King Macb. How does your patient, doctor?
Doct. Not so sick, my lord, As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, That keep her from her rest.
King Macb. Cure her of that: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d; Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow; Raze out the written troubles of the brain; And, with some sweet oblivious antidote, Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart?
Doct. Therein the patient Must minister to himself.
King Macb. Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it. Macbeth, Act V., Sc. III.
In King Lear also appears a physician worthy of the name. The last scene of the fourth act shows his excellent skill in treating Lear’s case. Dr. Bucknill, of England, in writing of it twenty-five years ago, says: “We confess, almost with shame, that although near two centuries and a half have passed since Shakespeare thus wrote we have very little to add to his method of treating the insane as thus pointed out.”
Dr. Butts, in Henry VIII, and Dr. Caius, in Merry Wives, play rather unimportant parts. He compliments the profession by putting this speech in the mouth of a madman:
Timon to Banditti: Trust not the physician; His antidotes are poison, and he slays More than you rob. Timon of Athens, Act IV., Sc. III.
And bringing this one from the lips of an ignorant prostitute:
Nay, will you cast away your child on a fool and a physician? Merry Wives, Act III., Sc. IV.