Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 58

_Sir Toby._ To hear by the nose, it is dulcet in contagion."

[610] "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 121.

_Insanity._ That is a common idea that the symptoms of madness are increased by the full moon. Shakespeare mentions this popular fallacy in "Oth.e.l.lo" (v. 2), where he tells us that the moon makes men insane when she comes nearer the earth than she was wont.[611]

[611] See p. 73.

Music as a cure for madness is, perhaps, referred to in "King Lear" (iv.

7), where the physician of the king says: "Louder the music there."[612]

Mr. Singer, however, has this note: "Shakespeare considered soft music favorable to sleep. Lear, we may suppose, had been thus composed to rest; and now the physician desires louder music to be played, for the purpose of waking him."

[612] Halliwell-Phillipps's "Handbook Index to Shakespeare"

(1866), p. 333.

So, in "Richard II." (v. 5), the king says:

"This music mads me: let it sound no more; For though it have holp madmen to their wits, In me, it seems, it will make wise men mad."

The power of music as a medical agency has been recognized from the earliest times, and in mental cases has often been highly efficacious.[613] Referring to music as inducing sleep, we may quote the touching pa.s.sage in "2 Henry IV." (iv. 5), where the king says:

"Let there be no noise made, my gentle friends; Unless some dull and favourable hand Will whisper music to my weary spirit.

_Warwick._ Call for the music in the other room."

[613] "A Book of Musical Anecdote," by F. Crowest (1878), vol.

ii. pp. 251, 252.

Ariel, in "The Tempest" (ii. 1), enters playing _solemn music_ to produce this effect.

A mad-house seems formerly to have been designated a "dark house."

Hence, in "Twelfth Night" (iii. 4), the reason for putting Malvolio into a dark room was, to make him believe that he was mad. In the following act (iv. 2) he says: "Good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad; they have laid me here in hideous darkness;" and further on (v. 1) he asks,

"Why have you suffer'd me to be imprison'd, Kept in a dark house?"

In "As You Like It" (iii. 2), Rosalind says that "Love is merely a madness, and ... deserves as well a dark-house and a whip as madmen do."

The expression "horn-mad," _i. e._, quite mad, occurs in the "Comedy of Errors" (ii. 1): "Why, mistress, sure my master is horn-mad." And, again, in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 4), Mistress Quickly says, "If he had found the young man, he would have been horn-mad."

Madness in cattle was supposed to arise from a distemper in the internal substance of their horns, and furious or mad cattle had their horns bound with straw.

_King's Evil._ This was a common name in years gone by for scrofula, because the sovereigns of England were supposed to possess the power of curing it, "without other medicine, save only by handling and prayer."

This custom of "touching for the king's evil" is alluded to in "Macbeth"

(iv. 3), where the following dialogue is introduced:

"_Malcolm._ Comes the king forth, I pray you?

_Doctor._ Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure; their malady convinces The great a.s.say of art; but, at his touch- Such sanct.i.ty hath heaven given his hand-- They presently amend.

_Malcolm._ I thank you, doctor.

_Macduff._ What's the disease he means?

_Malcolm._ 'Tis call'd the evil: A most miraculous work in this good king; Which often, since my here-remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows: but strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers: and 'tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. With this strange virtue He hath a heavenly gift of prophecy; And sundry blessings hang about his throne, That speak him full of grace."

This reference, which has nothing to do with the progress of the drama, is introduced, obviously, in compliment to King James, who fancied himself endowed with the Confessor's powers.[614] The poet found authority for the pa.s.sage in Holinshed (vol. i. p. 279): "As hath bin thought, he was enspired with the gift of prophecie, and also to haue hadde the gift of healing infirmities and diseases. Namely, he vsed to help those that were vexed with the disease, commonly called the kyngs euill, and left that vertue as it were a portion of inheritance vnto his successors the kyngs of this realme." Edward's miraculous powers were believed in, we are told, by his contemporaries, or at least soon after his death, and were expressly recognized by Pope Alexander III., who canonized him. In Plot's "Oxfordshire" (chap. x. sec. 125) there is an account, accompanied with a drawing, of the touch-piece supposed to have been given by this monarch. James I.'s practice of touching for the evil is frequently mentioned in Nichols's "Progresses." Charles I., when at York, touched seventy persons in one day. Indeed, few are aware to what an extent this superst.i.tion once prevailed. In the course of twenty years, between 1660 and 1682, no less than 92,107 persons were touched for this disease. The first English monarch who refused to touch for the king's evil was William III., but the practice was resumed by Queen Anne, who officially announced, in the _London Gazette_, March 12, 1712, her royal intention to receive patients afflicted with the malady in question. It was probably about that time that Johnson was touched by her majesty, upon the recommendation of the celebrated physician Sir John Floyer, of Lichfield. King George I. put an end to this practice, which is said to have originated with Edward the Confessor, in 1058.[615] The custom was also observed by French kings; and on Easter Sunday, 1686, Louis XIV. is said to have touched 1600 persons.

