think

themselves sufficiently qualified when there is nothing to be done

but to give kermes and emetics, to which they add bleeding at the

foot, according to their own fancy. They even proceed so far as to

mix kermes in apozems and cordial potions; and so they are on a par

with your celebrated prescribers. This contagion has spread also among

the cloisters. There are some monks who act both as apothecaries and

surgeons. These apes of medicine apply themselves to chemistry, and

compose pernicious drugs, with which they abridge the lives of the

reverend fathers.”

The doctor describes the dawn of pharmacy in France and Spain, which

was first practised by the surgeons who became surgeon-apothecaries.

The use of emetics in medical treatment came largely into vogue in

1658. It is said that the life of Louis XIV. was saved by an emetic

administered by Dusausoi, in opposition to the opinion of Vallot, the

chief physician to the king.

CHAPTER VI.

BEN JONSON.

Ben Jonson gives a description of the itinerant doctor in Queen

Elizabeth’s time, who travelled the country, usually accompanied by

a jester or zany, as he was called, who carried the box or chest

containing his remedies. We see the professor with his copper rings,

shining chain, better than gold but not quite so valuable, his yellow

jewel, his dirty feather-embroidered suit, grave look, and starched

beard.[45] Hush! he begins:—

[45] Ben Jonson’s _Fox_, act ii., scene i.

“Most noble gentlemen and my worthy patrons!—I have nothing to sell,

little or nothing to sell, though I protest, I and my six servants are

not able to make of my precious balsam so fast as it is fetched away

from my lodging by the worthy men of the town. O health! health! the

blessing of the rich, the riches of the poor, who can buy thee at too

dear a rate? And since there is no enjoying the world without thee, for

when a humid flux or catarrh, by the mutability of air, falls from

your head into an arm or shoulder, take you a rose noble or an angel

of gold and apply to the place affected; see what good effect it can

work. No, no; to this blessed unguent, this rare extraction, that hath

only power to dispose all malignant humours that proceed either of hot,

cold, moist, or windy causes; to fortify the most indigest and crude

stomach—aye, were it one that through extreme weakness vomited blood,

applying only a warm napkin to the place after the unction and fricace;

for the vertigoe in the head, putting out a drop into your nostrils,

likewise behind the ears, a most sovereign and approved remedy; the

_mal caduco_, cramps, convulsions, paralysies, epilepsies, tremor

cordia, retind nerves, ill vapours of the spleen, and stoppings of the

liver, or stops a dysentery, immediately cureth poison of the small

guts, and cures melancholia, being taken and applied according to my

printed recipe (shows his bill and vial, and the zany sings a song). It

will cost you eight crowns, and has cured all the kings in Christendom.

Many have attempted to make this oil, wasting thousands of crowns in

the ingredients (for there go to it sixty several simples, besides

some quantity of human fat for conglutination, which we buy of the

anatomists); but when these practitioners come to the last decoction,

blow, blow! puff, puff! it flies in fumes, poor wretches.

“Gentlemen, honourable gentlemen, I will undertake by virtue of

chemical art, out of the honourable hat that covers your head, to

extract the four elements—that is to say, the fire, air, water, and

earth, and return you your felt without burn or stain. You all know,

honourable gentlemen, I never valued this ampulla or vial at less than

eight crowns, but for this time I am content to be deprived of it for

six; six crowns, then, is the price in courtesy. I know you cannot

offer me less; take it or leave it, howsoever, both it and I are at

your service (zany sings another song).

“Well, I am in a humour at this time to make a present of the small

quantity my coffer contains to the rich in courtesy, and to the poor

for God’s sake; wherefore now mark, I asked you six crowns, and six

crowns at other times you have paid me: you shall not give me six

crowns, nor five, nor four, nor three, nor two, nor one, nor half a

one, nor a shilling; sixpence it will cost you or £60. Expect no lower

price, for I will not bate a jot; and this I take away as a pledge

of your love, to carry something from amongst you to show I am not

condemned.”

