CHAPTER XIX

THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME
SN endeavouring to reconstruct these times of our Master Shakspere — the spacious times of great EHzabeth, as Tennyson calls them — I have been struck with the circumstance that what we may call the modern doctor and modern medicine really ifgin in this wonderful period, — this last half of the sixteenth century, — just as so many other modern matters first show themselves emerging out of the uni- versally excited activities of that time. And thus I find that in any proper picture of Shakspere's time the physi- cians must form a prominent and striking figure, as indeed they do in any picture of any time. We all know how the ever-busy doctor, the never-refusing doctor, has interwoven himself, in these modern times, into the whole texture of our lives. We begin to call for him — I was going to say — even before we are born; we continue calling for him all through our lives when we are in bodily trouble, often when we are in mental trouble — at midday or at midnight ; when he has given us the prescriptton^ we always keep him a little while longer to talk to us, or
178 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
rather to let us talk to him about our majestic selves — that most interesting of topics which somehow scarcely any of our acquaintances seem to appreciate except our doctor ; and finally, after having treated him all our lives as a being entirely superior to the ordinary claims of humanity regarding dinners and sleep and rest, we at last call for him again when we are going to die, and then leave our executors or administrators to higgle with him about his bill after we are gone. So that practically, you observe, the doctor is more than interwoven with our whole life, for he is busied about us one way or another from before our birth until after our death.
Thus, as I was saying, since the modern doctor stands in the very foreground of modern society, and since the modern doctor, — the follower of Vesalius and Harvey, — as distinguished from the ancient doctor, begins just about Shakspere's time, I felt a much more than merely anti- quarian interest in collecting such references to him as I could find in Shakspere and his contemporary poets, together with such facts about the medicines and practice peculiar to his class as might be of interest to a general audience.
We have already studied somewhat the music of Shakspere's time, a theme which connects itself very charmingly with the physic of Shakspere's time through the fact that music was regarded as physic in Shakspere's time — as a true remedial agent, like cassia and aloes and colocynth, and other drugs. And there is even a further congruence between the two lectures in the fact that now, without more ado, I can begin my treatment of the present subject by introducing to you, in a lovely scene from one of Shakspere's own plays, a doctor actually engaged in employing music as a medicine to restore a very sweet patient.
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 179
At the moment when we are to come upon him, Ceri- mon has just had opened the chest containing the body of the unfortunate Thaisa, and the piteous scroll from Pericles asking that whoever finds her should bury her as befits a queen. The first sight of the supposed dead body at once awakes all the physician in Cerimon. He breaks out, quick, sharp, decided :
This chanc'd to-night.
Sec. Gent. Most likely, sir.
Cerimon. Nay, certainly to-night ;
For look how fresh she looks ! They were too rough.
. . . Make fire within :
Fetch hither all the boxes in my closet.
(^Exit a Servant.)
Death may usurp on nature many hours,
And yet the fire of life kindle again
The o'erpressed spirits. I heard of an Egyptian
That had nine hours lien dead.
Who was by good appliances recovered.
Reenter Servant, with boxes^ napkins^ and fire.
Well said, well said ; the fire and the cloths.
The rough and woful music that we have.
Cause it to sound, beseech you.
The vial once more : how thou stirr'st, thou block !
The music there! I pray you, give her air.
Gentlemen,
This queen will live : nature awakes ; a warmth
Breathes out of her : she hath not been entranc'd
Above five hours : see how she 'gins to blow
Into life's flower again !
It is very delightful to think that this superb por- traiture of the ideal doctor which Shakspere has given us in the figure of Cerimon — a portraiture which ought to be in gold letters and framed and hung up in every
i8o SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
medical college in the land — was possibly drawn from an actual personage. We know, historically, that in the year 1607 Dr. John Hall married Shakspere's youngest daughter, Susannah. Now Shakspere's part of the play of Pericles was probably written just about this time, and it seems very likely that this son-in-law. Dr. John Hall, furnished him with at least some of the features which go to make up the noble Dr. Cerimon. He was himself a writer, and was a physician of great repute in Stratford. This physician may indeed have been the son of a certain Dr. John Hall who wrote a work called An Historical Ex- postulation Against the Beastly Abuses both of Chirurgery and Physyke in Oure Tyme.
In rummaging about the Peabody Library some days ago I came upon this work of Dr. John Hall's in one of the volumes of the Percy Society's reprints. Before describing the abuses. Dr. Hall gives us an ideal physi- cian according to his views, and we can easily see that a very lineal tradition from father to son might have made the younger doctor a fair model for Shakspere's picture of Cerimon.
Here are some of the elder Hall's ideas of the proper chirurgeon ; and they let us into some curious features of medical matters in his time.
