The doctor says so * * * * * * * * * * * * * they sometimes Are soothsayers and always cunning men. Which doctor was it? _Ben Jonson—Magnetic Lady, Act II., Sc. I._ A side thrust at the experimenters in the profession is found in Cymbeline. 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; Which first, perchance, she’ll prove on cats and dogs, Then afterwards up higher. _Act I., Sc. V._ I can smile, and murder whiles I smile. _Henry VI.—3d, Act III., Sc. II._ He has in several plays shown his contempt for the “prating mountebank” or “doting wizard.” They brought one Pinch, a hungry, lean-fac’d villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, A thread-bare juggler, and a fortune-teller; A needy, hollow-ey’d, sharp-looking wretch, A living dead man: this pernicious slave, Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer, And, gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse, And with no face, as ’twere, out-facing me, Cries out I was possessed _Comedy of Errors, Act V., Sc. I._ I say we must not So stain our judgment, or corrupt our hope. To prostitute our past-cure malady To empirics; or to dissever so Our great self and our credit, to esteem A senseless help, when help past sense we deem. _All’s Well, Act II., Sc. I._ PART II. PRACTICE OF MEDICINE. Shakespeare’s maladies are many and the symptoms very well defined. Diseases of the nervous system seem to have been a favorite study, especially insanity; Lear, Timon, and Hamlet being excellent examples. And he * * * (a short tale to make), Fell into a sadness; then into a fast; Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness; Thence to a lightness; and, by this declension Into the madness wherein now he raves. _Hamlet, Act II., Sc. II._ He took me by the wrist and held me hard; Then goes he to the length of all his arm; And with his other hand thus o’er his brow, He falls to such perusal of my face, As he would draw it. Long stay’d he so; At last,—a little shaking of mine arm, And thrice his head thus waving up and down, He raised a sigh so piteous and profound, That it did seem to shatter all his bulk, And end his being: That done, he lets me go: And, with his head o’er his shoulder turn’d, He seem’d to find his way without his eyes; For out o’ doors he went without their help, And, to the last, bended their light on me. _Hamlet, Act II., Sc. I._