[583] See Brand’s “Pop. Antiq.,” vol. ii. pp. 50-55; Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakespeare,” pp. 181-183.
[584] See “Notes and Queries,” 6th series, vol. v. pp. 32, 173: also, Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne,” letter xvii.
[585] “Zoology,” 1766, vol. iii. p. 15.
[586] Cf. “Hamlet,” iii. 4; here paddock is used for a toad.
[587] Patterson’s “Insects Mentioned by Shakespeare,” 1841, p. 137.
[588] Cf. “Titus Andronicus,” ii. 3; “Henry VIII.,” iii. 3.
CHAPTER X.
FOLK-MEDICINE.
Without discussing the extent of Shakespeare’s technical medical knowledge, the following pages will suffice to show that he was fully acquainted with many of the popular notions prevalent in his day respecting certain diseases and their cures. These, no doubt, he collected partly from the literature of the period, with which he was so fully conversant, besides gathering a good deal of information on the subject from daily observation. Anyhow, he has bequeathed to us some interesting particulars relating to the folk-medicine of bygone times, which is of value, in so far as it helps to illustrate the history of medicine in past years. In Shakespeare’s day the condition of medical science was very unlike that at the present day. As Mr. Goadby, in his “England of Shakespeare” (1881, p. 104), remarks, “the man of science was always more or less of an alchemist, and the students of medicine were usually extensive dealers in charms and philtres.” If a man wanted bleeding he went to a barber-surgeon, and when he required medicine he consulted an apothecary; the shop of the latter being well described by Romeo (v. 1):
“And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuff’d, and other skins
Of ill-shap’d fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of empty boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds,
Remnants of pack-thread and old cakes of roses,
Were thinly scattered, to make up a show.”