in agues and other disorders of a febrile kind, and particularly against the fever called by the physicians Hemitritæus.'
1879. Literary World, 5 Dec., p. 358, col. 2 [M]. The new abracadabra of science, 'organic evolution.'
Abraham, subs. (popular).--A clothier's shop of the lowest description, where slop-made garments of shoddy cloth form the staple commodity together with second-hand clothes or hand-me-downs (q.v.). Chiefly localized in the East End of London, where these establishments are kept by Jews; hence probably the derivation of the term; adj. (old cant).--See Abram.
Abraham-Cove, Abraham-Man, Abram-Cove, Abram-Man, Tom of Bedlam's Man, or Bedlam Beggar, subs. (old cant).--It is difficult now-a-days to trace with certainty the origin of these terms, notwithstanding a wealth of matter on the subject. Nares describes the fraternity as a set of vagabonds who wandered about the country soon after the dissolution of the religious houses: the provision for the poor in those places being cut off and no other substituted. Thus, primarily, an Abraham-man was a vagabond, a beggar--tattered, unwashed, unkempt--and a thief withal. 'What an Abram!' an exclamation for a naked fellow. Harman, the earliest authority, refers to them as feigning madness (see quot.), and as having been resident in Bethlehem Hospital. Wards in the ancient Bedlam bore distinctive names of some saint or patriarch; that named after Abraham was devoted to a class of mendicant lunatics, who on certain days were permitted to go out begging. It is an open question whether the ward gave the name to the men or vice versâ. In either case, however, the use of the term 'Abraham' is in this connection possibly an allusion to the beggar Lazarus in Luke xvii. These mendicants bore a badge, but many assumed the distinction without right, and begged feigning lunacy. Hence, it may be, the more popular signification of the term--
2. An impostor, wandering about the country pretending to be mad, begging in the streets, and laying hands upon all trifles 'considered' or 'unconsidered' in his way. Dekker, in his English Villanies [1632], has many curious particulars of the habits of this class of impostors who were said to sham Abraham. Shakspeare also, in King Lear [1605], Act ii., Scene 3, describes and puts into the mouth of one of these characters the following words:
... the basest and most poorest shape, That ever penury in contempt of man, Brought near to beast: my face I'll grime with filth; Blanket my loins; elf all my hair in knots; And with presented nakedness outface The winds, and persecutions of the sky. The country gives me proof and precedent Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices, Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary; And with this horrible object, from low farms, Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes and mills, Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers, Enforce their charity.
