For meat in this distance I had plum-porridge of purgations ministered
me one after another to clarify my blood, that it should not lie cloddered
in the flesh. Nor did he it so much for clarifying physic, as to save charges.
Miserable is that mouse that lives in a physician’s house; Tantalus lives
not so hunger-starved in hell as she doth there. Not the very crumbs that
fall from his table, but Zachary sweeps together, and of them moulds up a
manna. Of the ashy parings of his bread he would make conserve of chippings.
Out of bones, after the meat was eaten off, he would alchemize an oil that
he sold for a shilling a dram. His snot and spittle a hundred times he hath
put over to his apothecary for snow-water. Any spider he would temper to
perfect mithridate. His rheumatic eyes, when he went in the wind, or rose
early in a morning, dropped as cool alum-water as you would request. He
was Dame Niggardise' sole heir and executor. A number of old books had
he, eaten with the moths and worms; now all day would not he study a dodkin,
but pick those worms and moths out of his library, and of their mixture make
a preservative against the plague. The liquor out of his shoes he would wring,
to make a sacred balsamum against barrenness.