lights of the profession that people could readily be duped into believing in the power of a distilled liquor, even though it was able to suspend all vital functions for nearly two days. The Apothecary is the other character in the play whose vocation makes him of medical interest. The description of him and his shop is such as would be expected from Romeo in the state of mind he was then in. His whole thought was to procure a poison, the selling of which he knew was contrary to Mantua's law, and therefore he must find an apothecary who was in such position as to be easily tempted. His mind quickly reverts to one he had once seen "in tatter'd weeds." He remembers the poverty of the man, the famine depicted in his face, and the beggarly state of his shop. The tortoise, alligator, and skins of ill-shaped fishes that Romeo noticed would be apt to attract his attention, as their employment as part of the furniture of every apothecary shop at that time made them very familiar objects. It at first is a little perplexing to understand how Romeo knew that the beggarly account of boxes on his shelves were empty. Surely their emptiness was not exposed. But Shakespeare knew more than one trick of the merchants and others who endeavored to make empty boxes appear like stock on hand and thus "make up a show," nor did he forget them in later years, for in Troilus and Cressida (I., 3) we find a most excellent one:

"Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares,

And think, perchance, they'll sell; if not,

The lustre of the better yet to show,

Shall show the better."

We may be sure that among the musty seeds there were those of the plaintain since Shakespeare so often referred to the leaf. They are small, flea-colored, shining, inodorous, mucilaginous when chewed, and were used internally and externally very much the same as flaxseed now is; which latter drug it closely resembled. The other seeds likely to be found at that time are conium or hemlock seeds, those of hyoscyamus and digitalis, mustard and caraway. The bladders were doubtless used then as now as a receptacle for ice or hot water in the

treatment of diseases requiring such applications, but more especially as a means of keeping drugs containing volatile oils. Unquestionably some of those bladders were filled with crocus (saffron), so much used by the ancients as an emmenagogue. The cakes of roses, pressed leaves of the Rosa Centifolio and Rosa Gallica, have quite disappeared. They were used as astringents and tonics and were very popular.

Shakespeare has given any number of evidences throughout his plays that he was fully acquainted with the value of sleep and the aids and the opponents to "nature's soft nurse." Romeo after his night in the orchard, meeting Friar Lawrence (II., 3) in early dawn, receives this bit of wisdom:

"Young son, it argues a distemper'd head,

So soon to bid good morrow to thy bed:
Care keeps his watch in every old man's eye,

And where care lodges, sleep will never lie:

But where unbruised youth with unstuff'd brain

Doth couch his limbs, there golden sleep doth reign:
Therefore thy earliness doth me assure

Thou art up-rous'd with some distemperature."

It will be noticed he first gives reason for his own earliness, that all old men have care and therefore cannot sleep. We all have noticed this in old people; but care is not the cause for it. It is but natural. The older we grow the less sleep nature allows us. In age the vessels of the brain lose their elasticity and consequently have more blood in them than is required to produce the cerebral anæmia requisite for sleep. So that there is a gradual reduction, in the number of necessary hours of sleep, from the infant "mewling and puking in the nurse's arms,' who sleeps almost continuously, to the "lean and slipper'd pantaloon with spectacles on nose and pouch on side," who is well satisfied with his five hours' repose. The words of the Friar are found again in the mouth of Brutus (Julius Cæsar, II., 1): "Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber :

Thou has no figures nor no fantasies,

Which busy care draws in the brains of men ;
Therefore thou sleep'st so sound;"

and re-echoed in the marvellous and beautiful soliloquy of Henry IV. (2d, III., 1). How truly is shown the mastery of sleep over the tired nature of the wet sea-boy, although surrounded by dangers, if the mind is unmolested, and how anxiety will fight off sleep even though it be courted by soothing surroundings and urged on by the melody of music! Surely no one except he whose care and anxiety had caused insomnia could so accurately describe the envy with which he looks upon the sound sleep of others. Benvolio's troubled mind (I., 1) forced sleep. from him and old Capulet (IV., 4) under the excitement attending the preparation for Juliet's wedding found neither desire nor necessity for the "foster-nurse of nature." The cause of Romeo's sleeplessness was Love, and Shakespeare has many times attributed that power to this master-passion.

"To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans;
one fading moment's mirth

With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights."

(Two Gentlemen of Verona, I., 1.)