CHAPTER VII.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

That picturesque period when the astrologer formed part of the

_entourage_ of almost every European court, and was petted by emperors

and kings, is graphically described by Sir Walter Scott in _Quentin

Durward_ in the following words:—

“Louis XI. of France had retired to the castle of Plessis, where

he received an ambassador from the Duke of Burgundy, with whom his

relations were somewhat strained. Attached to the court of the king,

we are told, and lodged in magnificent apartments, was the celebrated

astrologer, poet, and philosopher, Galeotti Martius, author of the

famous treatise _De Vulgo Incognitis_. He had long flourished at

the court of the King of Hungary, from whom, it is said, he was in

some measure decoyed by Louis, who grudged the Hungarian monarch the

counsels of a sage accounted so skilful in reading the decrees of

Heaven. Martius was none of those ascetic, withered, pale professors

of mystic learning of those days, who bleared their eyes over the

midnight furnace, and macerated their bodies by outmatching the

polar bear. He was trained in arms, and renowned as a wrestler. His

apartment was splendidly furnished, and on a large oaken table lay a

variety of mathematical and astrological instruments, all of the most

rich materials and curious workmanship. His astrolabe of silver was

the gift of the Emperor of Germany, and his Jacob’s staff of ebony,

jointed with gold, was a mark of esteem from the reigning Pope. In

person the astrologer was a tall, bulky, yet stately man. His features,

though rather overgrown, were dignified and noble, and a Santon might

have envied the dark and downward sweep of his long descending beard.

His dress was a chamber robe of the richest Genoa velvet, with ample

sleeves clasped with frogs of gold, and lined with sables. It was

fastened round his middle by a broad belt of virgin parchment, round

which were represented in crimson characters the signs of the zodiac.

“Such was the astrologer of Louis XI., who was consulted in matters of

state policy and intrigue, and exercised a considerable influence over

that weak monarch.

“The costly nature of such a courtier is well illustrated in an

interview which the king has with his astrologer, and leaves on his

table a purse of gold as a reward for some special service. But the

contents did not by any means satisfy the man of science.

“He emptied the purse, which contained neither more nor less than ten

gold pieces.

“The indignation of the astrologer was extreme.

“‘Thinks he that for such paltry rate of hire I will practice that

celestial science which I have studied with the Armenian Abbot of

Istrahoff, who had not seen the sun for forty years; with the Greek

Dubravius, who is said to have raised the dead; and have even visited

the Scheik Ebn Hali in his cave in the desert of Thebais? No, by

Heaven! He that contemns art shall perish through his ignorance. Ten

pieces!—a pittance which I am half-ashamed to offer to Toinette to buy

her new breast laces.’”

CHAPTER VIII.

DUMAS.

Pharmacy, pure and simple, occupies but a small space in literature,

although the disciples of the sister arts of medicine and alchemy have

often formed interesting studies for many great writers of fiction.

Unfortunately the scientific knowledge of the average novelist is, as

a rule, extremely limited, and the effects they attribute to certain

drugs are usually as fabulous as those believed in the dark ages.

They tell us of mysterious poisons of untold power, an infinitesimal

quantity of which will cause instantaneous death without leaving a

trace behind. They also describe anæsthetics so powerful that a whiff

from a bottle or the wave of a handkerchief will at once produce

insensibility for any period desired. In fact the writer of romance has

a _pharmacopœia_ of his own.

But why should we cavil at it or try to analyse it in the prosaic

test-tube of modern science.

Exclude the marvellous and mysterious, and you kill romance. It

performs its mission if it succeeds in interesting and amusing us, so

we should be lenient if it errs in mere matters of science.

The art of the romancer reaches its height when it succeeds in mixing

the possible with the impossible so that we can scarce perceive it.

There are few characters in the realm of romantic fiction more

fascinating than the Count Monte Christo. As a work of imaginative

power and absorbing interest, this masterpiece of Dumas stands unique.

Nothing is impossible to this extraordinary individual, and incident

after incident of the most dramatic and exciting nature crowd one upon

another.

The count, who is supposed to have studied the art of medicine in the

East, has always a remedy ready for every ill; from his hashis, in

which he is a profound believer, to his mysterious stimulating elixir,

a liquid, we are told, of the colour of blood, which he always kept in

a phial composed of Bohemian glass.

A single drop of this vital fluid, if allowed to fall on the lips,

almost before it reaches them, restores the marble and inanimate form

to life. His pill-boxes were composed of emeralds and precious stones

of huge size, and their contents were composed of drugs whose effect

was almost beyond comprehension.

In the _Memoirs of a Physician_, Dumas describes an alchemist of the

last century, a time when the seekers after the philosopher’s stone

and the _elixir vitæ_ had almost died out. Joseph Balsamo, the hero

of the story, drawn from the life of the notorious Cagliostro, is a

necromancer of the modern kind, who works his marvels by what is now

known as hypnotism or mesmerism, a condition little understood in those

days. Althotas, an alchemist of renown, lives with Balsamo, and aids

him in his researches.

