The accuracy with which Shakespeare has written of apoplexy is justly alluded to in Bell’s _Principles of Surgery_, (1815, Vol. II, p. 557): “My readers will smile, perhaps, to see me quoting Shakespeare among physicians and theologists; but not one of all their tribe, populous though it be, could describe so exquisitely the marks of apoplexy, conspiring with the struggles for life, and the agonies of suffocation, to deform the countenance of the dead: so curiously does our poet present to our conception all the signs from which it might be inferred that the good duke Humfrey had died a violent death.”
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 cools, and ne’er returneth To blush and beautify the cheek again. But see, his face is black and full of blood; His eye-balls further out than when he liv’d, Staring full ghastly like a strangled man: His hair uprear’d, his nostrils stretch’d with struggling; His hands abroad display’d, as one that grasp’d And tugg’d for life, and was by strength subdu’d. Look on the sheets, his hair, you see, is sticking; His well-proportion’d beard made rough and rugged, Like to the summer’s corn by tempest lodg’d. It can not be but he was murder’d here; The least of all these signs were probable. _Henry VI—2d, Act III., Sc. II._
Suddenly a grievous sickness took him, That made him gasp, and stare, and catch the air. _Henry VI—2d, Act III., Sc. II._
_Falstaff._ And I hear moreover, his highness is fallen into this same whoreson apoplexy. _Ch. Just._ Well, heaven mend him! I pray let me speak with you. _Falstaff._ This apoplexy is, as I take it, a kind of lethargy, an’t to please your lordship; a kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tingling. _Ch. Just._ What tell you me of it? Be it as it is. _Falstaff._ It hath its original from much grief; from study and perturbation of the brain. _Henry IV—2d, Act I., Sc. II_
_War._ Be patient, princes; you do know, these fits Are with his highness very ordinary. Stand from him, give him air; he’ll straight be well. _Clar._ No, no; he can not long hold out these pangs: The incessant care and labour of his mind Hath wrought the mure, that should confine it in, So thin, that life looks through, and will break out. * * * * * _P. Humph._ This apoplexy will certain be his end. _Henry IV—2d, Act IV., Sc. IV._