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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    Toadstool. Troilus and Cressida, ii. i, 22. Of Mushrooms or Toad-stools. Some mushrooms grow forth of the earth ; other upon the bodies of old trees. Many wantons that dwell near] the sea, and have fish at will, are very desirous for change' of diet to feed upon the birds of the mountains ; and such as dwell upon the hills or champaign grounds do long after sea-fish ; many that have plenty of both do hunger after the earthy excrescences called mushrooms. The mushrooms or Toadstools, which grow upon the trunks of old trees, 1 very much resembling Jew's-ear, do in continuance of time' grow unto the substance of wood, which the fowlers do call touchwood. This kind of mushroom is full of poison. With fuzz-balls, puck-fists and bull-fists in some places of England they use to kill or smoulder their bees, when they would drive the hives, and bereave the poor bees of their meat, houses and lives ; these are also used in some places, where neighbours dwell far asunder, to carry and reserve fire from place to place. Poisonsome mushrooms groweth where old rusty iron lieth, or rotten clouts, or near to serpents' dens, or roots of trees that bring forth venomous fruit. Divers come up in April, others grow later about August. To conclude, few of them are good to be eaten,i and most of them do suffocate and strangle the eater ;j therefore I give my advice unto those that love sucl strange and new-fangled meats to beware of licking honeyl among thorns, lest the sweetness of the one do not counter- vail the sharpness and pricking of the other. Fuzz-balls are noway eaten ; the powder of them is fitly applied tc merigalls, kibed heels and such like. Gerard's Herbal, s.zr Tobacco. [Though Shakespeare does not mention Tobacco, allusions! to it are very frequent in the other dramatists of his time.] Our adulterate Nicotian or Tobacco, so called of the! Knight Sir Nicot that first brought it over, which is the! spirit's Incubus, that begets many ugly and deformed phan- tasies in the brain, which being also hot and dry in ths