" Why," says he, " is every rude, rustick, braynsicke beast, fond fool, indiscreete idiote; yea, every scoldinge drabbe suffered thus ... to abuse this worthy arte upon the body of man? What avayleth the goodly orders taken by our forefathers and auncient authores, that none should be admitted to the art of chirurgery that are mis- create or deformed of body ; as goggle or skwynte eyed, unperfecte of sight, unhelthy of body, unperfecte of mynde, not hole in his members, boystrous fingers or shakyng hands. But contrarywyse that all that should be admytted to that arte should be of clean and perfect sight, well
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME i8i
formed in person, hole of mynde and of members, sclender and tender fingered, havyng a softe and stedfast hande : — or as the common sentence is, a chirurgien should have three dyvers properties in his person. That is to saie, a harte as the harte of the lyon, his eyes like the eyes of an hawke and his handes as the handes of a woman : what avayleth this order, I saye, sithe the contrary in all poyntes is put dayly in use, and that almost without hope of redresse ? Seyng also that those auncient authors had not only this regarde to the forme of the body, but also, and as well, to the bewtie or ornament of the mynde, and an honest conversation of him that should be admitted to chirurgery, as are thes : He ought to be well manered, and of good audacitie, and bolde when he may worke surely; and contrariwise, doubtfull and fearfull in things that be dangerous and desperate. He [ought to] be gen- tyll to his patients, witty in prognostications, and forseyng of dangers, apte and reasonable to answer and dissolve all doubtes and questions belongynge to his worke. He must also be chaste, sober, meeke and mercifuU ; no extorcioner, but so to accomplish his rewarde at the hands of the ryche to maynteine his science and necessary lyvynges, that he may helpe the poor for the only sake of God ; what mean- eth it, I saye (those things considered) that so many sheepe heads, unwytly, unlearned . . . dronkards, beastly glut- tons, . . . envious, evill manered, shall thus myserably be sufFred to abuse so noble an arte."^
But our author's Treatise of Anatomte gives us a mel- ancholy view of the state of knowledge at that time, even among such good intenders as himself." For example, " May it not be proved," says he, " that the brayne (lyke
^ Cf. Nicholas Breton's " Worthy sixteenth-century cure-all in The
Physician" in Good and Bad, Two Noble Kinsmen: **Thisques-
Brydges* Archaica. tion, aick between us, by bleeding
2 And there is a dismal hint of the must be cured."
1 82 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
unto the heavens) hangyth without any maner of staye or proppe, to hold by the same ? Nay, it is so evident that every learned anatomiste writeth of the same as a thynge not to be doubted of, and therefore judge the same to have a certayne lykeness with the heavenly nature." (Here is an argument !) " And as the world hath two notable lyghtes to govern the same, namely, the sonne and the moone ; so hath the body of man, planted lykewyse in the highest place, two lyghtes called eyes, which are the lyghtes of the body as the sonne and the moon are the lyghtes of the world. And it is also wrytten of some doctors, that the brayne hath VH concavities, being instruments of the wyttes, which answer unto the VH spheres of the planetes." But the good doctor now goes on to give us many lively pictures of the travelling quacks that went about England, and here we come to a terribly effective foil to his bright ideal of the physician. We are apt nowadays to think that the times are frightfully full of quacks and cure-alls and all manner of medical impostures ; but from the long list of wretched charlatans which Hall gives here, and the description of their pretensions, their ignorance, and their brutal juggleries, we are forced to believe that Shakspere's day was far more cursed in this kind than ours. Here, for example, are two or three of these charlatans, as Dr. Hall saw them : ^
" Fyrst there came into the towne of Maydstone, in the yere of our Lorde 1555 a woman which named her- selfe Jane. . . . This wicked beast toke her inn at the signe of the Bell . . . when she caused within short space
^The Apobgie for Poetrie has t which afterwards send Charon a
vicious fling by the way at the regular great number of soules drowned in
practitioners: '' How often, thinke a potion before they come to his
you, doe the Phisitians lye, when Ferry?'* they aver things good for sicknesses.
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 183
to be published that she could heale all maner, both inward and outward diseases. One powder she carried in a blader, made of the herbe daphnoydes and anise seed together, which she (as an onelye sufficient remedie for all grefes) administered unto all her foolish patients, in lyke quantitie to all people neyther regarding tyme, strength nor age." He tells how she worked away at a sick child who finally died of her terrible doses ; whereupon she ran away ; and the irate doctor adds exultingly that in running away she stole " the sheets, pillow-beres and blankets " from the landlord's bed, and not only that : it was discovered after she left that she had ordered the servant at the inn to bring her up muscadel wine whenever she ordered beer.
" Then again in the next year came to Maydstone one Robert Harris, professing by only looking in one's face to tell what they had done and what had chaunced to them all their lyfe tyme before. And for jestyng a lyttell agaynst the madness of this deceaver, I had a dagger drawne at me not long after.
" Again, a couple of years afterward came one Thomas Lufkyn, a cloth-fuller by trade, who had been long absent from the towne, in which time he had been roving abroad, and had become a physician, a chirurgien, an astronomier, a palmister, a phisiognomier, a sothsayer, a fortune devyner, and I cannot tell what. . . . This deceaver was the beast- liest beguiler by his sorcerys that ever I herd of, making physike the only colour to cover all his crafty thefte and mischieves, for he set uppe a byll at hys fyrste commynge, to publishe his beyng there, the tenour whereof was in effect as followeth : — If any manne, womanne, or childe bee sicke, or would be let blood, or bee deseased with any maner of inward or outwarde grefes, as al maner of agues, or fevers, plurises, cholyke, • . • goutes . • . bone ache
1 84 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
. . . and payne of the joynts . . . let them resorte to the sygneof the Sarazen's Hedde, in the easte lane, . . . and they shall have remedie.
By me, Thomas LufFkin.
Unto this divell incarnate resetted all sortes of vayne and indiscrete persons, as it were to a God, — especially women to know how many hisbands . . . they should have, and whether they should burie their husbands then lyving. . . . There was not so great a secret that he would not take it upon him to declare ... by astro- nomie. Well, the ende of hys being there was as it is commen wyth them all, wythoute anye difference, for he sodainlye was gone wyth many a poore man's moneye, whyche he had taken beforehand promisinge them helpe, which onlye he recompensed wyth the winge of his heles."
And then came another different medical impostor calling himself Master Wynkfelde, pretending to tell all diseases by looking at people's faces. Upon a certain occasion sending a verbal prescription to the apothecary, the apothecary asked the messenger why Wynkfelde did not write for his things, whereunto the messenger answered that " Mayster Wynkfelde was a right Latynist, for he could wryte no Englysh. By this ye may perceave he was a well learned man." Many adventures he had, and much report ; presently it turned out that Master Wynk- felde " had III wyves lyving at present." Whereupon he had to flee ; and Hall adds, "The truthe was ... he had no learnyng in the world, nor could reade English (and as I suppose knewe not . . . a b from a bateldore) . • . yet made he the people believe that he could speke Latin, Greek and Hebrue." And again there came a woman professing to have travelled everywhere, administering
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 185
physic;^ but upon being examined by the authorities as to her knowledge and her certificate to practise medicine, " she sayde she was never before so examined . . . neither sawe she ever the place that a woman could finde so little curtesie; . . . nevertheless she was expelled the town." Finally there came one Nichols who had a very prosperous career; and the sturdy Hall got him up for examination and showed that he did not know one medicine from an- other, and that he thought cassia was so called because it was like a case; but still he remained and practised. " One day this man made his vaunte that he sawe his maister close a man's head together that was cleft from the crown of his head down to the necke, who sayde he was after healed, and did live. This shameless lye, beyng hearde of a mery man was quited, on this sorte. Tushe^ (sayd this mery man) I have heard of as great a matter as this ; for a certayne man fallyng into the hands of theves was robbed, and his head so smoothe cutte off that it stoode styll upon his necke tyll he rode home ; whose wyfe metyng him at the doore, perceived his bosome bloudy, and asked him if his nose had bledde ; which wordes when the man heard, he tooke his nose in his hand to blow it, and therewith threw his head in at the dore. And now," says the doctor, " I leave this . . . monster least I should too much weary the lovynge reader." But he cunningly goes on. Paragraph after paragraph he begins : " I will omit to tell of So-and-so, who did so-and-so " : omitting also one Carter who was a sorcerer and did so-and-so ; and he will also " omitte to tell of Grygge the Poulter " who did so-and-so; and of the "joyner" in London, a Frenchman, who did so-and-so ; and so on.
