PARMACETI

*Shepherd’s Purse*

HOTSPUR

I then, all smarting with my wounds being cold,

To be so pester’d with a popinjay,

Out of my grief and my impatience,

Answer’d neglectingly I know not what,

He should or he should not; for he made me mad

To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet

And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman

Of guns and drums and wounds,—God save the mark!—

And telling me the sovereign’st thing on earth

Was PARMACETI for an inward bruise;

And that it was great pity, so it was,

This villanous salt-petre should be digg’d

Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,

Which many a good tall fellow had destroy’d . . .

—Henry IV, Pt. 1 [Act I, sc. 3]