“Cardinal Beaufort. Bid the apothecary
Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.”[13]
And again, in Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Cerimon says:—
“Your master will be dead ere you return;
There’s nothing can be minister’d to nature,
That can recover him. Give this to the apothecary,
And tell me how it works.”[14]
This lord of Ephesus was evidently something of an amateur physician, as he tells us later that
“’Tis known I ever
Have studied physic, through which secret art,
By turning o’er authorities, I have
(Together with my practice) made familiar
To me and to my aid the blest infusions
That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones;
And can speak of the disturbances that nature
Works, and of the cures; which doth give me
A more content in course of true delight
Than to be thirsty after tottering honour”.
The lines—
“One whose subdu’d eyes,
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum,”[15]
spoken by Othello, refer to the manner in which many of the medicinal gums are collected in the East. Small slits or punctures are made in the bark of the tree, through which the semi-liquid gum slowly oozes. It then coagulates in the form of a tear, and is at length scraped off and collected.
“Set ratsbane by his porridge.”[16]