Doct. Must minister to himself.
Therein the patient
Macb. Throw physic to the dogs, I’ll none of it.” This contempt of physic was not ill-founded upon the want of reliance which the Doctor expressed on the resources of his art. In those early times, the leech and the mediciner had not learnt to combine the moral influences which are the true
means of ministering to a mind diseased after the manner of Lady Macbeth's, with those sleep-producing oblivious antidotes which at present form the remedies of melancholia. Such a patient would not now be given over, either to the divine, or
to the unresisted ravages of conscience. What indeed could the divine effect without the aid of the physician ; or, rather, until the physician had done his work? In such a state of nervous system as that of this wretched lady, no judicious divine would attempt to excite religious emotion; indeed, all thoughts of the world to come would act as fuel to the fire of a conscience so remorseful. The treatment of such a case as that
of Lady Macbeth would be, to remove her from all scenes sug gesting unhappy thoughts, to fix by constant endeavours her attention upon new objects of interest, and to find, if possible, some stimulus to healthy emotion. If she had been thrown from her high estate, and compelled to labour for her daily bread, the tangible evils of such a condition would have been,
most likely, to have rooted out those of the imagination and of memory. The judicious physician, moreover, would not in such a case have neglected the medicinal remedies at his com mand, especially those which Macbeth himself seems to indicate, under the title of some sweet oblivious antidote.
He would have given the juice of poppy, or some “drowsy syrup,” to prevent thick-coming fancies depriving her of rest. He would thus have replaced the unrefreshing, nay, exhausting sleep of somnambulism, for that condition so beau
tifully described, earlier in the play, as that which D