He is described as “an old man of over a hundred years, with grey

eyes, hooked nose, and trembling bony hands, and he sits half-buried

in his chair. Clad in a long silk robe, now nothing but a shapeless,

colourless ragged covering, he grumbled as he drew over his ears his

cap of velvet, from under which a few locks of silver hair peeped out.

“The dwelling of the alchemist,” says the novelist, “might be about

eight or nine feet high and sixteen in diameter; it was lighted from

the top like a well, and hermetically closed on the four sides.”

“Besides the phials, boxes, books, and papers strewed around, copper

pincers were seen, and pieces of charcoal which had been dipped in

various liquids; there was also a large vase half full of water, and

from the roof, hung by threads, were bundles of herbs, some apparently

gathered the night before, others a hundred years ago. A keen odour

prevailed in this laboratory, which in one less strange would have been

called a perfume.

“The old man was seated in his armchair on wheels, in the centre of a

marble table formed like a horseshoe, and heaped up with a whole world,

or rather whole chaos, of plants, phials, tools, books, instruments,

and papers covered with cabalistic characters.

“He was so absorbed that he never raised his head when Balsamo appeared.

“The light of an astral lamp, suspended from the culminating point of

the window in the roof, fell on his bald, shining head.

“He was turning to and fro in his fingers a small white bottle,

the transparency of which he was trying before his eye, as a good

housekeeper tries the eggs which she buys at market.

“Balsamo gazed on him at first in silence; then, after a moment’s

pause:—

“‘Well,’ said he, ‘have you any news?’

“‘Yes, yes; come hither, Acharat, you see me enchanted—transported

with joy! I have found—I have found——’

“‘What?’

“‘Pardieu! what I sought.’

“‘Gold?’

“‘Gold, indeed! I am surprised at you!’

“‘The diamond?’

“‘Gold? diamonds? The man raves! A fine discovery, forsooth, to be

rejoiced at!’

“‘Then what you have found is your elixir?’

“‘Yes, my son, yes!—the elixir of life! Life?—what do I say?—the

eternity of life!’

“‘Oh!’ said Balsamo in a dejected voice (for he looked on this pursuit

as mere insanity), ‘so it is that dream which occupies you still?’

“But Althotas, without listening, continued to gaze delightedly at his

phial.

“‘At last,’ said he, ‘the combination is complete: the elixir of

Aristæus, twenty grains; balm of mercury, fifteen grains; precipitate

of gold, fifteen grains; essence of the cedar of Lebanon, twenty-five

grains.’

“‘But it seems to me that, with the exception of the elixir of

Aristæus, this is precisely your last combination, master?’

“‘Yes, but I had not then discovered one more ingredient, without which

all the rest are as nothing.’

“‘And have you discovered it now?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Can you procure it?’

“‘I should think so!’

“‘What is it?’

“‘We must add to the several ingredients already combined in this

phial, the three last drops of the life-blood of an infant.’

“‘Well, but where will you procure this infant?’ said Balsamo

horror-struck.

“‘I trust to you for that.’

“‘To me? You are mad, master!’

“‘Mad? And why?’ asked the old man, perfectly unmoved at this charge,

and licking with the utmost delight a drop of the fluid which had

escaped from the cork of the phial and was trickling down the side.

“‘Why, for that purpose you must kill the child.’

“‘Of course we must kill him; and the handsomer he is the better.’”

But in the end the old man falls a victim to his own infatuation, and

at length dies incontinently without discovering the long-looked-for

arcana.

CHAPTER IX.

READE.

An excellent picture of a physician of the fifteenth century is drawn

by that master in the art of fiction, Charles Reade, in his work _The

Cloister and the Hearth_, a story of much historic interest and beauty.

The hero, Gerard, wounded in an encounter with a bear, lies sick at

Düsseldorf, and is visited by a physician.

“It was an imposing figure that entered the sick room; an old gentleman

in a long sober gown trimmed with rich fur, cherry-coloured hose, and

pointed shoes, with a sword by his side in a morocco scabbard, a ruff

round his neck, not only starched severely, but treacherously stiffened

in furrows by rebatoes, or a little hidden framework of wood; and on

his head a four-cornered cap with a fur border; on his chin and bosom,

a majestic white beard. This was the full dress of a physician. A boy

followed at his heels with a basket, where phials, lint, and surgical

tools rather courted than shunned observation.”

The old doctor, on learning that his patient suffered from a wound,

exclaimed, “This must be cauterised forthwith,” and immediately called

for his urchin to heat his iron. Gerard, who didn’t like the look of

things, informed the leech the wound was caused by the bear’s paw, and

not his jaw.

“And why did’st not tell me that at once?”

“Because you kept telling me instead.”

