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dark coloured fibres ;' tlie flem rlfes to the height of a foot and a half, 
or more,towards the bottom it is round, ftrong, firm, naked, and marked 
with alternate cicatrices, the veftiges of the former leaves \ at the top 
it divides and fubdivides into branches, producing many flowers, and is 
garnifhed with fcaly leaves, or bradeas ; the leaves are numerous, and 
ftand upon long footftalks, furrounding the middle of the flem; they 
are divided like the Helleborus niger into fimple leaves, which are 
commonly eight or nine, long, narrow, lanceolated, ferrated, and of a 
dark green colour ; the fcaly leaves, placed at the ramifications of the 
flower fl:em, are fmooth, trifid, alternate, and often purplifh, but 
thofe near the flowers are oval and pointed ; the flowers are nume- 
rous, terminal, pendent, of a roundifh fliape, and fl:and upon pedun 
cles, forming a fort of umb.el ; the petals are five, oval, "concave, 
perfifterit, of a pale green colour, and their margins are ufually tinged 
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are the length of the petals ; the antherse 
i*^ 
with purple ; the fl:amina 
are white ; the germina three, hairy, and fhaped fimilarly to thofe of 
the Helleborus niger. This plant grows wild in many parts of Eng- 
land, and flowers about February. 
The Helleborus 'niger, though conftantly ufed in medicine fince 
the time of Hippocrates, was the only fpecies of Hellebore ^ known 
in the Materia Medica of our pharmacopoeias, till the late introdudion 
of this plant by the London College, probably upon the authority of 
Dr. Bifl^et, who recommends the leaves as pofl^efling extraordinary 
anthelminthic powers. The fmell of the recent plant is extremely 
fetid, and the tafl:e is bitter, and remarkably acrid, infomuch, that 
when chewed, it excoriates the mouth and fauces ; it commonly 
operates as a cathartic, fometimes as an emetic, and in large dofes 
proves highly deleterious." The leaves, the only part noticed by the 
College, have been long domeilically employed in this country for 
their vermifuge effeds, and are thus fpoken of by Gerard : — " The 
leaves of bailard Hellebor, dried in an oven, after the bread is drawne 
out, and the pouder thereof taken in a figge or raifin, or fl;rawed 
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I Gerard's defcriptlon we find very juft. « The root confifteth of many fmall black 
Itrings, involved or wrapped one within another very intricately." Johnfon's Gerard, 
977-— It n^^uft be obferved, that the Heleborus Albus of the fhops, is a Veratrum. 
c Vide Threlkeld's Irifh Herbal ; and in the Oxford Magazine for March 1769, p. 
99. fatal cafes are related by John Cook of Oxford. 
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