Folk-lore of Shakespeare Part 56

_Bruise._ A favorite remedy in days past for bruises was parmaceti, a corruption of spermaceti, in allusion to which Hotspur, in "1 Henry IV."

(i. 3), speaks of it as "the sovereign'st thing on earth for an inward bruise." So, too, in Sir T. Overbury's "Characters," 1616 ["An Ordinarie Fencer"]: "His wounds are seldom skin-deepe; for an _inward bruise_, lambstones and sweetbreads are his only spermaceti." A well-known plant called the "Shepherd's Purse" has been popularly nicknamed the "Poor Man's Parmacetti," being a joke on the Latin word _bursa_, a purse, which, to a poor man, is always the best remedy for his bruises.[596] In "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 2), a plantain-leaf is p.r.o.nounced to be an excellent cure "for your broken s.h.i.+n." Plantain-water was a remedy in common use with the old surgeons.[597]

[596] Dr. Prior's "Popular Names of British Plants," 1870, p. 185.

[597] "The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," 1860, p. 78.

_Bubukle._ According to Johnson, this denoted "a red pimple." Nares says it is "a corrupt word for a carbuncle, or something like;" and Mr.

Halliwell-Phillipps, in his "Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words," defines it as a botch or imposthume. It occurs in "Henry V."

(iii. 6), where Fluellen describes Bardolph's face as "all bubukles."

_Burn._ The notion of one heat driving out another gave rise to the old-fas.h.i.+oned custom of placing a burned part near the fire to drive out the fire-a practice, says Dr. Bucknill,[598] certainly not without benefit, acting on the same principle as the application of turpentine and other stimulants to recent burns. This was one of the many instances of the ancient h.o.m.opathic doctrine, that what hurts will also cure.[599] Thus, in "King John" (iii. 1), Pandulph speaks of it:

"And falsehood falsehood cures; as fire cools fire Within the scorched veins of one new burn'd."

[598] "The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," 1860, p. 65.

[599] See Tylor's "Primitive Culture," vol. i. p. 761.

Again, in the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (ii. 4), Proteus tells how:

"Even as one heat another heat expels, Or as one nail by strength drives out another, So the remembrance of my former love Is by a newer object quite forgotten."

We may also compare the words of Mowbray in "Richard II." (i. 1), where a similar idea is contained:

"I am disgrac'd, impeach'd, and baffled here; Pierc'd to the soul with slander's venom'd spear, The which no balm can cure, but his heart-blood Which breath'd this poison."

Once more, in "Romeo and Juliet" (i. 2), Benvolio relates how

"one fire burns out another's burning, One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish; Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; One desperate grief cures with another's languish."

_Cataract._ One of the popular names for this disease of the eye was the "web and the pin." Markham, in his "Cheap and Good Husbandry" (bk.

i. chap. 37), thus describes it in horses: "But for the wart, pearle, pin, or web, which are evils grown in or upon the eye, to take them off, take the juyce of the herb betin and wash the eye therewith, it will weare the spots away." Florio ("Ital. Dict.") gives the following: "Cataratta is a dimnesse of sight occasioned by humores hardened in the eies, called a cataract or a pin and a web." Shakespeare uses the term in the "Winter's Tale" (i. 2), where Leontes speaks of

"all eyes blind With the pin and web, but theirs;"

and in "King Lear" (iii. 4), alluding to "the foul fiend Flibbertigibbet," says, "he gives the web and the pin."[600] Acerbi, in his "Travels" (vol. ii. p. 290), has given the Lapland method of cure for this disease. In a fragment of an old medical treatise it is thus described: "Another sykenes ther byth of _yezen; on a webbe_, a nother a wem, that hydyth the myddel of the yezen; and this hes to maners, other whilys he is white and thynne, and other whilys he is thykke, as whenne the obtalmye ne is noght clene yhelyd up, bote the rote abydyth stylle.

Other whilys the webbe is noght white but rede, other blake."[601] In the Statute of the 34 and 35 of Henry VIII. a pin and web in the eye is recited among the "customable diseases," which honest persons, not being surgeons, might treat with herbs, roots, and waters, with the knowledge of whose nature G.o.d had endowed them.

[600] See Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. pp. 660, 661; Dyce's "Glossary," p. 322.

[601] Quoted in Singer's "Shakespeare."

_Chilblains._ These are probably alluded to by the Fool in "King Lear"

(i. 5): "If a man's brains were in's heels, were't not in danger of kibes?" Hamlet, too, says (v. 1): "the age is grown so picked, that the toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe."

_Deformity._ It was an old prejudice, which is not quite extinct, that those who are defective or deformed are marked by nature as p.r.o.ne to mischief. Thus, in "Richard III." (i. 3), Margaret says of Richard, Duke of Gloster:

"Thou elvish-mark'd, abortive, rooting hog!

