. It appears to have been a custom of the apothecaries from very early times to fill bottles with coloured solutions which were marked with these symbols; thus, a bottle containing a yellow solution signifying gold would be marked
, and a red one would be marked
, signifying iron. These gradually became a kind of trade sign, and are probably the origin of the coloured globes used as the insignia of the pharmacist or compounder of medicines at the present time.
CHAPTER II.
SHAKESPEARE.
The bard of Avon, in the wide and general knowledge he displays of the manners, ways, and customs of his own and other countries in his plays, makes many allusions to drugs and herbs, and their use. In his references to drugs, there is none perhaps on which greater difference of opinion exists than that alluded to in the speech of the Ghost in Hamlet, in which the apparition says:—
“Sleeping within mine orchard,
My custom always in the afternoon,
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole,
With juice of cursèd hebenon in a vial,
And in the porches of mine ear did pour
The leprous distilment; whose effect
Holds such an enmity with blood of man,
That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through
The natural gates and alleys of the body;
And, with a sudden vigour, it doth posset
And curd, like eager droppings into milk,
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine”.[9]