My princely father then had wars in France;
And by true computation of the time,
Found that the issue was not his begot.

Richard III., Act III., Sc. V.

Worse than a slavish wipe, or birth hour's blot:

For marks descried in men's nativity

Are nature's faults, not their own infamy.

Lucrece.

A few quotations on abortion, and some others that are intimately related to obstetrics, remain.

If ever he have child, abortive be it,
Prodigious, and untimely brought to light,
Whose ugly and unnatural aspect

May fright the hopeful mother at the view.

Richard III., Act I., Sc. II.

Why should I joy in any abortive birth?

Love's Labour's Lost, Act I., Sc. I.

Truth is truth: large length of seas and shores
Between my father and my mother lay,-
And I have heard my father speak * * *
That this, my mother's son, was none of his ;
And, if he were, he came into the world

Full fourteen weeks before the course of time.

King John, Act I., Sc. I. Shakespeare has interwoven some of his family history here, and made the advent of Philip, the Bastard, correspond exactly to the untimely birth of his eldest daughter Susanna, who appeared only five and a half months after his marriage-" full fourteen weeks before the course of time." Later on in the play we find the following:

Your brother is legitimate,

Your father's wife did after wedlock bear him.

-thus furnishing proof of legitimacy in such cases.

She is, something before her time, deliver❜d.

She had also snatch'd a moment since her marriage
To bear a son and heir-and one miscarriage.

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

Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.

Macbeth, Act V., Sc. VIII.

Some griefs are med'cinable; that is, one of them,
For it doth physic love.

This supposed charm against sterility, says Dyer, "is copied from Plutarch, who, in his description of the festival Lupercalia, tells us how 'noble young men run naked through the, city, striking in sport whom they meet in the way with leather thongs,' which blows were commonly believed to have the wonderful effect attributed to them by Cæsar."

I had then laid wormwood to my dug,

* * * it did taste the wormwood on the nipple

Of my dug, and felt it bitter.

Romeo and Juliet, Act I., Sc. III.

I have given suck, and know

How tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me;

I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn
As you have done to this.

Eggs, oysters too, are amatory food.

Macbeth, Act I., Sc. VII.

Byron-Don Juan, Canto, II., Verse CLXX.

Surely Byron knew of the stimulating qualities of eggs and oysters, and no doubt took them with as much faith as the wornout debauchee of to-day does, as he sits down to his "plate of " and his "sherry and egg."

raw

PART V.

PHYSIOLOGY.

Mr. Hackett, noticing the numerous allusions in Shakespeare to the blood, and to a circulation of this fluid to and from the heart or the liver, was led, in 1859, to express the absurd idea that William Shakespeare had anticipated Harvey in the discovery of the circulation of the blood.

"What damned error, but some sober brow

Will bless it, and approve it with a text."

Mr. Hackett found many thoughts in Shakespeare concerning the circulation which were applicable to Harvey's theory.

See, how the blood is settled in his face!
Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost,

Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale and bloodless,
Being all descended to the labouring heart;
Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,
Attracts the same for aidance 'gainst the enemy;

Which with the heart there couls, and ne'er returneth

To blush and beautify the cheek again.

These words of yours draw life-blood from my heart.

The blood weeps from my heart.

Henry VI., Act IV., Sc. VI.

Henry IV-2d, Act IV., Sc. IV.

I send it through the rivers of your blood,

Even to the court, the heart-to the seat o' the brain;
And, through the cranks and offices of man,
The strongest nerves and small inferior veins,
From me receive that natural competency
Whereby they live.

The tide of blood in me

Coriolanus, Act I., Sc. I.

Snakes, in my heart-blood warm'd, that sting my heart!

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

Richard II., Act III. Sc. II.

Henry VI., Act I., Sc. III.

Thy heart-blood I will have for this day's work.

Thou wouldst have left thy dearest heart-blood there,
Rather than have made that savage duke thine heir.

Henry VI-3d, Act I., Sc. I.

Her blue blood changed to black in every vein,
Wanting the spring that those shrunk pipes had fed,
Show'd life imprison'd in a body dead.

Lucrece.