Bacon’s description of cramp in his Natural and Experimental History is fairly explicit and obviously does not embrace epilepsy: ‘The cramp cometh of contraction of sinews, which is manifest, in that it comes either by cold or dryness.’
Shakespeare recognizes both epilepsy and rheumatism as entities apart from cramp. Epilepsy he seems to associate more with falling than with convulsion: thus, of the fit that attacked Caesar when the crown was offered to him, he writes:
Casca. He fell down in the market-place, and foamed at mouth, and was speechless.
Brutus. ‘Tis very like: he hath the falling-sickness.[260]
‘Cramp’ is used by Shakespeare for muscular spasms or contractures, and he links the term on the one side to rheumatism, and on the other to convulsions, in the following passages:
For this, be sure, to-night thou shalt have cramps,
Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up.[261]
Parolles says:
‘In a retreat he outruns any lackey: marry, in coming on he has the cramp.’[262]
Prospero says: