I’faith, if he be not rotten before he die (as we have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce hold the laying in), he will last you some eight year or nine year.
Hamlet, Act V., Sc. I.
She hath eaten up all her beef, and is herself in the tub.
Measure for Measure, Act III., Sc. II.
To the spital go, And from the powdering-tub of infamy Fetch forth the lazar-kite of Cressid’s kind, Doll Tearsheet she by name. Henry V., Act II., Sc. I.
Be a whore still: * * * * Give them diseases, * * * * * * * Season the slaves For tubs and baths; bring down rose-cheeked youth To the tub-fast, and the diet. Timon of Athens, Act IV., Sc. III.
Dr. Macdonnell, of Canada, has thrown much light on these quotations in his works on Syphilis. He says: “It appears to have been the custom to prescribe for syphilitic patients, in addition to inunction, a prolonged diaphoresis and a very low diet. On the continent the patient was placed in a cave, oven, or dungeon, and Wiseman says it was the custom in England to use a tub for this purpose.”
In the footnote to the passage in Johnson & Steven’s edition of Shakespeare’s works the following quotations from old plays are given:
“——you had better match a ruin’d bawd, One ten times cur’d by sweating and the tub.” Jaspar Maines, 1639.
Again, in the Family of Love, (1608), a doctor says: