bdanum, benjoin, with storaxes,
ambergris, civet, and musk. Incorporate them together, and work them
into what form you please. This, if your breath be not too valiant, will
make you smell as sweet as any lady's dog."

[628] Quoted in Nares's "Glossary," vol. ii. p. 671.

_Rheumatism._ In Shakespeare's day this was used in a far wider sense
than nowadays, including, in addition to what is now understood by the
term, distillations from the head, catarrhs, etc. Malone quotes from the
"Sidney Memorials" (vol. i. p. 94), where the health of Sir Henry Sidney
is described: "He hath verie much distempored divers parts of his bodie;
as namelie, his heade, his stomack, &c., and thereby is always subject
to distillacions, coughes, and other rumatick diseases." Among the many
superstitions relating to the moon,[629] one is mentioned in "A
Midsummer-Night's Dream" (ii. 1), where Titania tells how the moon,

"Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound."

[629] See p. 74.

The word "rheumatic" was also formerly used in the sense of choleric or
peevish, as in "2 Henry IV." (ii. 4), where the Hostess says: "You two
never meet but you fall to some discord: you are both, in good troth, as
rheumatic as two dry toasts." Again, in "Henry V." (ii. 3), the Hostess
says of Falstaff: "A' did in some sort, indeed, handle women; but then
he was rheumatic,[630] and talked of the whore of Babylon."

[630] Malone suggests that the hostess may mean "then he was
lunatic."

_Serpigo._ This appears to have been a term extensively used by old
medical authors for any creeping skin disease, being especially applied
to that known as the _herpes circinatus_. The expression occurs in
"Measure for Measure" (iii. 1), being coupled by the Duke with "the
gout" and the "rheum." In "Troilus and Cressida" (ii. 3), Thersites
says: "Now, the dry serpigo on the subject."

_Sickness._ Sickness of stomach, which the slightest disgust is apt to
provoke, is still expressed by the term "queasy;" hence the word denoted
_delicate_, _unsettled_; as in "King Lear" (ii. 1), where it is used by
Edmund:

"I have one thing, of a queasy question,
Which I must act."

So Ben Jonson employs it in "Sejanus" (i. 1):

"These times are rather queasy to be touched."

_Sigh._ It was a prevalent notion that sighs impair the strength and
wear out the animal powers. Thus, in "2 Henry VI." (iii. 2), Queen
Margare