Strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery. Macbeth, Act IV., Sc. III.
Fell sorrow’s tooth doth never rankle more Than when it bites but lanceth not the sore. Richard II., Act I., Sc. III.
You rub the sore, When you should bring the plaster. Tempest, Act II., Sc. I.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place. Hamlet, Act III., Sc. IV.
Men.The service of the foot Being once gangren’d is not then respected For what before it was. Bru. Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence, Lest his infection, being of catching nature, Spread further. Coriolanus, Act III., Sc. I.
Sic. He’s a disease that must be cut away. Men. O he’s a limb that has but a disease; Moral, to cut it off; to cure it easy. Coriolanus, Act III., Sc. I.
Falstaff. Boy, tell him I am deaf. Page. You must speak louder, my master is deaf.
Falstaff. * * * it is a kind of deafness. Ch. Just. I think you are fallen into the disease; for you hear not what I say to you, * * * and I care not if I do become your physician. Falstaff. * * * I should be your patient to follow your prescriptions, the wise may make some dram of a scruple, or, indeed, a scruple itself. Henry IV—2d, Act I., Sc. II.
The surgery described in Titus Andronicus is, of course, impossible.