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King Macb. How does your patient, doctor?

Doct. Not so sick, my lord,

As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.

King Macb. Cure her of that:

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd;
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow;
Raze out the written troubles of the brain;
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Doct. Therein the patient

Must minister to himself.

King Macb. Throw physic to the dogs,

I'll none of it.

Act V., Sc. I.

Macbeth, Act V., Sc. III.

In King Lear also appears a physician worthy of the name. The last scene of the fourth act shows his excellent skill in treat

ing Lear's case. Dr. Bucknill, of England, in writing of it twenty-five years ago, says: "We confess, almost with shame, that although near two centuries and a half have passed since Shakespeare thus wrote we have very little to add to his method of treating the insane as thus pointed out."

Dr. Butts, in Henry VIII, and Dr. Caius, in Merry Wives, play rather unimportant parts. He compliments the profession by putting this speech in the mouth of a madman:

Timon to Banditti :

Trust not the physician;

His antidotes are poison, and he slays

More than you rob.

Timon of Athens, Act IV., Sc. III.

And bringing this one from the lips of an ignorant prostitute:

Nay, will you cast away your child on a fool and a physician?

Merry Wives, Act III., Sc. IV.

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His friends, like physicians, thrice give him over.

Timon of Athens, Act III., Sc. III.

He is the wiser man, master doctor; he is a curer of souls, and you a curer

of bodies.

Merry Wives, Act II., Sc. III.

A poor physician's daughter my wife! Disdain
Rather corrupt me ever.

All's Well, Act II., Sc. III.

Doctors, less famous for their cures than fees.

Byron-Don Juan, Canto XIV., Verse XLVIII.

Like a port sculler, one physician plies
And all his art and all his skill he tries;
But two physicians, like a pair of oars,
Conduct you faster to the Stygian shores.

This is the way physicians mend or end us,
Secundum artem: but although we sneer
In health-when ill, we call them to attend us
Without the least propensity to jeer;
While that " hiatus maxime deflendus"
To be filled up by spade or mattock, 's near,
Instead of gliding graciously down Lethe,
We tease mild Baillie, or soft Abernethy.

Byron-Don Juan, Canto X, Verse XLII.

God and the doctor we alike adore,
But only when in danger, not before;
The danger o'er, both are alike requited,
God is forgotten, and the doctor slighted.

The doctor says so * * * * *

* ** ** : ** *they sometimes

Are soothsayers and always cunning men.
Which doctor was it?

Ben Jonson-Magnetic Lady, Act II., Sc. I.

A side thrust at the experimenters in the profession is found

in Cymbeline.

I do know her spirit,

And will not trust one of her malice with

A drug of such damn'd nature. Those she has
Will stupify and dull the sense awhile;

Which first, perchance, she'll prove on cats and dogs,

Then afterwards up higher.

Act I., Sc. V.

Henry VI.-3d, Act III., Sc. II.

I can smile, and murder whiles I smile.

He has in several plays shown his contempt for the "prating

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They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-fac'd villain,

A mere anatomy, a mountebank,

A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller;

A needy, hollow-ey'd, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man: this pernicious slave,
Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer,
And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse,
And with no face, as 'twere, out-facing me,
Cries out I was possessed

I say we must not

Comedy of Errors, Act V., Sc. I.

So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope,

To prostitute our past-cure malady

To empirics; or to dissever so

Our great self and our credit, to esteem

A senseless help, when help past sense we deem.

All's Well, Act II., Sc. I.

TRIVERSITY

CALIFORNIA

PART II.

PRACTICE OF MEDICINE.

Shakespeare's maladies are many and the symptoms very well defined. Diseases of the nervous system seem to have been a favorite study, especially insanity; Lear, Timon, and Hamlet being excellent examples.

And he * * * (a short tale to make),
Fell into a sadness; then into a fast;
Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness;
Thence to a lightness; and, by this declension
Into the madness wherein now he raves.

Hamlet, Act II., Sc. II.

He took me by the wrist and held me hard;
Then goes he to the length of all his arm;
And with his other hand thus o'er his brow,
He falls to such perusal of my face,

As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so;

At last, a little shaking of mine arm,

And thrice his head thus waving up and down,
He raised a sigh so piteous and profound,

That it did seem to shatter all his bulk,
And end his being: That done, he lets me go :
And, with his head o'er his shoulder turn'd,
He seem'd to find his way without his eyes;
For out o' doors he went without their help,
And, to the last, bended their light on me.

Alas, how is it with you,

Hamlet, Act II., Sc. I.

That you do bend your eye on vacancy,
And with the incorporal air do hold discourse?
Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep;
And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm,
Your bedded hair, like life in excrements,
Starts up, and stands on end.

Hamlet, Act III., Sc. IV.

O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The courtier's, scholar's, soldier's, eye, tongue, sword:
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

The observed of all observers,-quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth,
Blasted with ecstasy.

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Whereto our health is bound; we are not ourselves,

When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind

To suffer with the body: I'll forbear;

And am fall'n out with my more headier will,

To take the indispos'd and sickly fit

For the sound man.

King Lear, Act II., Sc. IV.

This is in thee a nature but infected;
A poor unmanly melancholy, sprung
From change of fortune.

Timon of Athens, Act IV., Sc. III.

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