“Never conceal aught from your leech, young man,” continued the senior,

who was a good talker, but one of the worst listeners in Europe. “Well,

it is an ill business. All the horny excrescences of animals—to wit,

claws of tigers, panthers, badgers, cats, bears, and the like, and horn

of deer, and nails of humans, especially children, are imbued with

direst poison. I had better have been bitten by a cur, _whatever you

may say_, than gored by a bull or stag, or scratched by bear. However,

shalt have a good biting cataplasm for thy leg; meantime keep we the

body cool: put out thy tongue!—good!—fever. Let me feel thy pulse:

good!—fever! I ordain flebotomy, and on the instant. Hans, go fetch

the things needful, and I will entertain the patient meantime with

reasons.”

The man of art then entered into a learned disquisition on pathology

and the healthful practice of blood-letting. Time was evidently no

object, neither the extremity of his patient. “Think not,” said he

warmly, “that it suffices to bleed; any paltry barber can open a vein.

The art is to know what vein to empty, and for what disease. T’other

day they brought me one tormented with earache. I let him blood in the

right thigh, and away flew his earache. By-the-bye, he has died since

then. Another came with the toothache. I bleed him behind the ear, and

relieved him in a jiffey. He is also since dead as it happens.”

After thus reciting his powers in venesection, the worthy doctor

thought he could not do better than back it up with a show of

knowledge, and recommenced on a new theme.

“Know, young man, that two schools of art contend at this moment

throughout Europe. The Arabian, whose ancient oracles are Avicenna,

Rhazes, Allricazis; and its revivers are Chauliac and Lanfranc; and

the Greek school, whose modern champions are Bessarion, Platinus,

and Marsilius Ficinus, but whose pristine doctors were medicine’s

very oracles—Phœbus, Chiron, Æsculapius, and his sons Podalinus

and Machaon, Pythagoras, Democritus; Praxagoras, who invented the

arteries, and Dioctes, _qui primus urinæ animum dedit_. All these

taught orally. Then came Hippocrates, the eighteenth from Æsculapius,

and of him we have manuscripts, to him we owe ‘the vital principle’. He

also invented the bandage, and tapped for water on the chest; and above

all, he dissected, yet only quadrupeds, for the brutal prejudices of

the pagan vulgar withheld the human body from the knife of science. Him

followed Aristotle, who gave us the aorta, the largest blood-vessel in

the human body.”

“Surely, sir, the Almighty gave us all that is in our bodies, and not

Aristotle nor any Grecian man,” objected Gerard humbly.

“Child! of course He gave us the thing; but Aristotle did more—he gave

us the name of the thing. But young men will still be talking. The

next great light was Galen; he studied at Alexandria, then the home

of science. He, justly malcontent with quadrupeds, dissected apes, as

coming nearer to man, and bled like a Trojan. Then came Theophilus, who

gave us the nerves, the lacteal vessels, and the _pia mater_.”

“I am put to silence, sir.”

“And that is better still, for garrulous patients are ill to cure,

especially in fever. I say, then, that Eristratus gave us the cerebral

nerves and the milk vessels; nay, more, he was the inventor of

lithotomy, whatever you may say. Then came another whom I forget;

you do somewhat perturb me with your petty exceptions. Then came

Ammonius, the author of lithotrity, and here comes Hans with the basin

to stay your volubility. Blow thy chafer, boy, and hand me the basin;

’tis well. Arabians, quotha! What are they but a sect of yesterday,

who about the year 1000 did fall in with the writings of those very

Greeks, and read them awry, having no concurrent light of their own?

for their demi-god and camel-driver, Mahomed, impostor in science as

in religion, had strictly forbidden them anatomy, even of the lower

animals, the which he who severeth from medicine, _tollit solem e

mundo_, as Tully quoth. Nay, wonder not at my fervour, good youth;

where the general weal stands in jeopardy a little warmth is civic,

humane, and honourable. Now, there is settled of late in this town a

pestilent Arabist, a mere empiric, who, despising anatomy, and scarce

knowing Greek from Hebrew, hath yet spirited away half my patients, and

I tremble for the rest. Put forth thine ankle; and thou, Hans, breathe

on the chafer.”

At the end of this tirade Gerard’s friend and fellow-traveller Denys

appears on the scene, and will not hear of the bleeding being carried

out. The blustering but good-tempered soldier soon comes to hot words

with the old physician on the subject, and a wordy battle ensues, which

ends by the doctor being offended, and decides to beat a dignified

retreat. The concluding scene is too good to omit, and we will give it

in the author’s own words.

“Ah! you reject my skill, you scorn my art. My revenge shall be to

leave you to yourself; lost idiot, take your last look at me, and at

the sun. Your blood be on your head!” And away he stamped.

But on reaching the door he whirled and came back, his wicker tail

twirling round after him like a cat’s.

“In twelve hours at furthest you will be in the secondary stage of

fever. Your head will split. Your carotids will thump. Aha! And let

but a pin fall, you will jump to the ceiling. Then send for me, and

_I’ll not come_.” He departed. But at the door-handle gathered fury,

wheeled and came flying, with pale, terror-stricken boy and wicker tail

whisking after him. “Next will come—_Cramps of the stomach_. Aha!

“Then—_Bilious vomit_. Aha!

“Then—_Cold sweat and deadly stupor_.

“Then—_Confusion of all the senses_.

“Then—_Bloody vomit_.

“And after that nothing can save you, not even I; and if I could I

would not, and so farewell.”

Even Denys changed colour at threats so fervent and precise; but Gerard

only gnashed his teeth with rage at the noise, and seized his hard

bolster with kindling eye.

This added fuel to the fire, and brought the insulted ancient back from

the impassable door, with his whisking train.

“And after that—_Madness!_

“And after that—_Black vomit!_

“And then—_Convulsions!_

“And then—_That cessation of all vital functions the vulgar call

‘death,’_ for which thank your own Satanic folly and insolence.

Farewell.” He went. He came. He roared: “And think not to be buried

in any Christian churchyard, for the bailiff is my good friend, and

I shall tell him how and why you died: _felo de se! felo de se!_

Farewell.”

Gerard sprang to his feet on the bed by some supernatural gymnastic

power excitement lent him, and, seeing him so moved, the vindictive

orator came back at him fiercer than ever, to launch some master-threat

the world has unhappily lost, for as he came with his whisking train

and shaking his fist, Gerard hurled the bolster furiously in his face

and knocked him down like a shot, the boy’s head cracked under his

falling master’s, and crash went the dumb-stricken orator into the

basket, and there sat, wedged in an inverted angle, crushing phial

after phial. The boy, being light, was strewed afar, but in a squatting

posture, so that they sat in a sequence, like graduated specimens, the

smaller howling. But soon the doctor’s face filled with horror, and he

uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled

with wonderful agility for one of his age.

He was sitting on the hot coals.

They had singed the cloth, and were now biting the man. Struggling

wildly but vainly to get out of the basket, he rolled over with it

sideways, and lo! a great hissing; then the humane Gerard ran and

wrenched off the tight basket, not without a struggle. The doctor lay

on his face groaning, handsomely singed with his own chafer, and slaked

a moment too late by his own villainous compounds, which, however,

being as various and even beautiful in colour as they were odious in

taste, had strangely diversified his grey robe, and painted it more

gaudy than neat.

Gerard and Denys raised him up and consoled him. “Courage, man, ’tis

but cautery; balm of Gilead—why, you recommended it but now to my

comrade here.”

A curious specimen of medical treatment came to light when Philip, Duke

of Burgundy, lay sick at Bruges. He was a doughty warrior this Earl of

Holland, as he was sometimes called, and wealthy withal, so the best

advice was secured.

“Now, paupers got sick and got well as Nature pleased, but woe betided

the rich,” says the novelist, “in an age when for one Mr. Malady

killed, three fell by Dr. Remedy.

“The duke’s complaint, nameless then, is now called diphtheria. He was

old and weak, so Dr. Remedy bled him.

“The duke turned cold—wonderful!

“Then Dr. Remedy had recourse to the arcana of science.

“Ho! This is grave. Flay me an ape incontinent, to clap him to the

duke’s breast! Officers of state ran septemvious, seeking an ape to

counteract the blood-thirsty tomfoolery of the human species.

“But an ape could not be found.

“Then Dr. Remedy grew impatient, and bade flay a dog.

“A dog is next best to an ape; only it must be a dog all of one colour.

“So they flayed a liver-coloured dog and clapped it, yet palpitating,

to their sovereign’s breast; and he died.”

Thus ended Philip the Good.

CHAPTER X.

DICKENS.

The apothecary of romance is almost invariably pale and lean, with head

nearly destitute of hirsute covering, and a man of retiring habits and

sad demeanour. This is perhaps because he gets little chance to make

the wherewithal to make him fat, and has few opportunities to seek

enjoyment and recreation.

