Shakespeare’s Potions, Poisons and Medicines

The plays provide us with many potions and concoctions with fantastic effects and with sensational medical feats like the reviving of Thaisa with ‘rough and woeful music’ and drug from a ‘vial’19 (Pericles 3.2). A ‘leprous distilment’ made from a ‘juice of hebona’ (Ham 1.5.64, 62) was used to kill old Hamlet, and Laertes intends …