“Help!”—“a couplet?”—“no, a cup Of warm water.” “What’s the matter?” “Zounds! my liver’s coming up; I shall not survive the racket Of this brutal Lisbon Packet.” Byron—Poems.
Love’s a capricious power; I’ve known it hold Out through a fever caused by its own heat, But be much puzzled by a cough or cold, And find a quinsy very hard to treat; Against all noble maladies he’s bold, But vulgar illnesses don’t like to meet, Nor that a sneeze should interrupt his sigh, Nor inflammations redden his blind eye. But worst of all it’s nausea, or a pain About the lower regions of the bowels; Love who heroically breathes a vein, Shrinks from the application of hot towels, And purgatives are dangerous to his reign, Seasickness death. Byron—Don Juan, Canto II., Verse XXII.
Like wind compress’d and pent within a bladder, Or like a human colic which is sadder. Byron—Vision of Judgment.
When will your constipation have done, good madame? Cartwright.
Diseases of the secretory system have not escaped his eagle eye.
A fat old man * * * that swoln parcel of dropsies. Henry IV., Act II., Sc. IV.
The dropsy drown this fool! Tempest, Act IV., Sc. I.
It is a dropsied honour. All’s Well, Act II., Sc. III.
Fal. You make fat rascals, mistress Doll. Doll. I make them! gluttony and disease make them. Henry IV—2d, Act II., Sc. IV.
Leprosy was sometimes called measles, from the French of leper, meseau or mesel. This is the sense in which Shakespeare uses the word measles—an entirely different one from that now in vogue. The word “hoar,” occurring in several of the quotations, refers to the white spots so characteristic of the disease.