Dickens’ chemist, whom he describes in his pathetic little story

_The Haunted Man_, is no exception to this rule. “Who could have

seen his hollow cheek, his sunken, brilliant eye; his black-attired

figure, indefinably grim, although well knit and well proportioned;

his grizzled hair hanging like tangled seaweed about his face,—as if

he had been through his whole life a lonely mark for the chafing and

beating of the great deep of humanity—but might have said he looked

like a haunted man?

“Who could have observed his manner—taciturn, thoughtful, gloomy,

shadowed by habitual reserve, retiring always and jocund never, with a

distraught air of reverting to a bygone place and time, or of listening

to some old echoes in his mind—but might have said it was the manner

of a haunted man?

“Who could have heard his voice—slow-speaking, deep and grave, with a

natural fulness and melody in it which he seemed to set himself against

and stop—but might have said it was the voice of a haunted man?

“Who that had seen him in his inner chamber, part library and part

laboratory,—for he was, as the world knew far and wide, a learned man

in chemistry, and a teacher on whose lips and hands a crowd of aspiring

ears and eyes hung daily,—who that had seen him there, upon a winter

night, alone, surrounded by his drugs and instruments and books; the

shadow of his shaded lamp, a monstrous beetle on the wall, motionless

among a crowd of spectral shapes raised there by the flickering of the

fire upon the quaint objects around him; some of these phantoms (the

reflection of glass vessels that held liquids) trembling at heart like

things that knew his power to uncombine them, and to give back their

component parts to fire and vapour;—who that had seen him then, his

work done and he pondering in his chair before the rusted grate and red

flame, moving his thin mouth as if in speech, but silent as the dead,

would not have said that the man seemed haunted and the chamber too?”

In the _Pickwick Papers_ the author describes in one of his happiest

veins, the troubles of a chemist who is suddenly called to serve on a

common jury—to try indeed the celebrated case of “Bardell _versus_

Pickwick”.

“‘Answer to your names, gentlemen, that you may be sworn,’ said the

gentleman in black.

“‘Richard Upwitch.’

“‘Here,’ said the greengrocer.

“‘Thomas Groffin.’

“‘Here,’ said the chemist.

“‘Take the book, gentlemen. You shall well and truly try——’

“‘I beg this court’s pardon,’ said the chemist, who was a tall, thin,

yellow-visaged man, ‘but I hope this court will excuse my attendance.’

“‘On what grounds, sir?’ said Mr. Justice Stareleigh.

“‘I have no assistant, my lord,’ said the chemist.

“‘Then you ought to be able to afford it, sir,’ said the judge

reddening, for Mr. Justice Stareleigh’s temper bordered on the

irritable, and brooked not contradiction.

“‘I know I _ought_ to do, if I got on as well as I desired, but I

don’t, my lord,’ answered the chemist.

“‘Swear the gentlemen,’ said the judge peremptorily.

“The officer had got no further than the ‘You shall well and truly try’

when he was again interrupted by the chemist.

“‘I am to be sworn, my lord, am I?’ said the chemist.

“‘Certainly, sir,’ replied the testy little judge.

“‘Very well, my lord,’ replied the chemist in a resigned manner. ‘Then

there’ll be murder before this trial’s over: that’s all. Swear me if

you please, sir.’ And sworn the chemist was before the judge could find

words to utter.

“‘I merely wanted to observe, my lord,’ said the chemist, taking his

seat with great deliberation, ‘that I’ve left nobody but an errand boy

in my shop. He is a very nice boy, my lord, but he is not acquainted

with drugs; and I know that the prevailing impression in his mind is,

that Epsom salts means oxalic acid, and syrup of senna, laudanum.

That’s all, my lord.’ With this, the tall chemist composed himself

into a comfortable attitude, and, assuming a pleasant expression of

countenance, appeared to have prepared himself for the worst.”

This little sketch shows the disabilities the chemist laboured under

before he was exempted from jury service, and the intimate knowledge

Dickens had of almost every phase of life on which he wrote.

In _Oliver Twist_ he gives us an instance of prompt prescribing on the

part of the parochial doctor’s assistant and dispenser, related by

Bumble.

Mr. Bumble betakes himself to the undertaker’s shop to arrange for the

funeral.

“‘Bayton,’ said the undertaker looking from the scrap of paper to Mr.

Bumble; ‘I never heard the name before.’

“Bumble shook his head as he replied, ‘Obstinate people, Mr.

Sowerberry—very obstinate. Proud, too, I’m afraid, sir.’

“‘Proud, eh?’ exclaimed Mr. Sowerberry with a sneer. ‘Come, that’s too

much.’

“‘Oh, its sickening,’ replied the beadle; ‘antimonial, Mr. Sowerberry!’

