66 FLORA HOMGEOPATHTCA. 



employed in medicine as early as the days of Hippocrates ; for 

 although not mentioned in his works, it is found in those of 

 Diagoras his contemporary. 



Pliny (b. xix. t. ii. p. 30, Holland's Trans.) gives the follow- 

 ing description of the Papaver and its properties : — u Of 

 Garden Poppies there be three kinds, first the white, whereof 

 the seeds, in old times, being made into biskets or comfits, 

 with honie, were served up as a junketting dish. The rusticall 

 peasants of the countrey were wont to guild or glaze (as it were) 

 the upper crust of their loaves of bread with yolkes of eggs, 

 and then to bestrew it with poppie seed, which would cleave 

 fast unto it, having first underlaid the bottome crust with 

 ammi, or annise seed and gith ; and then they put them into the 

 oven being thus seasoned, which gave a commendable taste to 

 their bread when it was baked. There is a second kind of 

 poppie called black, out of the heads or bols whereof a white 

 juice or liquor issueth by way of incision, like unto milke, and 

 many receive and reserve it carefully. * * * Meanwhile this 

 cannot be forgotten, that poppies have alwaies, time out of 

 mind, been highly regarded and honoured among the Romanes : 

 witnesse Tarquine the Proud, the last king of Rome, when his 

 sonnes embassadours were come unto him for to understand his 

 advise how to compasse the siegnoree over the Gabians, drew 

 them into his garden, and there, by circumstance of topping the 

 heads of the highest poppies there growing, without any 

 answere parole, dispatched them away, sufficiently furnished 

 by this demonstration with a bloudie designe, even to fetch off 

 the greatest mens heads of the city, the readiest meanes to effect 

 his purpose. Which juice thus drawne and thus prepared, hath 

 power not only to provoke sleepe, but if it be taken in any great 

 quantitie, to make men die in their sleepe ; and this our physi- 

 cians call Opion. Certes, I have knowne many come to their 

 death by this meanes: and, namely, the father of Licinius 

 Cecinna, late deceased, a man by calling a pretour, who, not 

 able to endure the intolerable pains and torments of a certaine 

 disease, and being wearie of his life, at Bilbil, in Spaine, 



