Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging.

  • Seager, H. W. (Herbert West), 1848-
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    laid in a hollow place, subject to receive moisture en- gendereth Serpents. Topsell, History of Serpents, pp. 595-96. [Topsell gives many other curious facts about Serpents, but as his treatise covers nearly forty folio pages, this sample must suffice.] You have ate a snake, and are grown young, gamesome and rampant. Bcaianont and Fletcher^ The Elder Brothers, iv. 4. He hath left off o' late to feed on snakes ; His beard's turn'd white again. Miusiriger, etc., The Old Law, v. i. Your viper wine So much in practice with grey-bearded gallants, But vappa to the nectar of her lips. Ibid., Believe as You List, iv. i. That men may appear to be headless :—Take the slough of a snake, and auripigment [arsenic] and Greek pitch, and the wax of young bees, and ass's blood, and pound them all, and put them in a rough jar full of water, and make i: boil on a slow fire, and then let it cool, and make a taper of it, and every man who shall be illuminated by that taper will seem to be headless. Albcrtus Magnus, Of the Wonders of the World. If you wish to kill a Serpent quickly, take as much as you please of Aristolochia Rotunda, and pound it well, and take a frog of the woods or of the fields, and pound and mix it with the Aristolochia^ and put with it something burnt, and write with it on a paper, or anything that you prefer, and throw it to the Serpents. m^^ That a house may seem quite green and full of Serpents and fearful images, take the skin of a Serpent, and the blood of another male Serpent, and the fat of another Serpent, collect all these three things, and put them in a cere-cloth, and kindle it in a new lamp. n^y^