Until to him her troth she plight,
She would not stir from him that night."

[621] "Shakespeare," vol. ix. p. 413.

_Paralysis._ An old term for chronic paralysis was "cold palsies,"
which is used by Thersites in "Troilus and Cressida" (v. 1).[622]

[622] Bucknill's "Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," p. 235.

_Philosopher's Stone._ This was supposed, by its touch, to convert base
metal into gold. It is noticed by Shakespeare in "Antony and Cleopatra"
(i. 5):

"_Alexas._ Sovereign of Egypt, hail!

_Cleopatra._ How much unlike art thou Mark Antony!
Yet, coming from him, that great medicine hath
With his tinct gilded thee."

The alchemists call the matter, whatever it may be, says Johnson, by
which they perform transmutation, a medicine. Thus, Chapman, in his
"Shadow of Night" (1594): "O, then, thou _great elixir_ of all
treasures;" on which passage he has the following note: "The
philosopher's stone, or _philosophica medicina_, is called the _great
elixir_." Another reference occurs in "Timon of Athens" (ii. 2), where
the Fool, in reply to the question of Varro's Servant, "What is a
whoremaster, fool?" answers, "A fool in good clothes, and something like
thee. 'Tis a spirit: sometime 't appears like a lord; sometime like a
lawyer; sometime like a philosopher, with two stones moe than's
artificial one," etc.; a passage which Johnson explains as meaning "more
than the philosopher's stone," or twice the value of a philosopher's
stone; though, as Farmer observes, "Gower has a chapter, in his
'Confessio Amantis,' of the three stones that philosophers made."
Singer,[623] in his note on the philosopher's stone, says that Sir
Thomas Smith was one of those who lost considerable sums in seeking of
it. Sir Richard Steele was one of the last eminent men who entertained
hopes of being successful in this pursuit. His laboratory was at
Poplar.[624]

[623] "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. iii. p. 284.

[624] See Pettigrew's "Medical Superstitions," pp. 13, 14.

_Pimple._ In the Midland Counties, a common name for a pimple, which, by
rubbing, is made to smart, or _rubbed to sense_, is "a quat." The word
occurs in "Othello" (v. 1), where Roderigo is so called by Iago:

"I have rubb'd this young quat almost to the sense,
And he grows angry."

--Roderigo being called a quat by the same mode of speech as a low fellow
is now called a _scab_. It occurs in Langham's "Garden of He