"Love hath chas'd sleep from my enthrall'd eyes,

And made them watchers of mine own heart's sorrow."

(Idem., II., 4.)

"In thy youth thou wast as true a lover

As ever sighed upon a midnight pillow."

(As You Like It, II., 4.)

And so examples might be multiplied, and did time allow, much space might be occupied in showing Shakespeare's thorough knowledge of the aids and opponents to sleep as well as its employment by him as a remedial agent.

If there is any one subject that Shakespeare delighted in it must have been in disposing of his characters by death, and of this he certainly made a special study, for he has painted the scene in so many cases in such true colors that we cannot but marvel at the accuracy of his description. Of course, of necessity, in the great majority of them it has been a sacrifice of the real to the dramatic: but even in many of those cases the light of modern medical discoveries shows that the results are really natural, though not thought to be so by Shakespeare. Let us

verify this by a glance at one or two deaths from the play under consideration. The poison which Romeo obtained from the Apothecary was the most deadly then known, and even now it is only surpassed in its intensity, perhaps, by hydrocyanic acid. (the fumes of which kill). Aconite was often compared with gunpowder on account of its hasty action (Henry IV., 2d, IV., 4), and was then thought to act only as a poison; its medicinal properties not having been discovered until 1762. Romeo seeks the vault where his beloved Juliet lies, and finally drinks off the poison. The knowledge of the activity of the poison, the Apothecary's word as to its strength, and the burning sensation experienced, make him think that death is really upon him. It takes him but a few seconds to say:

"Oh, true apothecary!

Thy drugs are quick-thus, with a kiss, I die,"

and he falls over a corpse.

Poisons do not kill the moment they touch the lips, as one would imagine from Romeo's death. There is a long train of symptoms that poisonous doses of this drug always produce, such as tingling sensations, which first are felt in the throat, then extending to the extremities and over the entire body; pulse finally becomes imperceptible; the muscular strength is greatly reduced; respirations are irregu lar; sensibility is benumbed; and the eyes protrude and are glaring. Just before death the sense of sight is frequently lost. We can readily see how absurd it would be to introduce any such symptoms as part of the play, so the real is sacrificed, and he dies at once. But Shakespeare, while he thus hurries him off, unwittingly assigns him an action which we now know will produce sudden death in cases of aconite poisoning. In treating cases of this kind, the heart being exceeding weak, it is of utmost importance that the patient should be kept on his back with his head lower than his body, and under no circumstances exert himself. Shakespeare makes him take a last kiss, and the exertion thus caused in bending over would certainly produce immediate death from syncope. The Friar arrives on the scene a minute after Romeo has taken the poison, and his knowledge

of medicine was sufficient to have given an emetic and to have followed it with the antidote. It is reasonable to suppose that he had the appropriate medicines with him, for the object of his visit to the vault was to assist Juliet, and he had every reason to imagine that she might require some heart stimulants, considering her position, and these would have been the very medicines requisite in Romeo's case after his stomach had been evacuated by the emetic. He would have had no trouble in discovering the cause of Romeo's sickness, for even though the empty cup in his hand (which would certainly be sufficient) would escape his eye, in all probability Romeo could have told him all, for in these cases the intellect remains clear until just before death. Could Romeo only have foregone the pleasure of that last embrace, how different the end would have been! The other death in the play, where Shakespeare intended to sacrifice the real to the dramatic, is that of Tybalt, and yet other evidence proves it to be truly portrayed. The fiery Tybalt utters not a word on receiving his death-stab. Romeo plunged his sword, without doubt. into Tybalt's heart. That there was great hemorrhage is shown by Lady Capulet (III., 1):

"Some twenty of them fought in this black strife
And all those twenty could but kill one life,"

as if Romeo's one thrust had produced sufficient hemorrhage to appear as if twenty had their swords at him and each had wounded him. Then, too, the Nurse (III., 2) in her description to Juliet of Tybalt's body:

"A piteous corse, a bloody piteous corse;
Pale, pale as ashes, all bedaub'd in blood,
All in gore blood: I swounded at the sight."

The other deaths that occur in Romeo and Juliet are truly drawn and so intended by Shakespeare. Juliet seizes Romeo's dagger and penetrates one of her principal vessels with it, the great loss of blood allowing her to say but a word or two. She is bleeding when the Page and Watch arrive, and even some time after, Capulet calls his wife's attention to the continued