1 Cf. the Lady Loose-pain in the cient lady leeches and the modern Percy Ballad, It would be inter- women doctors, esting to compare in detail the an-
1 86 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
It may be well enough, however, to cap these specimens of sixteenth-century quackery with an account of a certain wholesale quackery written by a medical friend with whom our Dr. John Hall seems to have been intimate — Dr. Thomas Gale — in 1563. Gale had served in the army, and in one place he says : " I remember when I was in the wars in the time of the most famous prince. King Henry VIII, there was a great rabblement there, that took upon them to be surgeons. Some were pig-doctors, some were horse doctors, some tinkers and coblers. This noble sect . . . got themselves ... for their notorious cures, called dog-leachers, for in two dressings they did commonly make their cures so that they neither felt heat nor cold nor no manner of pain after. But when the Duke of Norfolk, who was then general, understood how the sol- diers did die, and that of small wounds, he sent for me and certain other surgeons ; and we made search through all the camp and found many of the same good fellows which took upon them the name of surgeons, — not only the name but the wages also. We asking of them whether they were surgeons or no, they said they were. . . . Then we demanded of them what chirurgery stuff they had to cure men withal, and they would show us a pot or box, wherein was such trumpery as they did use to grease horses heels withal . . . and such like. And other that were coblers and tinkers, they used shoemaker's wax, with the rust of old pans, and made therewithal a noble salve as they did term it. But in the end this worthy rabblement was committed to the Marshalsea and threat- ened by the duke's grace to be hanged . . . except they would declare what they were, and in the end they did confess, as I have declared to you." ^
iCf. Chettle's Kind Hearths Dream: *« To the impudent discrcditors of Phisickes Art, either speedy Amendement or punishment." (The
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 187
After looking upon these pictures, we need not be sur- prised to find that Shakspere, among the thousand types of characters which he studied, gives us some views of the doctor quite different from that of Cerimon. For exam- ple, compare the celebrated passage in Act V, Scene III of Macbeth^ where we get a vivid glimpse of the relations very likely to subsist between a man of affairs, like Mac- beth, and a man of pure ideas, like a doctor. It is in Scene I of this act, you remember, that the Doctor is first introduced. Lady Macbeth's gentlewoman has happened to see the guilty Queen walking in her sleep ; and, not knowing what to do about it, has called in the Doctor — showing that old times were very much like modern ones in this particular. We have in this scene the wonderful sleep-walking speech of Lady Macbeth, while the gentle- woman and the Doctor stand close ; and the Doctor, after she retires, concludes : " More needs she the divine than the physician." But in Scene III we have the wild Mac- beth one minute cursing the servant who brings him news of the English, the next minute calling for his armour, and then turning to the physician. " How does your patient, doctor ? " he asks.
Doct. Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick-coming fancies, That keep her from her rest.
Macb. Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased. Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow. Raze out the written troubles of the brain. And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stufPd bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart ?
tooth-drtwers had acquired the name of Kind-heart — possibly because some ^unous dentist bore this name and so cognomened the tribe.)
1 88 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Doct. Therein the patient
Must ministel' to himself.
Macb. Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it,i etc.
And it is not surprising to hear the Doctor presently declaring :
Were I from Dunsinane away and clear. Profit again should hardly draw me here.^
This Throw physic to the dogs always reminds me of a cunning passage in Chaucer's Knight*s Tale when Arcite has been thrown and fearfully crushed by his horse, and after telling how all the leechcraft of the time — bleeding being the main resort — has been tried to no purpose, because nature hath now no " dominacioun " over the man's body, Chaucer exclaims in one of his peculiar bright sallies :
And certeynly when Nature wil not wirche, Farwel phisik ; go here the man to chirche.
It is interesting to think that etymologically "physic" means nature : cf. Greek yootxic, natural^ from ^otc, na- ture ; and we can here get a realising sense of the dis- tance to which the meaning of a word may depart from its original sense when we here find Chaucer using nature and physic as two precisely contradictory terms, though physic originally meant exactly nature and nothing more.
It would seem that the functions of the apothecary and the doctor were not so distinct in Shakspere's time as at present, and so a view of the doctors of this period must embrace also a glimpse at the apothecary. As such a glimpse, recall that powerful description of the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet ^ Act V, Scene I. Balthasar brings the
1 Cf. AlPs Well that Ends Well, 2 Cf. Dr. Pinch in Comedy rf Er- Act I, Scene I : "He hath aban- rors. Act IV, Scene IV, and Dr. doned his physicians, madam," etc. Caius in Merry Wives, passim.
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 189
mortal news from Verona that Juliet is dead ; and, in his customary lightning way, Romeo instantly resolves to go and die alongside her dear body. And then, how to die ? " Let's see for means." And straight the idea of poison comes.
I do remember an apothecary. And hereabouts a' dwells, which late I noted In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows. Culling of simples ; meagre were his looks ; Sharp misery had worn him to the bones : And in his needy shop
(doubtless Shakspere is here picturing some actual apothe- cary's shop he had seen)
a tortoise hung. An alligator stuft'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 packthread and old cakes of roses. Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show. Noting this penury, to myself I said. An if a man did need a poison now. Whose sale is present death in Mantua, Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him. . . • What, ho ! apothecary !
Enter Apothecary.
Jpoth. Who calls so loud ?
Romeo. Come hither, man. I see that thou art poor ; Hold, there is forty ducats : let me have A dram of poison ; such soon-spreading gear As will disperse itself through all the veins. That the life-weary taker may fall dead. And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath As violently as hasty powder fired Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
I90 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Apoth. Such mortal drugs I have ; but Mantua's law Is death to any he that utters them.
Romeo. Art thou so bare and full of wretchedness. And fear'st to die ? famine is in thy cheeks. Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes. Contempt and beggary hang upon thy back. The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law : The world affords no law to make thee rich ; Then be not poor, but break it, and take this.
Apoth. My poverty, but not my will, consents.
Romeo. I pay thy poverty, and not thy will.
Apoth. Put this in any liquid thing you will. And drink it off; and, if you had the strength Of twenty men, it would dispatch you straight.
Romeo. There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, Doing more murder in this loathsome world. Than these poor compounds that thou mayst not sell : I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none. Farewell : buy food, and get thyself in flesh. Come, cordial and not poison, go with me To Juliet's grave ; for there must I use thee.
Several items in this apothecary picture lead me now to bring before you a very lifelike account of the rascally apothecary, given by a writer whom we may call Shakspere's contemporary, though he is a few years before Shakspere. I mean old John Heywood, of whom we have already had a taste in another connection. In that same interlude called The Four P*s — the four P's being, you remember, The Palmer (Pilgrim), The Pedler^ The Poticary^ and The Par- doner — he introduces us to four very notable characters, and manages to make them lampoon themselves very effectually in the absurd dialogue which they carry on throughout this interlude.
After some flouting and gibing at each other's rascality — and they are certainly as precious a quartette of rascals
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 191
as ever gulled the people — the Pardoner, you will recall, begins to brag of the efficacy of his bulls and indulgences and pardons.
I say yet againe [says he] my pardons are suche
That yf there were a thousand soules on a hepe
I wold brynge them all to heaven, as good chepe.
As ye have brought yourselfe on pylgrymage
In the least quarter of your vyage ;
With smale cost and without any payne
These pardons bring them to heaven playne ;
Geve me but a peny or two pens
And assone as the soule departeth hens,
In half an houre, or three quarters at the moste.
The soule is in heven, with the holy ghost.
Here the Poticary strikes in :
Sende ye any soules to heaven by water?
Pardoner. If we doo sir, what is the mater ?
Poticary. By god, I have a drye soule shoulde thyther ; I praye you let our soules go to heven togyther : So bysy you twayne be in soules helth May not a poticary come in by stelth ? . . • No soule, ye knowe, entreth heven gate, Tyll from the bodye he be separate : And whome have ye knowen dye honestly Without helpe of the potycary ? Nay, all that commeth to our handlynge. Except ye happe to come to hangynge ; That way perchanse, ye shall not myster To go to heven without a glyster. But ye be sure I wold be wo If ye shoulde chaunce to begyle me so, As good to lye with me a nyght As hang abrode in the mone light.
192 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
Syns of our soules the multitude I sende to heven when all is vewd. Who should but I then all togyther Have thanke of all theyr comynge thyther ?
Pardoner, If ye kyl'd a thousande in an houre space, When come they to heven, dyenge out of grace ?
Poticary. If a thousande pardons about your necks were teyd, When came they to heven yf they never dyed ?
And here we have a curious list of the names of apothe- caries' drugs :
Poticary. Here is a syrapus de Byzansis A lytell thynge is inough of thys : For even the weyght of one scryppal Shall make you as strong as a cryppul. Here are other as diosialos, Diagalanga and sticados Blanka, manna, diaspoliticon. Mercury sublyme and mitridaticon, Pellitory and arsefetita Cassy and colloquintida. These be the thynges that breke all stryfe. Between man's sycknes and his lyfe. . . .
This list of medicines leads me now to speak of one drug which played a much more important part in the phar- macy of Shakspere's time than ours, though we use it much more freely than then, under a very different rubric. I mean tobacco. When Shakspere was just emerging into manhood — twenty or twenty-one years old, say — tobacco was widely regarded as one of the most wonderful medicines the world had ever known, and was often pre- scribed by physicians in case of sickness. Indeed, — as you will presently see by some citations from contempo-
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 193
rary writers, — many regarded it as a perfect cure-all, and thought that tobacco-smoke, if sent into the body, would chase out diseases, just as hunters smoke game out of hollow trees. Some of the literature of this subject is so curious, and reveals to us so many of the crude notions which our ancestors — even the wisest among them — held regarding the human organs and the action of medi- cines upon them, that I think you will be interested in several citations from writers of Shakspere's time relating to the medicinal virtues of tobacco. Singularly enough, I can cite you nothing on tobacco from Shakspere. So far as I now recollect, there is not a single word about tobacco, or the remotest allusion to it, in all his plays and poems. This is the more remarkable because other writers of his time abound in allusions to it ; a whole war of books and pamphlets in prose and verse was carried on about tobacco, in which even King James was one of the disputants ; and in a thousand ways we see that the won- derful rapidity with which tobacco took hold of the English people had excited great attention long before Shakspere died. Although Shakspere was a man when people began to smoke tobacco (or to drink tobacco, as it was then called — you asked a friend to drink tobacco with you), the custom had become so common that we find King James early in the seventeenth century foreboding that it would ruin the health of his whole people. And, what is more specially to the point here, smoking appears to have been carried on at the theatres more vigorously than any- where else. I find this often mentioned, and Shakspere himself must have had to act day after day in the midst of a stage reeking with smoke from the pipes in the pit and those aflfected by the gallants who used to sit on the stage among the players. But withal never a word from Shakspere about tobacco : and it must certainly be regarded
194 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
one of the most curious silences, that one whose eye never missed anything in his time has omitted to make any record of what we may perhaps fairly call the most novel sight of his age — the sight of people everywhere swallowing the smoke of a drug and puffing it out again from mouth and nostrils.
Here are some citations giving the early stories and opinions about this drug when it was first being intro- duced into England and France.^
The first mention of the herb in English seems to be in a translation, by "John Frampton, Marchant," of a Spanish work which Nicholas Monardes issued at Seville in 1571. Frampton says in the dedication to his first edition (1577): ** Retourning right worshipfull, home into Englande oute of Spaine, and now not pressed with the former toiles of my old trade, I to passe the tyme to some benefite of my countrie, and to avoyde idlenesse : tooke in hande to translate out of Spanishe into Englishe, the thre bookes of Doctour Monardes of Scvill, the learned Phisition, treating of the singuler and rare vertues of certaine Hearbes, Trees, Oyles, Plantes, Stones, and Drugges of the Weste Indies. ..."
Among the " singuler and rare vertues" of the " Hearbe *Tabaco^^ ("an Hearbe of much antiquitie," the proper name of which "amongest the Indians is Picielty for the name Tabaco is geven to it by our Spainardes, by reason of an Island that is named Tabaco ") was that of divination :
" One of the mervelles of this hearbe, and that which bringeth most admiration, is, the maner howe the Priestes of the Indias did use it, which was in this manner : when there was emongest the Indians any manner of businesse, of greate importaunce, in the which the chiefe Gentlemen
1 Sec King James's " Essay es in Poesie** and "Counterblaste to Tobacco" in Arber's English Reprints, pages 81 etseq.
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 195
called CasiqueSy or any of the principall people of the countrie, had necessitie to consult with their Priestes, in any business of importance ; they went and propounded their matter to their chiefe Priest, forthwith in their pres- ence, he tooke certayne leaves of the TabacOy and cast them into the fire, and did receive the smoke of them at his mouth, and at his nose with a Cane, and in taking of it, he fell downe uppon the ground, as a Dead man, and remayn- ing so, according to the quantitie of the smoke that he had taken, when the hearbe had done his worke, he did revive and awake, and gave them their answeres, according to the visions, and illusions which he sawe, whiles he was rapt in the same manner, and he did interprete to them, as to him seemed best, or as the Devill had counselled him, geving them continually doubtful answeares, in such sorte, that howsoever it fell out, they might say that it was the same, which was declared, and the answeare that he made.
"In like sort the rest of the Indians for their pastime, doe take the smoke of the T'abacOy too make themselves drunke withall, and to see the visions, and thinges that represent unto them that wherein they doe delight : and other times they take it to knowe their businesse, and suc- cesse, because conformable to that, whiche they have scene beyng drunke therewith, even so they judge of their businesse. And as the Devil is a deceaver, and hath the knowledge of the vertue of hearbes, so he did shew the vertue of this Hearb, that by the meanes thereof, they might see their imaginations, and visions, that he hath represented to them, and by that meanes deceave them."
Under the name of Nicotiane (modern nicotine — after a French John Nicot, who was ambassador in Portugal, and who sent it to France as a wonderful medicine) the " hearbe " now acquired a reputation for working most wonderful cures of all sorts. Nicot's own story of its dis-
196 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
covery by him occurs in Liebault's edition of Charles Estienne's Farming and the Country House {U Agriculture et Maison Rustique) :
" Maister lohn Nicoty Counseller to the King, being Embassadour for his Maiestie in Portugall, in the yeere of our Lorde. 1558. 59. 60. went one day to see the Prysons of the King of Portugall : and a Gentleman beeyng the keeper of the sade Prisons presented him with this hearb, as a strange Plant brought from Florida. The same Maister Nicoty having caused the said hearb to be set in his Garden, where it grewe and multiplied marvellously, was uppon a time advertised, by one of his Pages, that a young man, of kinne to that Page made asaye of that hearbe brused both the hearbe and the luice together uppon an ulcer, which he had upon his cheeke . . . where- with hee found himselfe mervellously eased. Therefore the saide Maister Nicot caused the sicke younge man to bee brought before him, and causing the saide hearb to bee continued to the sore eight or ten daies, this said Noli me tangere was utterly extinguished and healed. . . .
