“Be a whore still! they love thee not that use thee;
Give them diseases, leaving with thee their lust.
Make use of thy salt hours: season the slaves
For tubs and baths: bring down rose-cheeked youth
To the tub-fast, and the diet.”
As beef, too, was usually salted down in a tub, the one process was jocularly compared to the other. So, in “Measure for Measure” (iii. 2), Pompey, when asked by Lucio about his mistress, replies, “Troth, sir, she hath eaten up all her beef, and she is herself in the tub.” Again, in “Henry V.” (ii. 1), Pistol speaks of “the powdering-tub of infamy.”
Vinegar. In Shakespeare’s day this seems to have been termed “eisel” (from A. S. aisel), being esteemed highly efficacious in preventing the communication of the plague and other contagious diseases. In this sense it has been used by Shakespeare in Sonnet cxi.:
“like a willing patient, I will drink
Potions of eisel, ’gainst my strong infection.”
In a MS. Herbal in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, occurs “acetorum, ance vynegre or aysel.” The word occurs again in “Hamlet” (v. 1), where Laertes is challenged by Hamlet:
“Woo’t drink up eisel? eat a crocodile?”
The word woo’t, in the northern counties, is the common contraction of wouldst thou, which is the reading of the old copies. In former years it was the fashion with gallants to do some extravagant feat, as a proof of their love, in honor of their mistresses, and, among others, the swallowing of some nauseous potion was one of the most frequent. Hence, in the above passage, some bitter potion is evidently meant, which it was a penance to drink. Some are of opinion that wormwood is alluded to; and Mr. Singer thinks it probable that “the propoma called absinthites, a nauseously bitter medicament then much in use, may have been in the poet’s mind, to drink up a quantity of which would be an extreme pass of amorous demonstration.” It has been suggested by a correspondent of “Notes and Queries,”[636] that the reference in this passage from “Hamlet” is to a Lake Esyl, which figures in Scandinavian legends. Messrs. Wright and Clark, however, in their “Notes to Hamlet” (1876, p. 218), say that they have consulted Mr. Magnusson on this point, and he writes as follows: “No such lake as Esyl is known to Norse mythology and folk-lore.” Steevens supposes it to be the river Yssell.[637]
Water-casting. The fanciful notion of recognizing diseases by the mere inspection of the urine was denounced years ago, by an old statute of the College of Physicians, as belonging to tricksters and impostors, and any member of the college was forbidden to give advice by this so-called “water-casting” without he also saw the patient. The statute of the college runs as follows: “Statuimus, et ordinamus, ut nemo, sive socius, sive candidatus, sive permissus consilii quidquam impertiat veteratoriis, et impostoribus, super urinarum nuda inspectione, nisi simul ad ægrum vocetur, ut ibidem, pro re natû, idonea medicamenta ab honesto aliquo pharmacopoea componenda præscribat.” An allusion to this vulgar error occurs in the “Two Gentlemen of Verona” (ii. 1), where, after Speed has given to Valentine his amusing description of a lover, in which, among other signs, are “to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence,” and “to fast, like one that takes diet,” the following quibble takes place upon the within and the without of the symptoms:
“Valentine. Are all these things perceived in me?
Speed. They are all perceived without ye.