Bolus

An apothecary. Apothecaries are so called because they administer boluses. Similarly Mrs. Suds is a washer-woman; Boots is the shoeblack of an inn, etc.

George Colman adopts the name for his apothecary, who wrote his labels in rhyme, one of which was—

“When taken,

To be well shaken”;

but the patient being shaken, instead of the mixture, died.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.