ke the water in an urinal, that not an eye that sees you
but is a physician to comment on your malady."

This singular pretence, says Dr. Bucknill,[638] is "alleged to have
arisen, like the barber surgery, from the ecclesiastical interdicts upon
the medical vocations of the clergy. Priests and monks, being unable to
visit their former patients, are said first to have resorted to the
expedient of divining the malady, and directing the treatment upon
simple inspection of the urine. However this may be, the practice is of
very ancient date." Numerous references to this piece of medical
quackery occur in many of our old writers, most of whom condemn it in
very strong terms. Thus Forestus, in his "Medical Politics," speaks of
it as being, in his opinion, a practice altogether evil, and expresses
an earnest desire that medical men would combine to repress it.
Shakespeare gives a further allusion to it in the passage where he makes
Macbeth (v. 3) say:

"If thou couldst, doctor, cast
The water of my land, find her disease,
And purge it to a sound and pristine health,
I would applaud thee to the very echo."

[638] "The Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare," 1860, pp. 1-64.

And in "2 Henry IV" (i. 2) Falstaff asks the page, "What says the doctor
to my water?" and, once more, in "Twelfth Night" (iii. 4), Fabian,
alluding to Malvolio, says, "Carry his water to the wise woman."

It seems probable, too, that, in the "Merry Wives of Windsor" (ii. 3),
the term "mock-water," employed by the host to the French Dr. Caius,
refers to the mockery of judging of diseases by the water or
urine--"mock-water," in this passage, being equivalent to "you pretending
water-doctor!"

CHAPTER XI.

CUSTOMS CONNECTED WITH THE CALENDAR.

In years gone by the anniversaries connected with the calendar were kept
up with an amount of enthusiasm and merry-making quite unknown at the
present day. Thus, for instance, Shakespeare tells us, with regard to
the May-day observance, that it was looked forward to so eagerly as to
render it impossible to make the people sleep on this festive occasion.
During the present century the popular celebrations of the festivals
have been gradually on the decline, and nearly every year marks the
disuse of some local custom. Shakespeare has not omitted to give a good
many scattered allusions to the old superstitions and popular usages
associated with the festivals of the year, some