More comprehensible is the astonishment which has been awakened by Shakespeare's insight in other domains of nature not lying so open to immediate observation. His medical knowledge early attracted attention. In 1860 a Doctor Bucknill devoted a whole book to the subject, in which he goes so far as to attribute to the poet the most advanced knowledge of our own time, or, at any rate, of the 'sixties, in this department. Shakespeare's representations of madness surpass all those of other poets. Alienists are full of admiration for the accuracy of the symptoms in Lear and Ophelia. Nay, more, Shakespeare appears to have divined the more intelligent modern treatment of the insane, as opposed to the cruelty prevalent in his own time and long after. He even had some notions of what we in our days call medical jurisprudence; he was familiar with the symptoms of violent death in contradistinction to death from natural causes. Warwick says in the second part of _Henry VI_. (iii. 2):-- "See, how the blood is settled in his face. Oft have I seen a timely-parted ghost, Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless, Being all descended to the labouring heart." These lines occur in the oldest text. In the later text, undoubtedly the result of Shakespeare's revision, we read:-- "But see, his face is black, and full of blood; His eye-balls further out than when he liv'd, Staring full ghastly like a strangled man: His hair uprear'd, his nostrils stretch'd with struggling; His hands abroad display'd, as one that grasp'd And tugg'd for life, and was by strength subdued. Look, on the sheets, his hair, you see, is sticking; His well-proportion'd beard made rough and rugged, Like to the summer's corn by tempest lodg'd. It cannot be but he was murder'd here; The least of all these signs were probable." Shakespeare seems, in certain instances, to be not only abreast of the natural science of his time, but in advance of it. People have had recourse to the Baconian theory in order to explain the surprising fact that although Harvey, who is commonly represented as the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, did not announce his discovery until 1619, and published his book upon it so late as 1628, yet Shakespeare, who, as we know, died in 1616, in many passages of his plays alludes to the blood as circulating through the body. Thus, for example, in _Julius Cæsar_ (ii. I), Brutus says to Portia-- "You are my true and honourable wife; As dear to me as are the ruddy drops That visit my sad heart." Again, in _Coriolanus_ (i. I) Menenius makes the belly say of its food-- "I send it through the rivers of your blood, Even to the court, the heart, to the seat o' the brain; And, through the cranks and offices of man, The strongest nerves, and small inferior veins, From me receive that natural competency Whereby they live."