Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Mother Cornelius’ tub n.

also Cornelian tub, Cornelius’ tub
[a presumed actual Mother Cornelius, whether a nurse or a procuress; but note the masc. ‘Cornelius’ in Taylor, ‘Travels to Bohemia’ (1620): ‘Or had Cornelius but this tub, to drench / His clients that had practis’d too much French’ (i.e. venereal disease); poss. ref. to physician Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1496–1535) a leading advocate of hot baths for medicinal purposes; Henke, in Gutter Life and Language (1988), also notes the possible use of a hard dense wood, necessary to withstand the heavy salt brine used in ‘pickling’ patients, known as cornel-wood, ‘the wood of Cornus mascula, celebrated for its hardness and toughness, whence it was anciently in request for javelins, arrows, etc.’ (OED); also poss. puns on cornel and the ‘cornuted’ cuckold or Lat. cornu, a horn; one’s current incapacity is the result of one’s horn n.2 (1b)]

the sweating tub used in the cure of venereal disease; many ad hoc vars. and extrapolations exist in cits.

Show quotations
[UK]Nashe Unfortunate Traveller n.p.: Mother Cornelius tub why it was like hell, he that came into it, neuer came out of it.
[UK]T. Lodge VVits miserie 40: I doome you to Cornelius Tub if you trust him, and her to hell as shee deserues it.
[UK]Middleton Blurt, Master Constable B: The commodities which are sent out of the Low Countries, (and put in vessels called mother Cornelius’s dry-fats) are most common in France!
T. Russel Diacatholicon aureum n.p.: [F]or the French Poxe [...] it is the most singular medicine that euer was found out [...] without hot-houses, lothsome diet drinkes, bathing in Cornelius Tub, any other Purgations, annoyntments, fumes, or Suffumigations.
[UK]T. Overbury New and Choise Characters n.p.: [A Phantastique] A Scholer he pretends himselfe, and saies hee hath sweat for it: but the truth is, hee knowes Cornelius, farre better than Tacitus.
M. Sutcliffe The unmasking of a masse-monger 64: [in fig. use] [T]the Apostate [...] was boyled in a Frying-pan of impure & flagitious Lusts, and reboyled againe in Cornelius Tub, and yet confesseth nothing.
[UK]W. Davenant Platonic Lovers III i: scio.: He took the diet, sir, And in that very tub sweat for the French disease. fred.: And some unlearn’d apothcary since, Mistaking’s name, called it Cornelius Tub.
Brothers of the Blade 5: [T]he like Cocatrice of yours sent you to the French Doctors, where you lay so long in Cornelius his tub to pickle, that at last the hungry Neopolitan ate away a part of your right tubified rose.
[UK]New Brawle 10: That Disease made you to be roasted alive in Old Cornelious his Tub.
T. Peirce The Sinner Impleaded 309: Behold the man of uncleaness in his Cornelian Tub.
[UK]W.R. Organon salutis 38: I have known some being troubled with the Pox [...] But I leave them to Mother Cornelius Tub.
[UK]R. Brathwait Age for Apes 159: Some Ladies much deform’d of late [...] Which now for modesty I will omit, Because Cornelius-tub produceth it.
J. Howell Paroimiograpsia n.p.: He is no compleat gentleman who hath not made five voyages to Swetland, viz. to Cornelius tub.
[UK] ‘News from Chelmsford’ in Ebsworth Bagford Ballads (1878) II 738: Psalm sung, As from Cornelius Tub, / The Parson came down, reeking.
[UK]T. Duffet Epilogue Spoken by Heccate and Three Witches 33: A health , a health to Mother C--- [...] She puts off rotten new rig’d vessel.
[UK] ‘A Letany’ in Ebsworth Merry Drollery Compleat (1875) 176: From a Lecture to the Zealous, / And from the Tub of old Cornelius, / Libera nos Domine.
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Cornelian Tub He has been in the Cornelian Tub or Sweating Tub i.e. he has lately had the Venereal Disease.
, [UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: Cornelian Tub The sweating tub, formerly used for the cure of the venereal disease.