My nose fell a-bleeding on Black-Monday last. Merchant of Venice, Act II., Sc. V.
Diseases of the respiratory system were quite overlooked by Shakespeare.
Consumption catch thee! Timon of Athens, Act IV., Sc. III.
There’s hell, there’s darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption! King Lear, Act IV., Sc. VI.
Thy food is such As has been belch’d on by infected lungs. Pericles, Act IV., Sc. VI.
But I’m relapsing into metaphysics, That labyrinth, whose clue is of the same Construction as your cures for hectic phthisics, Those bright moths fluttering round a dying flame. Byron—Don Juan, Canto XII., Verse LXXII.
Love is riotous, but marriage should have quiet, And, being consumptive, live on a milk diet. Byron—Don Juan, Canto XV., Verse XLI.
For goodness, growing to a plurisy, Dies in his own too-much. Hamlet, Act IV., Sc. VII.
A whoreson cold, sir; a cough, sir; which I caught with ringing in the king’s affairs, upon his coronation day. Henry IV—2d, Act III., Sc. II.
’Tis dangerous to take a cold. Henry IV., Act II., Sc. III.