“‘So it is,’ acquiesced the undertaker.

“‘We only heard of the family the night before last,’ said the beadle;

‘and we shouldn’t have known anything about them then, only a woman who

lodges in the same house made an application to the parochial committee

for them to send the parochial surgeon to see a woman as was very bad.

He had gone out to dinner, but his ’prentice (which is a very clever

lad) sent ’em some medicine in a blacking bottle off hand.’

“‘Ah, there’s promptness,’ said the undertaker.

“‘Promptness indeed!’ replied the beadle. ‘But what’s the consequence;

what’s the ungrateful behaviour of these rebels, sir? Why, the husband

sends back word that the medicine won’t suit his wife’s complaint, and

so she shan’t take it—says she shan’t take it, sir! Good, strong,

wholesome medicine, as was given with great success to two Irish

labourers and a coal-heaver only a week before. Sent ’em for nothing,

with a blacking bottle in, and he sends back word that she shan’t take

it, sir!’”

THACKERAY.

The great satirist, in _Pendennis_, gives us a brief sketch of the

apothecary of the Georgian era in the early life of John Pendennis,

who in the city of Bath practised as an apothecary and surgeon,

“attending gentlemen in their sickrooms, and ladies at the most

interesting periods of their lives, and condescending to sell a

brown-paper plaister to a farmer’s wife across the counter, or to vend

tooth-brushes, hair-powder, and London perfumery”. How he eventually

merged into John Pendennis, Esq., of Fairoaks, Clavering, with a

“family pride,” is it not described with the pen of inimitable genius

in the pages of the story?

CHAPTER XI.

MARRYAT.

In his novel entitled _Japhet in Search of a Father_, Captain Marryat

introduces to us that eccentric apothecary, Mr. Phineas Cophagus; and

although the character is doubtless exaggerated to some extent, it

forms an amusing picture of the practising apothecary in the early part

of this century.

Japhet, who is taken in hand and apprenticed to the worthy

practitioner, describes the shop looking upon Smithfield Market,

with its usual allowance of green, yellow, and blue bottles. All the

patent medicines in the known world were kept in stock, even to the

all-sufficient medicine for mankind of Mr. Euony. The shop was large,

and at the back part there was a most capacious iron mortar with a

pestle to correspond.

The proprietor himself, we are told, might have been forty-five years

of age. “He was of middle height, his face was thin, his nose very much

hooked, his eyes small and piercing, with a good-humoured twinkle in

them. His mouth was large and drawn down at one corner. He was stout

in his body, and carried a considerable protuberance before him, which

he was in the habit of patting with his left hand complacently. But

although stout in his body, his legs were mere spindles, so that in his

appearance he reminded you of some bird of the crane genus.

“He dressed in a black coat and waistcoat, white cravat, and high

collar to his shirt; blue cotton-net pantaloons and Hessian boots, both

fitting so tight that it appeared as if he was proud of his spindle

shanks. His hat was broad-brimmed and low, and he carried a stout black

cane with a gold top in his right hand, almost always raising the gold

top to his nose when he spoke.

“The apothecary’s assistant, Brookes, was a tall, fresh-coloured, but

hectic-looking young man, and, with the ubiquitous Timothy, who took

out the medicine, formed the staff of the establishment.”

Japhet’s introduction to the rudiments of the profession was to pound

up some drugs in the big iron mortar, which he did with a will until

the perspiration ran down him in streams. He hadn’t been many months

in the shop before he was left in charge with Timothy, who, after

cudgelling his brains as to how they shall make a little money on their

own account, agrees with Japhet to physic any one who comes in the shop.

The story is related by Japhet as follows:—

“An old woman soon came in, and addressing Timothy, said that she

‘wanted something for her poor grandchild’s sore throat’.

“‘I don’t mix up the medicines, ma’am,’ replied Timothy; ‘you must

apply to that gentleman, Mr. Newland, who is behind the counter; he

understands what is good for everybody’s complaints.’

“‘Bless his handsome face—and so young, too! Why, be you a doctor,

sir?’

“‘I should hope so,’ replied I. ‘What is it you require—a lotion or an

embrocation?’

“‘I don’t understand those hard words, but I want some doctor’s stuff.’

“‘Very well, my good woman; I know what is proper,’ replied I, assuming

an important air. ‘Here, Timothy, wash out this phial very clean.’

“‘Yes, sir,’ replied Timothy very respectfully.

“I took one of the measures, and putting in a little green, a little

blue, and a little white liquid from the medicine bottles generally

used by Mr. Brookes, filled it up with water, poured the mixture into

the phial, corked, and labelled it _haustus statim sumendus_, and

handed it over to the old woman.

