The aged man that coffers-up his gold Is plagu’d with cramps, and gouts and painful fits. Lucrece.
* * * Shorten up their sinews With aged cramps. Tempest, Act IV., Sc. I.
To-night thou shalt have cramps, Side stitches that shall pen thy breath up. Tempest, Act I., Sc. II.
I’ll rack thee with old cramps, Fill all thy bones with aches. Tempest, Act I., Sc. II.
Thy nerves are in their infancy again And have no vigour in them. Tempest, Act I., Sc. II.
Hysteria, in Shakespeare’s time, was considered a disease common to both sexes, and was known as “Hysterica passio,” or more popularly termed “the mother.”
O, how this mother swells up toward my heart! Hysterica passio—down, thou climbing sorrow, Thy element ’s below! Where is this daughter? King Lear, Act II., Sc. IV.
Percy thinks that Shakespeare read of this disease in Harsnet’s “Declaration of Popish Impostures” while he was looking up material for his character of Tom of Bedlam. The following is taken from (p. 25) the work referred to: “Ma: Maynie had a spice of the Hysterica passio as seems from his youth, hee himself termes it the Moother, and saith that hee was much troubled with it in Fraunce, and that it was one of the causes that mooved him to leave his holy order whereinto he was initiated and to returne into England.”
Diseases of the nervous system have not been overlooked by other writers. How excellently we have described the chief symptom of locomotor ataxia:
Obliquely waddling to the mark in view. Pope.