Thou that was seal'd in thy nativity The slave of nature, and the son of h.e.l.l."

She calls him _hog_, in allusion to his cognizance, which was a boar. A popular expression in Shakespeare's day for a deformed person was a "stigmatic." It denoted any one who had been _stigmatized_, or burned with an iron, as an ignominious punishment, and hence was employed to represent a person on whom nature has set a mark of deformity. Thus, in "3 Henry VI." (ii. 2), Queen Margaret says:

"But thou art neither like thy sire, nor dam; But like a foul misshapen stigmatic Mark'd by the destinies to be avoided, As venom toads, or lizards' dreadful stings."

Again, in "2 Henry VI." (v. 1), young Clifford says to Richard:

"Foul stigmatic, that's more than thou canst tell."

We may note, too, how, in "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" (v. 1), mothers'

marks and congenital forms are deprecated by Oberon from the issue of the happy lovers:

"And the blots of Nature's hand Shall not in their issue stand; Never mole, hare-lip, nor scar, Nor mark prodigious, such as are Despised in nativity, Shall upon their children be."[602]

[602] Cf. "King John" (iii. 1), where Constance gives a catalogue of congenital defects.

Indeed, constant allusions are to be met with in our old writers relating to this subject, showing how strong were the feelings of our forefathers on the point. But, to give one further instance of this superst.i.tion given by Shakespeare, we may quote the words of King John (iv. 2), with reference to Hubert and his supposed murder of Prince Arthur:

"A fellow by the hand of Nature mark'd, Quoted, and sign'd, to do a deed of shame, This murder had not come into my mind."

This adaptation of the mind to the deformity of the body concurs, too, with Bacon's theory: "Deformed persons are commonly even with nature; for, as nature hath done ill by them, so do they by nature, being void of natural affection, and so they have their revenge on nature."

_Drowning._ The old superst.i.tion[603] of its being dangerous to save a person from drowning is supposed, says Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, to be alluded to in "Twelfth Night." It was owing to the belief that the person saved would, sooner or later, injure the man who saved him. Thus, in Sir Walter Scott's "Pirate," Bryce, the pedler, warns the hero not to attempt to resuscitate an inanimate form which the waves had washed ash.o.r.e on the mainland of Shetland. "'Are you mad,' exclaimed the pedler, 'you that have lived sae lang in Zetland, to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye not if ye bring him to life again he will do you some capital injury?'"

[603] "Handbook Index to Shakespeare," p. 150. See "Notes and Queries" for superst.i.tions connected with drowning, 5th series, vol. ix. pp. 111, 218, 478, 516; vol. x. pp. 38, 276; vol. xi.

pp. 119, 278.

_Epilepsy._ A popular name for this terrible malady was the "falling-sickness," because, when attacked with one of these fits, the patient falls suddenly to the ground. In "Julius Caesar" (i. 2) it is thus mentioned in the following dialogue:

"_Ca.s.sius._ But, soft, I pray you: what, did Caesar swoon?

_Casca._ He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless.

_Brutus._ 'Tis very like; he hath the falling-sickness.

_Ca.s.sius._ No, Caesar hath it not; but you, and I, And honest Casca, we have the falling-sickness."

_Fistula._ At the present day a fistula means an abscess external to the r.e.c.t.u.m, but in Shakespeare's day it was used in a more general signification for a burrowing abscess in any situation.[604] The play of "All's Well that Ends Well" has a special interest, because, as Dr.

Bucknill says, its very plot may be said to be medical. "The orphan daughter of a physician cures the king of a fistula by means of a secret remedy left to her as a great treasure by her father. The royal reward is the choice of a husband among the n.o.bles of the court, and 'thereby hangs the tale.'" The story is taken from the tale of Gilletta of Narbonne, in the "Decameron" of Boccaccio. It came to Shakespeare through the medium of Painter's "Palace of Pleasure," and is to be found in the first volume, which was printed as early as 1566.[605] The story is thus introduced by Shakespeare in the following dialogue (i. 1), where the Countess of Rousillon is represented as inquiring:

"What hope is there of his majesty's amendment?

_Laf._ He hath abandoned his physicians, madam; under whose practices he hath persecuted time with hope; and finds no other advantage in the process but only the losing of hope by time.

_Count._ This young gentlewoman had a father-O, that 'had!'

how sad a pa.s.sage 'tis!-whose skill was almost as great as his honesty; had it stretched so far, would have made nature immortal, and death should have play for lack of work. Would, for the king's sake, he were living! I think it would be the death of the king's disease.

_Laf._ How called you the man you speak of, madam?

_Count._ He was famous, sir, in his profession, and it was his great right to be so; Gerard de Narbon.