“I had as lief they would put ratsbane in my mouth as offer to stop it with security.”[17]
“I would the milk
Thy mother gave thee, when thou suck’dst her breast,
Had been a little ratsbane for my sake.”[18]
Ratsbane, mentioned in the three preceding quotations, was an old name for arsenic, which in Shakespeare’s time was commonly used for poisoning rats, hence the name.
“I have bought the oil, the balsamum, and aqua vitæ,”[19]
says Dromio of Syracuse. These were the medical comforts for the barque of Epidamnum, and show that sailing vessels in those days carried a certain amount of medicine. The oil may have been one of the many panaceas of the time for “purging the body of bile or humour,” while balsams there were by the score, of Hungary, and aromatics for “wind and pain”. The aqua vitæ alluded to was probably brandy, which would serve to keep the courage of the voyagers up and the cold out.
Proteus, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, exclaims:—
“When I was sick you gave me bitter pills;
And I must minister like to you”.[20]
In Lucrece the bard shows he knew something of the counteracting effects of certain drugs from the following lines:—
“The poisonous simple sometimes is compacted
In a pure compound; being so applied,
His venom in effect is purified”.[21]
“King Henry.