" Within a while after, one of the Cookes of the sayde Embassadour having almost cutte off his thombe, with a great chopping knyfe, the Steward of the house of the sayde Gentleman ran to the sayde Nicotiancy and dressed him therewith five or six tymes, and so in the ende thereof he was healed : from that time forward this hearbe began to bee famous throughout LishebroHy where the court of the kyng of Portugall was at that present, and the vertue of this sayde hearbe was extolled, and the people began to name it the Ambassadours hearbe." People came fi-om all parts to be cured of ulcers, and many other afflictions, ranging apparently from ringworm to " shorte breath " !
" Moreover," continues Liebault, " the inhabitantes of Florida do nourish themselves certaine tymes, with the
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 197
smoke of this Hearbe, which they receave at the mouth through certaine coffins, suche as the Grocers do use to put in their Spices."
It was in this matter of receiving its smoke at the mouth " through certaine coffins " that tobacco began to occupy a large amount of attention from Englishmen dur- ing the last decade of the sixteenth century. It seems probable, by the way, that Sir Walter Raleigh had far less to do with the introduction of tobacco into England than had Master Ralph Lane ; and the well-known tale of his being doused while smoking by his servant, who thought his master on fire, exists in too many variations to be con- sidered very trustworthy.
The controversy which soon arose over this new and strange custom is very ingeniously presented by Ben Jon- son in his comedy of Every Man in his Humour (acted November 25, 1596):
Says Bobadilla :
Body of me : here's the remainder of seven pound, since yes- terday was sevennight. It's your right Trinidado: did you never take any, signior ?
Stephano. No truly sir ? but i'le learne to take it now since you commend it so.
Bobadilla. Signior beleeve me, (upon my relation) for what I tel you, the world shall not improve. I have been in the Indies (where this herbe growes) where neither my selfe, nor a dozen Gentlemen more (of my knowledge) have received the taste of any other nutriment, in the world, for the space of one and twentie weekes, but Tabacco onely. Therefore it cannot be but 'tis most divine. Further, take it in the nature, in the true kinde so, it makes an Antidote, that (had you taken the most deadly poyson- ous simple in all Florence, it should expell it, and clarifie you, with as much ease, as I speak. And for your greene wound, your BalsamumyZnA your are all mere gulleries and trash to it,espe-
198 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
cially your Trinidado ; your Newcotian is good too : I could say what I know of the vertue of it, for the exposing of rewmes, raw humors, crudities, obstructions, with a thousand of this kind ; but I professe my selfe no quack-salver : only thus much : by Htrtaitt I doe holde it, and will afiirme it (before any Prince in Europe) to be the most soveraigne and pretious herbe, that ever the cndi tendred to the use of man.
Cob presently has his say on the other side :
By gods deynes: I marie what pleasure or felicitie tkcj have in taking this rogish Tabacco : it's good for nodung byf Id choake a man, and fill him full of smoake, and imben : then foure died out of one house last weeke with taking of it, and more the bell went for yester-night, one of them (thejr tAjr) wfll ne're scape it, he voyded a bushell of soote yester-day, upward and downeward. By the stockes ; and there were no wiser men I, rid have it present death, man or woman, that should but with a Tabacco pipe; why it will stifle them all in tfae'nd at many as use it ; it's little better than rats bane.
King James himself took a leading part in the batde over tobacco. His Counterblaste to Tobacco is a pieee of invective against the users of the herb that seems to \m^ difficulty in finding words strong enough. It winds up: " A custome loathsome to the eye, hateful! to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs^ and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling die horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlessc."
Yet in spite of the kingly displeasure which did not even stop at words but proclaimed fines and " corporall Punishments " for the disobedient, it is astonishing to see how rapidly the practice of smoking grew. " Barnabee Rych Gentleman, Servant to the Kings most Excellent Maiestie," says in 1614:
Dr. Thoma
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THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 199
" I have heard it tolde that now very lately, there hath bin a Cathalogue taken of all those new erected houses that have set uppe that Trade of selling Tobacco, in London and neare about London : and if a man may beleeve what is confidently reported, there are found to be upward of 7000. houses that doth live by that trade." He goes on presently : " It may well bee supposed to be but an ill customed shoppe, that taketh not five shillings a day, one day with another, throughout the whole yeare, or if one doth take lesse, two other may take more: but let us make our account, but after 2 shillings sixe pence a day, for he that taketh lesse than that, would be ill able to pay his rent, or to keepe open his Shop Windowes, neither would Tobacco houses make such a muster as they doe, and that almost in every . . . by-corner round about London.
