With the corruption, however, of the spelling, the word lost in time its
real meaning, and it is, consequently, found in passages where a sense
opposite to the true one is intended.[607] It was often used in
exclamations, as in "Merry Wives of Windsor" (i. 4): "We must give folks
leave to prate: what, the good-jear!" In "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 1),
Thersites, by the "rotten diseases of the south," probably meant the
_Morbus Gallicus_.

[607] Wright's "Notes to King Lear" (1877), p. 196.

_Handkerchief._ It was formerly a common practice in England for those
who were sick to wear a kerchief on their heads, and still continues at
the present day among the common people in many places. Thus, in "Julius
Caesar" (ii. 1), we find the following allusion:

"O, what a time have you chose out, brave Caius,
To wear a kerchief! Would you were not sick!"

"If," says Fuller, "this county [Cheshire] hath bred no writers in that
faculty [physic], the wonder is the less, if it be true what I read,
that if any here be sick, they make him a posset and tye a kerchief on
his head, and if that will not mend him, then God be merciful to
him."[608]

[608] "Worthies of England" (1662), p. 180.

_Hysteria._ This disorder, which, in Shakespeare's day, we are told, was
known as "the mother," or _Hysterica passio_, was not considered
peculiar to women only. It is probable that, when the poet wrote the
following lines in "King Lear" (ii. 4), where he makes the king say,

"O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!
_Hysterica passio!_ down, thou climbing sorrow,
Thy element's below!--Where is this daughter?"

he had in view the subjoined passages from Harsnet's "Declaration of
Popish Impostures" (1603), a work which, it has been suggested,[609] "he
may have consulted in order to furnish out his character of Tom of
Bedlam with demoniacal gibberish." The first occurs at p. 25: "Ma.
Maynie had a spice of the _hysterica passio_, as it seems, from his
youth; hee himselfe termes it the moother (as you may see in his
confessione)." Master Richard Mainy, who was persuaded by the priests
that he was possessed of the devil, deposes as follows (p. 263): "The
disease I speake of was a spice of the mother, wherewith I had been
troubled (as is before mentioned) before my going into Fraunce. Whether
I doe rightly terme it the _mother_ or no I know not." Dr. Jordan, in
1603, published "A Briefe Discourse of a Disease call