In a comedy of Lord Digby's, written more than a hundred years after Tusser's didactics, one of the scenes is laid in a lady's laboratory, “with a fountain in it, some stills, and many shelves, with pots of porcelain and glasses;” and when the lady wishes to keep her attendant out of the way, she sends her there, saying I have a task to give you,——carefully To shift the oils in the perfuming room, As in the several ranges you shall see The old begin to wither. To do it well Will take you up some hours, but 'tis a work I oft perform myself. And Tusser among “the Points of Housewifery united to the Comfort of Husbandry,” includes good housewifely physic, as inculcated in these rhymes; Good houswife provides ere an sickness do come, Of sundry good things in her house to have some; Good _aqua composita_, and vinegar tart, Rose water, and treacle to comfort the heart; Cold herbs in her garden for agues that burn, That over-strong heat to good temper may turn; White endive, and succory, with spinage enow, All such with good pot-herbs should follow the plough. Get water of fumitory liver to cool, And others the like, or else go like a fool; Conserves of barberry, quinces and such, With syrups that easeth the sickly so much. Old Gervase Markham in his “Approved Book called the English Housewife, containing the inward and outward virtues which ought to be in a complete woman,” places her skill in physic as one of the most principal; “you shall understand,” he says, “that sith the preservation and care of the family touching their health and soundness of body consisteth most in her diligence, it is meet that she have a physical kind of knowledge, how to administer any wholesome receipts or medicines for the good of their healths, as well to prevent the first occasion of sickness, as to take away the effects and evil of the same, when it hath made seizure upon the body.” And “as it must be confessed that the depths and secrets of this most excellent art of physic, are far beyond the capacity of the most skilful woman,” he relates for the Housewife's use some “approved medecines and old doctrines, gathered together by two excellent and famous physicians, and in a manuscript given to a great worthy Countess of this land.”