_Malcolm._ Comes the king forth I pray you? _Doctor._ Ay, sir; there are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure; their malady convinces The great assay of art; but, at his touch, Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, They presently amend. _Malcolm._ I thank you, doctor. _Macduff._ What’s the disease he means? _Malcolm._ ’Tis call’d the evil A most miraculous work in this good king: Which often, since my here-remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven, Himself best knows: but strangely-visited people, All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye, The mere despair of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, Put on with holy prayers; and ’tis spoken, To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction. _Macbeth, Act IV., Sc. III._
On the action of medicines he has given us abundant cause to think he was much better informed than the average man of his time.
_Cleo._ Give me to drink mandragora _Char._ Why, madame? _Cleo._ That I might sleep out this great gap of time, My Antony is away. _Antony and Cleopatra, Act I., Sc. V._
Not poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever med’cine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou ow’dst yesterday. _Othello, Act III., Sc. III._
Cupid’s cup With the first draught intoxicates apace— A quintessential laudanum or “black drop” Which makes one drunk at once, without the base Expedient of full bumpers. _Byron—Don Juan, Canto IX,. Verse LXVII._
——like an opiate which brings troubled rest, Or none, _Byron—Don Juan, Canto XVI., Verse X_
The drug he gave me, which, he said, was precious And cordial to me, have I not found it Murderous to the senses? _Cymbeline, Act IV., Sc. II._
Have we eaten of the insane root, That takes the reason prisoner? _Macbeth, Act I., Sc. III._
Commentators think that Shakespeare found the name of this root in Bateman’s Commentary on Bartholeme _de Propriet Rerum_: “Henbane (Hyoscyamus) is called _Insana_, mad, for the use thereof is perillous; for if it be eate or drunke, it breedeth madnesse, or slow lykenesse of sleepe. Therefore this hearb is called commonly Mirilidium, for it taketh away wit and reason.” _Lib. XVII., Ch. 87._
Thy uncle stole, With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, And in the porches of mine ears did pour The leperous distilment; whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man, That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body; And with a sudden rigour, it doth posset And curd, like sour droppings into milk, The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine, And a most instant tetter bark’d about, Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, All my smooth body. _Hamlet, Act I., Sc. V._