“CORNELIUS. (_aside_) I do suspect you, madam, But you shall do no harm. I do not like her. She doth think she has Strange lingering poisons. I do not 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 a while: Which first, perchance, she’ll prove on cats and dogs, Then afterwards up higher, 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.”[12] [12] _Cymbeline_, scene vi. The caution of the physician is well described, and his resort to subterfuge in order to checkmate the evil design of his wily mistress and old pupil, whom he evidently distrusts. The Queen is supposed to have possessed considerable knowledge and skill in the use of drugs, and her conserves had evidently a great reputation. Her scientific ideas were in advance of the age she lived in when she states her desire to make physiological experiments on animals to advance her knowledge; but the clear acumen of Cornelius saw through the apparently laudable spirit of research that imbued his pupil, and he supplied her with drugs of less potency. The following allusions are made to the apothecary:— “CARDINAL BEAUFORT. Bid the apothecary Bring the strong poison that I bought of him.”[13] And again, in _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_, Cerimon says:— “Your master will be dead ere you return; There’s nothing can be minister’d to nature, That can recover him. Give this to the apothecary, And tell me how it works.”[14] [13] _Henry VI._, part iii., act ii., scene iii. [14] _Pericles_, act iii., scene ii. This lord of Ephesus was evidently something of an amateur physician, as he tells us later that “’Tis known I ever Have studied physic, through which secret art, By turning o’er authorities, I have (Together with my practice) made familiar To me and to my aid the blest infusions That dwell in vegetives, in metals, stones; And can speak of the disturbances that nature Works, and of the cures; which doth give me A more content in course of true delight Than to be thirsty after tottering honour”. The lines— “One whose subdu’d eyes, Albeit unused to the melting mood, Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees Their medicinal gum,”[15]