CONIUM MACULATUM. 223 
a remedial agent; he employed it with great effect in the cures 
of scirrhus, cancer, ulcers, and many other chronic diseases. The 
praises he bestowed upon it led to its almost universal adoption, 
and, of course, to general disappointment ; and from the general 
ineflicacy experienced in this country, it was supposed that 
the Hemlock of Storck was a different plant to ours, but this 
was proved not to be the case. It has been also used in chronic 
rheumatism, glandular swellings, and various fixed and periodical 
pains. Fothergill and Butter (Med. Observ. and Inquir., vol. 
lil.) recommended its use in hooping-cough, and in painful 
affections of the face. Rosenstein, in Sweden, President Fisher 
and Professor Jackson, in America, have found its relaxing 
effects facilitate the passage of biliary calculi. Bigelow found 
it useful in jaundice. Bergius extols it in impotency, for its 
remarkable opposite effects, as an external remedy to those 
parts. It has been used in nymphomania and _ satyriasis, 
from its anaphrodisiac properties. Fothergill, Chaussier, 
and Dumeril found it successful in tic-douloureux; and it 
also has been found successful in cases of hemicrania, which 
are not regularly intermittent; in syphilis by Pearson; and in 
bronchocele by Gibson, of Pennsylvania. But its chief recom- 
mendation, in the allopathic school of medicine, has been in 
enlargement and induration of the absorbing and secreting 
glands, and of the viscera ; scrofula, obstinate chronic skin dis- 
eases, and foul ulcers; also in mammary tumours and profuse 
secretion of milk (galactorrheea); for this latter purpose it has 
been used since the time of Dioscorides. Bayle (Bib. Thérap., 
yol. iii, p. 618) collected, from various authors, forty-six cases 
of cancerous diseases cured, and twenty-six ameliorated, by the 
use of Conium. 
Description.—Conium maculatum is a biennial plant, flower- 
ing in June and July. The root is fleshy, top-shaped, whitish, 
frequently forked, of a disagreeable smell, and sweetish taste. 
Stem from three to six feet high, upright, round, hollow, smooth, 
glaucous, shiny, much branched, and copiously spotted or 
