bane vs bitter pill

bane

noun
  • A cause of misery or death. 

  • A disease of sheep. 

  • Bone. 

verb
  • To be the bane of. 

  • To kill, especially by poison; to be the poison of. 

bitter pill

noun
  • Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bitter, pill. 

How often have the words bane and bitter pill occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )