_Queen._ Now, master doctor, have you brought those drugs?
_Cor._ * * * I beseech your grace, without offence, My conscience bids me ask,—wherefore you have Commanded of me these most poisonous compounds, Which are the movers of a languishing death; But though slow, deadly? * * * * * Your highness Shall from this practice but make hard your heart: Besides, the seeing these effects will be Both noisome and infectious. * * * * * [_Aside._] I do suspect you, madame; But you shall do no harm. * * * I do not like her. She doth think she has Strange ling’ring poisons: 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; * * * * * * but there is No danger in what show of death it makes, More than the locking up the spirits a time, To be more fresh, reviving. She is fool’d With a most false effect; and I the truer So to be false with her. _Act I., Sc. V._
The queen, sir, very oft importun’d me To temper poisons for her; still pretending The satisfaction of her knowledge only In killing creatures vile, as cats and dogs, Of no esteem: I, dreading that her purpose Was of more danger, did compound for her A certain stuff, which, being ta’en, would cease The present power of life; but in short time All offices of nature should again Do their due function. _Act V., Sc. V._
Macbeth supplies us with a wise member of the profession, who, at a time when charlatans without number were promising to cure every malady, sees clearly that Lady Macbeth’s disease is beyond his power, and so informs Macbeth.
This disease is beyond my practice: * * * * * * infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine than the physician: * * * * * Remove from her the means of all annoyance, And still keep eyes upon her. _Act V., Sc. I._
_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?