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

  • Macht, David I.
Date:
[1918]
Catalogue details

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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    [1G7] after swallowing large quantities of the infusion from leaves in from one and a half to twenty-four hours. The chief expe¬ rimental work on yew poisoning has been done by Borchers/® who found that death was produced primarily through respira¬ tory paralysis. Taxin, however, was found by him also to he poisonous to the heart and to the central nervous system. Con¬ cerning the pathological findings in fatal cases, there is nothing characteristic reported by reliable pathologists, the only con¬ stant lesion being an intense infiammation of the intestines. On the Eelation of the Word Heben to Ebony Mention has already been made of the hypothesis advanced by some Shakespearean students that hebona might really refer to the ebony tree. It therefore behooves us to inquire whether the ebony tree or diospyros ebenm of India is poison¬ ous or not. There is no evidence in the literature ascribing to the ebony tree any poisonous properties. Among modern authorities the most complete account of the medicinal prop¬ erties of the ebony tree is by W. Ainslie.^ This writer states that the juice of the ebony is perfectly innocuous, and that it is used by the natives as a remedy for certain complaints of the liver and in cases of dysentery. Shakespeare, therefore, could hardly have used the word hebona to mean the ebony tree. The confusion of hebona with ebony, however, is interesting from the etymological point of view. The English word heben, yew-tree, is really the same word as' ebony applied to the Diospyros ehenus. The Greek e/3evo<s, the Latin ebenus, the Italian and Spanish ebano and the French ebene, all names for ebony, all come from the original Hebrew root eben, which means a stone, and refer to the hardness of ebony wood and not, as may be at first glance supposed, to its color. Nicholson and Harrison call attention to the fact that in the Middle Ages the word ebenus or ebony was applied to any hard wood, and thus it came to pass that the same term was used to mean also the yew-tree, the wood of which is remarkable for its hardness. Thus arose the Scandinavian and high and low German words Eben, the Dutch Iben, the Swedish Eben, the modern German Eibe(n) and the Danish Heben, a form which is also found in Elizabethan literature.