“‘Is the poor child to take it, or is it to rub outside?’ inquired the

old woman.

“‘The directions are on the label; but you don’t read Latin?’

“‘Deary me, no! Latin! and do you understand Latin? What a nice clever

boy!’

“‘I should not be a good doctor if I did not,’ replied I. On second

thoughts I considered it advisable and safer that the application

should be _external_, so I translated the label to her: _haustus_, rub

it in; _statim_, on the throat; _sumendus_, with the palm of the hand.”

Their next effort at doctoring is humorously described by the novelist

in the following words:—

“An Irish labourer, more than half-tipsy, came in one evening and asked

whether we had such a thing as was called ‘_A poor man’s plaister_’.

‘By the powers, it will be a poor man’s plaister when it belongs to me;

but they tell me that it is a sure and sartain cure for the thumbago,

as they call it, which I’ve at the small of my back, and which is a

hinder to my mounting up the ladder; so as it’s Saturday night, and

I’ve just got the money, I’ll buy the plaister first, and then try

what a little whisky inside will do. The devil is in’t if it won’t be

driven out of me between the two.’

“We had not that plaister in the shop, but we had blister plaisters,

and Timothy, handing one to me, I proffered it to him. ‘And what may

you be after asking for the same?’ inquired he.

“The blisters were sold at a shilling each, when spread on paper, so I

asked him eighteen-pence, that we might pocket the extra sixpence.

“‘By the powers, one would think that you had made a mistake, and

handed me the rich man’s plaister instead of the poor one’s. It’s less

whisky I’ll have to drink, any how; but here’s the money, and the top

of the morning to ye, seeing as how it’s jist getting late.’

“Timothy and I laughed as we divided the sixpence. It appeared that

after taking his allowance of whisky the poor fellow fixed the plaister

on his back when he went to bed, and the next morning found himself in

a condition not to be envied. It was a week before we saw him again,

and, much to the horror of Timothy and myself, he walked into the shop

when Mr. Brookes was employed behind the counter. Timothy perceived him

before he saw us, and pulling me behind the large mortar, we contrived

to make our escape into the back parlour, the door of which we held

ajar to hear what would take place.

“‘Murder and turf!’ cried the man, ‘but that was the devil’s own

plaister you gave me here for my back, and it left me as raw as a

turnip, taking every bit of my skin off me entirely, forbye my lying in

bed for a whole week and losing my day’s work.’

“‘I really do not recollect supplying you with a plaister, my good

man,’ replied Mr. Brookes.

“‘Then by the piper that played before Moses, if you don’t recollect

it, I’ve an idea that I shall never forget it. Sure enough, it cured

me, but wasn’t I quite kilt before I was cured?’

“‘It must have been some other shop,’ observed Mr. Brookes. ‘You have

made a mistake.’

“‘Devil a bit of a mistake, except in selling me the plaister. Didn’t I

get it of a lad in this same shop?’

“‘Nobody sells things out of this shop without my knowledge.’

“The Irishman was puzzled—he looked round the shop. ‘Well, then, if

this a’n’t the shop, it was own sister to it.’”

“Like all embryo apothecaries,” says Japhet, “I carried in my

appearance, if not the look of wisdom, most certainly that of

self-sufficiency, which does equally well with the world in general.

My forehead was smooth and very white, and my dark locks were combed

back systematically and with a regularity that said, as plainly as

hair could do, ‘The owner of this does everything by prescription,

measurement, and rule’. Altogether I cut such a truly medical

appearance that even the most guarded would not have hesitated to allow

me the sole conduct of a whitlow, from inflammation to suppuration, and

from suppuration to cure, or have refused to have confided to me the

entire suppression of a gumboil.

“Such were my personal qualifications at the time I was raised to the

important office of dispenser of, I may say, life and death.”

Transcriber’s note

Text in italics was surrounded with _underscores_ and small capitals

changed to all capitals.

A few errors in punctuation were corrected silently. Also the

following changes were made, on page

52 “furnance” changed to “furnace” (seizing his red-hot tongs from

the little furnace in which)

76 “Teragrammaton” changed to “Tetragrammaton” (Tetragrammaton +

Adonai)

234 “the” added (centre of the cover)

273 “Lanfen” changed to “Lafeu” (Lafeu. Go to, sir, you were beaten

in Italy)

278 “Spencer” changed to “Spenser” (Edmund Spenser was born in

London).

Otherwise the original was preserved, including unusual or

inconsistent spelling and hyphenation, and possible errors in

quotes from other books.