HELLEBORUS NIGER. 289 
intestines, and acts as a stimulant to the pelvic circulation. In 
larger doses, it often occasions sickness, cold sweats, and lowers 
the state of the pulse. In excessive or poisonous doses, it acts 
as a narcotic acrid poison, and causes vomiting, purging, burn- 
ing pain in the stomach and intestines, cramps of the lower 
extremities, cold sweats, faintness, paralysis, and death. 
Two persons took a decoction of this root in cider; three 
quarters of an hour after taking it, alarming symptoms were 
developed, without exciting suspicion of the real cause. One 
of the men, therefore, took another dose, when vomiting, deli- 
rium, horrible convulsions, accompanied with immediate cold- 
ness, supervened, and death at last ensued. On dissection, 
sixteen hours afterwards, the appearances in each were found 
precisely similar, except that in the one who took the largest 
quantity they were more strongly marked; the lungs were 
gorged with blood; the mucous membrane of the stomach was 
considerably inflamed, of a blackish-brown colour, and reduced 
almost to a gangrenous state; the cesophagus and intestines 
were natural (Beck’s El. of Med.) 
A man, who appeared to be nearly fifty years old, being in 
the hospital on account of melancholia, was about to depart, 
when he took some extract of black Hellebore, by which he 
was considerably purged. . In the beginning of the night, at 
the seventh or eighth hour after taking it, he was attacked by 
yomiting and pains in the abdomen, which were allayed by 
warm broth; about the fifth hour of the night those symptoms 
returned, and were again relieved. He lay down an hour 
afterwards, having vomited two or three spoonfuls of a ae 
matter. So quietly did he rest that none of the patients in the 
nearest beds heard him; but at the eighth hour they were 
attracted to his bedside by a peculiar noise from his mouth, and 
found him dead. He had taken about half a drachm of ie 
extract, a quantity which had been administer - to pis: ag 
impunity. He had, however, neglected to drink copiously of 
. | “a 
whey, a precaution it was customary to recommend. On 7 
