Vol. XXIII. N0.5.] 



POPtJLAR SOIENOE NEWS. 



77 



n^ediciue aiid Pbarnjacy. 



THE DEATH OF FALSTAFF. 



Every reader of Shakespeare remembers 

 Dame Qiiickly's comic, yet most pathetic, 

 account of Falstaff's death in Henry 7'., 

 11., 3 = 



"A' made a finer end, and went away an it had 

 been any christom child ; a' parted even just be- 

 tween twelve and one, even at the turning o' the 

 tide : for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and 

 play with flowers and smile upon his fingers' ends, I 

 knew there was but one way; for his nose was as 

 sharp as a pen, and a' babbled of green fields. 

 'How now, Sir John.'' quoth I; 'what, man! be o' 

 good cheer.' So a' cried out, 'God, God, God !' 

 three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid 

 him a' should not think of God ; I hoped there was 

 no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts 

 yet. So a' bade me lay more clothes on his feet : 

 I put my hand into the bed and felt them, and they 

 were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees; 

 and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward 

 and upward, and all was as cold as any stone." 



This play was first printed in its present 

 form in the Folio of 1623, which reads in the 

 middle of the passage : '"for his Nose was as 

 .sharpe as a Pen, and a Table of greene fields." 

 (The earlier incomplete editions have only 

 "as sharpe as a pen.") The emendation is 

 Theobald's, and has been generally adopted 

 by the more recent editors. Grant White 

 calls it "the most felicitous conjectural emen- 

 dation ever made^of Shakespeare's text." It 

 is sustained by the preceding "play with 

 flowers," which gives the clue to the wander- 

 ing thoughts of the dying knight. Various 

 other corrections have, nevertheless, been 

 suggested ; but the only one worth mentiori- 

 ing is Collier's "a pen on a table of green 

 frieze" — one of the readings ascribed to his 

 famous "manuscript corrector," whose work, 

 originally set forth as belonging to a period 

 not much subsequent to the publication of the 

 Second Folio (1632), is now generally re- 

 garded as a modern forger}-. Rejected by 

 the editors and commentators (except Collier) , 

 it has found an able defender in Dr. C. 

 Creighton, who makes it the subject of a long 

 article in B/ackzvood ior March. He believes 

 that Shakespeare made Falstaft' die of the 

 "sweating sickness," which first appeared in 

 1485 (its introduction in Henry I', would be 

 an anachronism, but not unlike many another 

 in Shakespeare) and prevailed at intervals 

 until the middle of the following century, not 

 only in England, but in Germany and other 

 countries of northern Europe. Dr. Creighton 

 finds evidence in support of his opinion in 

 the epilogue to 2 Henry /I '., which promises 

 to "continue the story with Sir John in it 

 . . . where, for anything I know, Falstaft' 

 shall die of a sweaC ; also in the fact that 

 many of the symptoms of death to which 

 Dame Qiiickly refers correspond with those 

 recorded by Dr. John Cains, in his Boke of, 

 L'ounscil against the Szveat; and, finally,! 



on account of "the pimply roughness of the 

 skin" in the disease. "The turgid skin," 

 according to Dr. Creighton, "during life 

 would look like red frieze ; but, when the 

 cadaveric hue of the fades Hippocratica 

 came out, it would change tachlorotic green." 

 In Germany the popular name of the sweat- 

 ing sickness was der Friesel (frieze.) 



The London Lancet^ in reply to this inge- 

 nious plea for Collier's reading, urges the fact 

 that the sweating sickness was not known till 

 more than seventy years later than Falstaft"'s 

 da\' ; but, as we have intimated, no stress can 

 be laid on such anachronisms in Shakespeare. 

 It is also suggested that, if the dramatist had 

 intended to represent Jack as dying of that 

 disease, he would have said "the sweat" in- 

 stead of "a sweat ;" and with this we are in- 

 clined to agree, as with what the writer goes 

 on to say : 



"Moreover, it is not natural to make Mrs. Qiiickly 

 such a minute clinical observer; while the picture 

 of the drawn features and the childish and innocent 

 babblings of the old sinner's delirium is one of those 

 powerful touches that the poet delighted to draw. 