" Let us then reckon thus, 7000. halfe Crouns a day, amounteth just to 3 1 9,3 75 poundes a yeare. Summa totaliSy All spent in smoake."
And yet our Shakspei-e, who seems to sum up in his plays the whole world of his fellow-men, and whose term of writing corresponds almost exactly to these thirty years during which his countrymen, from knowing nothing of tobacco, came to consume hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth each year, does not so much as mention the herb or the practice of smoking.
I should have liked to give some account of the more famous physicians of this time in England ; of " that famous Phisition, Master Thomas Twyne " ; of Dr. Thomas Linacre, the founder of the London College of Physicians, who went over from England in 1484 to Italy and studied medicine in Florence, where he was companion to the children of the great Lorenzo de' Medici. Italy was at this time the centre of medical learning: the learned refugees from Constantinople had found an
200 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
asylum there, and attendants upon their lectures were attracted from all parts of the world. Foreign physicians were greatly esteemed in England ; and I find cunning indications cropping up here and there in contemporary literature that perhaps they were sometimes esteemed more because they were foreign than because they displayed any superiority over native doctors. For example^ in an old play called The Marriage of Wit and Wisdom there is a lampoon upon a quack aping these foreign doctors or out- landish men, like this :
Now you shall hear how finely Master Doctor
Can play the outlandish man.
(And he apes the foreigner):
Ah, by Got, me be the Doctor,
Me am the fine knave, I tell ye.
Me have the excellent medicine
P'or the blaines and the blister. . . •
The bee have no so many herbes
Whenout to suck honey
As I can find shifts whereby to get money.
But the length of the medical course pursued at this time in Italy would astonish the young gentlemen who are so impatient of a few months before they can enter the world as doctors. Dr. Li nacre must have remained fifteen years in Italy, studying in Florence, Rome, and Padua^ before he came back to England and b^an his career.
I should also have liked particularly to dwell upon the life of William Harvey, who discovered the circulation of the blood at this time, and who, you remember, was a con- temporary of Shakspere.
It was in 1616 that he put forth his doctrine of the circulation of the blood. Harvey is an instructive person, particularly when we think of the trouble that often fell
William Harvey, and Chart of Circulation of ihe Blood
THE DOCTORS OF SHAKSPERE'S TIME 201
upon him in consequence of his discoveries. Aubrey re- ports that he had heard Harvey say that " after his booke of the Circulation of the Blood came out, he fell mightily in his practice and . . . 'twas believed by the vulgar he was crack-brained." What a curious crisscross of things it is that the vulgar should believe Harvey crack-brained and accept as wise men the ignorant charlatans whom we saw them running after in Dr. John Hall's book !
Yet Harvey lived to see his doctrine established. And the metaphysician Hobbes, well enough acquainted with the vanity of such success, spoke of him as " the only man I know that conquering envy, hath established a new doctrine in his life-time." People knew in a vague sort of way, before Harvey, that the blood moved ; but they were utterly ignorant of what made it move ; and even in Shakspere's time we find a writer speaking of the liver as the fountain of the blood — evidently fancying that, from some cause or other, the blood spouted out of the liver as a fountain out of the ground. Servetus appears to have narrowly missed forestalling Harvey's Exercitatio anato- mic a de motu cordis et sanguinis. Harvey's own position against his antagonists was dignified and noble. He says in one of his own works that scarce a day has passed that he has not heard both good and evil of his doctrine. Some with great disdain opposed him ; others dispraised with childish slight his dissections and his frogs and ser- pents ; but he thinks it unworthy of a philosopher and a searcher of the truth to return bad words for bad words, and thinks he will do better and more advised if with the light of true and evident observations he shall wipe away those symptoms of incivility. He died in 1657, after great gifts to the College of Physicians.
And I cannot better close this meagre lecture than by citing the words of another young physician of this period
202 SHAKSPERE AND HIS FORERUNNERS
named Harvey, who appears to have been altc^ether a beautiful soul, and to have died lamented at a very early age. This was Dr. John Harvey. In some letters of the learned Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Sir Philip Sidney and particularly of Edmund Spenser, I find a short but touching allusion to the death of Dr. John Harvey, who was his brother. "He that lived not to see nine and twenty years, ... in Norfolk," says Gabriel, "'. . .as skilful a physician for his age as ever came there. I . . . can never forget that sweet voice of the dying cygnet." And then follow the dying words of his brother: "0 frater^ Christus est optimus medicuSy et meus solus tnedicus. Vale Galeney valete humana artes : nihil divinum in terris^ praeter animum aspirant em ad ccelos. (O brother^ Christ is the test physician, and my only physician. Farewell GaUn^ farewell human arts : there is nothing divine in the worlds except the soul aspiring to the heavens. y*