Is this the balsam that the usuring senate Pours into captain’s wounds? Banishment! Timon of Athens, Act III., Sc. V.
My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds. Henry VI.—3d, Act IV, Sc. III.
A solution of gold was supposed to possess great medical power; even the actual contact of the pure metal, according to their belief, kept the wearer ever in good health. Dyer quotes from John Wight’s translation of the “Secrets of Alexis,” in which is given a receipt “to dissolve and reducte golde into a potable licour which conserveth the youth and healthe of a man, and will heale every disease that is thought incurable in the space of seven daies at the furthest.” The term “grand liquor,” as it appears in Shakespeare, refers to this solution.
Coming to look on you, thinking you dead, (And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,) I spake unto the crown, as having sense, And thus upbraided it: The care on thee depending, Hath fed upon the body of my father; Therefore, thou, best of gold, art worst of gold; Other, less fine in carat, is more precious, Preserving life in med’cine potable. Henry IV—2d, Act IV., Sc. IV.
Plutus himself, That knows the tinct and multiplying medicine, Hath not in nature’s mystery more science Than I have in this ring. All’s Well, Act V., Sc. III.
Find this grand liquor that hath gilded ’em. Tempest, Act V., Sc. I.
We sicken to shun sickness when we purge. Sonnets, CXVIII.
What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug, Would scour these English hence? Macbeth, Act V., Sc. III.
Let’s purge this choler without letting blood: This we prescribe, though no physician;