PART III.
SURGERY.
Shakespeare paid much more attention to the practice of medicine and obstetrics than to surgery. Perhaps the cause of this was that at that time surgery had not reached its present perfection. A more probable reason is that his son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, may not have been a surgeon.
Iago. What, are you hurt, lieutenant? Cas. Ay, past all surgery. Othello, Act II., Sc. III.
Can honour set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honour hath no skill in surgery then? No. Henry IV., Act V., Sc. I.
With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover. Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act V., Sc. I.
Let me have surgeons; I am cut to the brains. King Lear, Act IV., Sc. VI.
The king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all those legs, and arms, and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day, and cry all——We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some, upon their wives left poor behind them.
Henry V., Act IV., Sc. I.
Patr. Who keeps the tent now? Ther. The surgeon’s box, or the patient’s wound. Troilus and Cressida, Act V., Sc. 1.
Give physic to the sick, ease to the pain’d: The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee. Lucrece.