[614] See Beckett's "Free and Impartial Enquiry into the Antiquity and Efficacy of Touching for the King's Evil," 1722.

[615] See "Notes and Queries," 1861, 2d series, vol. xi. p. 71; Burns's "History of Parish Registers," 1862, pp. 179, 180; Pettigrew's "Superst.i.tions Connected with Medicine and Surgery," 1844, pp. 117-154.

_Lethargy._ This is frequently confounded by medical men of former times, and by Shakespeare himself, with apoplexy. The term occurs in the list of diseases quoted by Thersites in "Troilus and Cressida" (v.

1).[616]

[616] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 235.

_Leprosy._ This was, in years gone by, used to denote the _lues venerea_, as in "Antony and Cleopatra" (iii. 8):

"Yon ribaudred nag of Egypt,- Whom leprosy o'ertake!

Hoists sails and flies."

_Leech._ The old medical term for a leech is a "blood-sucker," and a knot would be an appropriate term for a number of cl.u.s.tering leeches.

So, in "Richard III." (iii. 3), Grey, being led to the block, says of Richard's minions:

"A knot you are of d.a.m.ned blood-suckers."

In "2 Henry VI." (iii. 2) mention is made by Warwick of the "blood-sucker of sleeping men," which, says Dr. Bucknill, appears to mean the vampire-bat.

_Measles._ This word originally signified leprosy, although in modern times used for a very different disorder. Its derivation is the old French word _meseau_, or _mesel_, a leper. Thus, Cotgrave has "Meseau, a meselled, scurvy, leaporous, lazarous person." Distempered or scurvied hogs are still said to be measled. It is in this sense that it is used in "Coriola.n.u.s" (iii. 1):

"As for my country I have shed my blood, Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs Coin words till their decay, against those measles, Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them."

_Pleurisy._ This denotes a plethora, or redundancy of blood, and was so used, probably, from an erroneous idea that the word was derived from _plus pluris_. It is employed by Shakespeare in "Hamlet" (iv. 7):

"For goodness, growing to a plurisy, Dies in his own too-much."

In the "Two n.o.ble Kinsmen" (v. 1) there is a similar phrase:

"that heal'st with blood The earth when it is sick, and cur'st the world O' the plurisy of people."

The word is frequently used by writers contemporary with Shakespeare.

Thus, for instance, Ma.s.singer, in "The Picture" (iv. 2), says:

"A plurisy of ill blood you must let out By labour."

_Mummy._ This was a preparation for magical purposes, made from dead bodies, and was used as a medicine both long before and long after Shakespeare's day. Its virtues seem to have been chiefly imaginary, and even the traffic in it fraudulent.[617] The preparation of mummy is said to have been first brought into use in medicine by a Jewish physician, who wrote that flesh thus embalmed was good for the cure of divers diseases, and particularly bruises, to prevent the blood's gathering and coagulating. It has, however, long been known that no use whatever can be derived from it in medicine, and "that all which is sold in the shops, whether brought from Venice or Lyons, or even directly from the Levant by Alexandria, is fact.i.tious, the work of certain Jews, who counterfeit it by drying carca.s.ses in ovens, after having prepared them with powder of myrrh, caballine aloes, Jewish pitch, and other coa.r.s.e or unwholesome drugs."[618] Shakespeare speaks of this preparation. Thus Oth.e.l.lo (iii. 4), referring to the handkerchief which he had given to Desdemona, relates how: