ginally signified leprosy, although in modern
times used for a very different disorder. Its derivation is the old
French word _meseau_, or _mesel_, a leper. Thus, Cotgrave has "Meseau, a
meselled, scurvy, leaporous, lazarous person." Distempered or scurvied
hogs are still said to be measled. It is in this sense that it is used
in "Coriolanus" (iii. 1):

"As for my country I have shed my blood,
Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs
Coin words till their decay, against those measles,
Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought
The very way to catch them."

_Pleurisy._ This denotes a plethora, or redundancy of blood, and was so
used, probably, from an erroneous idea that the word was derived from
_plus pluris_. It is employed by Shakespeare in "Hamlet" (iv. 7):

"For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
Dies in his own too-much."

In the "Two Noble Kinsmen" (v. 1) there is a similar phrase:

"that heal'st with blood
The earth when it is sick, and cur'st the world
O' the plurisy of people."

The word is frequently used by writers contemporary with Shakespeare.
Thus, for instance, Massinger, in "The Picture" (iv. 2), says:

"A plurisy of ill blood you must let out
By labour."

_Mummy._ This was a preparation for magical purposes, made from dead
bodies, and was used as a medicine both long before and long after
Shakespeare's day. Its virtues seem to have been chiefly imaginary, and
even the traffic in it fraudulent.[617] The preparation of mummy is said
to have been first brought into use in medicine by a Jewish physician,
who wrote that flesh thus embalmed was good for the cure of divers
diseases, and particularly bruises, to prevent the blood's gathering and
coagulating. It has, however, long been known that no use whatever can
be derived from it in medicine, and "that all which is sold in the
shops, whether brought from Venice or Lyons, or even directly from the
Levant by Alexandria, is factitious, the work of certain Jews, who
counterfeit it by drying carcasses in ovens, after having prepared them
with powder of myrrh, caballine aloes, Jewish pitch, and other coarse or
unwholesome drugs."[618] Shakespeare speaks of this preparation. Thus
Othello (iii. 4), referring to the handkerchief which he had given to
Desdemona, relates how:

"it was dyed in mummy which the skilful
Conserv'd of maidens' hearts."

[617] See Pettigrew's