 Besides, there was no necessity to make Falstaff die 

 of an acute disease, when Shakespeare had already 

 represented him as suffering under a complication 

 of disorders, with symptoms so graphically described 

 that we can readily diagnose his disease. The 

 Chief-Justice, addressing Falstafl", says: 'Have you 

 not a moist eye, a dry hand, a yellow cheek, a white 

 beard, a decreasing leg, an increasing belly .'' etc. ; 

 the yellow cheek, the increasing swelling of the 

 belly, with the shrunken limbs, telling of the onset 

 of the jaundice, and the ascites which accompany 

 the latter stage of cirrhosis of the liver. Nor are 

 the presages of his death incompatible with this 

 view : the burning heats, succeeded by sensations of 

 intense cold, the rambling delirium, and pinched 

 features, are characteristic of death by this disease." 



Who shall decide when doctors disagree.' 

 In our humble opinion, they are both wrong, 

 being led astray by their professional interest in 

 the "case" as reported by Dame Qiiickly. 

 We doubt whether Shakespeare had in mind 

 the sweating sickness or "cirrhosis of the 

 liver" or any other specific disease. The 

 signs of death described are such as were 

 familiar to common people, and mingled with 

 vulgar superstition, like the reference to the 

 old notion that death is more likely to occur 

 with the falling than with the rising tide. 

 The "fumbling with the sheets" is found in 

 other dramatists of the time, and had been 

 mentioned as an indicatitjn of approaching 

 death by Celsius, Hippocrates, Galen, and 

 other professional authorities. The drawn 

 features need no comment, but we may note 

 that the sharpness of the nose is connected 

 with the preceding sign by Thomas Lupton 

 in his Thousand Notable Things {i^'&6), a 

 book which Shakespeare had probably read. 

 He says : "If the foreheade of the sicke 

 wajle redde, and his nose tuaxe sharpe, if he 

 pull strawes or the cloathes of his bedde — 

 these are most certain tokens of death." The 

 Chief-Justice's description is simply that of 



the ordinary "sere and yellow leaf" of a cor- 

 pulent old reprobate like Falstaft". A doctor 

 might "diagno.se disease" in it, but not the 

 justice nor the dramatist. 



It seems to us improbable that Falstaft' 

 would be represented as dying of a terrible 

 epidemical disorder without a hint of its 

 prevalence at the time. An isolated case of 

 the sweating sickness would have been a 

 strange phenomenon ; and, on the other hand, 

 any extended outbreak of the disease would 

 have interrupted Henr3''s expedition to 

 France. Henry VIII., who was no coward, 

 left London during the epidemic of 1528, and 

 endeavored to "dodge" the plague by con- 

 tinual travelling. How many lives were lost 

 in that "great mortality," as it was called, we 

 do not know, but in 1485 "many thousands" 

 are said to have died from the disease in less 

 than six weeks. In 1551, according to Stow, 

 it caused a "depopulation" of the kingdom. 

 It is not likely that Shakespeare would intro- 

 duce a destructive agency of this tremendous 

 sort merel}' to get rid of poor old Jack, when , 

 a common inflammatory fever would suftice 

 to do the business. 



This dispute of the doctors over Falstaft''s 

 case is, to our thinking, only another illustra- 

 tion of "medico-Shakespearian fanaticism," 

 as Dr. Field, of Easton, Pa., called it in his 

 interesting paper read before the Shakespeare 

 Society of New York last December. He 

 proved clearly enough that the medical allu- 

 sions in the plays are such as might be ex- 

 pected from any well-informed man of that 

 day. The symptomatology of the diseases 

 referred to includes, as a rule, only the most 

 common characteristics ; and the exceptions 

 may be due to what the poet had learned from 

 his son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, who was one 

 of the best physicians of the time. Possibly 

 Cerimon in Pericles — certainly a model doc- 

 tor — is a portrait of Hall. Law appears to 

 be the only professional specialty of which 

 Shakespeare shows anything more than the 

 average knowledge which a man with his 

 genius and opportunities might easily pick 

 up ; and some excellent critics believe that 

 his experience in law-suits and legal matters 

 connected with his business and estates was 

 sufficient to account for his knowledge in that 

 line. 



[Original in The Popular Science Neivs.^ 

 THE PRO AND CON OF VACCINATION. 



BY JOHN CROWELL, M. D. 



The epidemics of opposition to vaccination break 

 out with more frequency than do the visitations of 

 the dread disease that Jenner thought he had com- 

 pletely conquered by his great discovery. The 

 prejudice against vaccination assumes divers shapes, 

 according to the fancy of individuals or communi- 

 ties. Sometimes in small villages, whose districts 

 are disturbed by some anomaly in the results of the 

 process, we find a stout opposition to an order 

 for general vaccination, which nothing but the 

 strong arm of the law can subdue. Sometimes a 



