Danger, like an ague, subtly taints Even then when we sit idly in the sun. Troilus and Cressida, Act III., Sc. III.
All the infections that the sun sucks up From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him By inch-meal a disease! Tempest, Act II., Sc. II.
It is not for your health thus to commit Your weak condition to the raw cold morning. Julius Cæsar, Act II., Sc. I.
I asked the doctors after his disease— He died of the slow fever called the tertian, And left his widow to her own aversion. Byron—Don Juan, Canto I., Verse XXXIV.
His feelings had not those strange fits, like tertians Of common likings, which make some deplore What they should laugh at—the mere ague still Of men’s regards, the fever or the chill. Byron—Don Juan, Canto XIII., Verse XVII.
Plague has been alluded to frequently, but generally only the symptoms of carbuncles and the petechiæ are mentioned. As the latter only occur in very bad cases, they were called “God’s tokens,” and their appearance denoted a fatal termination of the disease. Hence the home of the patient was closed and “Lord have mercy on us” placed upon the door.
Write Lord have mercy on us on those three; They are infected, in their hearts it lies; They have the plague and caught it of your eyes. Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act V., Sc. II.
He is so plaguy-proud, that the death tokens of it cry— No recovery. Troilus and Cressida, Act II., Sc. III.
Enobarbus. How appears the fight? Scarus. On our side like the token’d pestilence, Where death is sure Antony and Cleopatra, Act III., Sc. X.
Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Rome, And occupations perish! Coriolanus, Act IV., Sc. I.