A pharmacological appreciation of Shakespeare's Hamlet : on instillation of poisons into the ear / by David I. Macht.

  • Macht, David I.
Date:
[1918]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: A pharmacological appreciation of Shakespeare's Hamlet : on instillation of poisons into the ear / by David I. Macht. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    July, 1918.] A PHAEMACOLOGICAL APPEECIATION OF SHAKE- SPEAEE’S HAMLET: ON INSTILLATION OF POISONS INTO THE EAE By David I. Macht, A. B., M. D., LL. B., F. S. J. A., Lecturer in Pharmacology, The Johns Hopkins University Shakespeare^s works abound in references to drugs and [165] poisons; some of these pertain to the mystic vagaries and super¬ stitions of kakopharmacy or dirt medicine, alchemy and witch¬ craft; others, on the other hand, are borrowed from the more scientific, even though empirical, data furnished by the materia medica and poison-lore of antiquity and the Middle Ages. In the present paper I have attempted to analyze and discuss in the light of modern science a passage in Hamlet which is of extreme interest to the student of medical history from the pharmacological and toxicological points of view, I am refer¬ ring to the manner of HamlePs father’s death as described by [166] his ghost in Act I, Scene 5, lines 59 to 73. The passage in full reads as follows: “ Sleeping within mine orchard, My custom always in the afternoon, Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole. With juice of cursed hehenon in a vial. And in the porches of mine ears did pour The leperous distilment; whose effect Holds such an enmity with blood of man That swift as quicksilver it courses through The natural gates and alleys of the body; And with a sudden vigour it doth posset And curd, like eager droppings into milk. The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine; And a most instant tetter hark’d about. Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust All my smooth body.” The points of interest to us as medical men in connection with these lines are: Firstly, what is meant by the poisonous (1)