ician
living at Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire where he was very famous, as
also in the counties adjacent, as appears by these observations, drawn
out of severall hundreds of his as choycest, now put into English for
common benefit by James Cooke, practitioner in Physick and Surgery,
1657." Cooke, in the introduction, relates the strange manner in which
he became possessed of them, Mrs. Hall not knowing they were in her
husband's handwriting, and, believing they were part of a poor scholar's
mortgage, transferred them to him with other books. Cooke used the books
as guides in his own practice, and then expanded the contractions,
translated and published them, "being acquainted with his apothecary."
It is no slight compliment to a physician to have his cures published
twenty-two years after his death, and to have them run through more than
one edition. Cooke mentions: "Mr. John Hall had the happiness to lead
the way to that practice almost generally used now by the most knowing
of mixing scorbutics to most remedies." It is to Cooke we owe
information concerning Hall's education abroad; concerning the
physician, his relative, on terms of intimacy with Mrs. Hall, who
introduced him to New Place; and concerning the "other book" of Dr. John
Hall, also prepared for the press. We wonder what it contained.

The book published by Cooke records only _cures_. We are inclined to
echo, "Where are they that were drowned?" Doubtless Hall had attended
his father-in-law in his last illness, but his skill and affection were
not sufficient to save him. And because of this failure, we do not know
the symptoms shown by the poet after the traditional "merrymaking with
Ben Jonson and Drayton," when later gossips say he "drank too much." The
earliest _dated_ cure is 1617. But is it too much to imagine that the
undated illness of Drayton, recorded in "Obs. XXII.," occurred at the
same time as the death of the poet? Was he at any later time ill in
Warwickshire, and likely to be attended by Dr. John Hall? "Mr. Drayton,
an excellent poet, labouring of a Tertian, was cured by the following
treatment." Let us suppose it was April, 1616, and it may account for
the poet's illness, otherwise than by over-drinking.

In "Obs. XIX." Hall mentions without date an illness of his wife, Mrs.
Hall. "Obs. XXXVI." concerns his only daughter, and supports my opinion
of a constitutional delicacy of Anne Hathaway and her family. It is not
insignificant that her