538 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1920. 



THE USE OF NARCOTIC PLANTS AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 



The history of narcotic plants goes back to remote antiquity. The 

 Pythian priestesses of Delphos prophesied while under their influ- 

 ence. The lovely Helen, as related in the Odyssey, to make Telemachus 

 forget his sorrows, held to his lips a cup of wine into which she had 

 secretly put the soothing nepenthe. Diodorus of Sicily, in his accoimt 

 of the narcotics of Egypt, tells of a plant used by the women of 

 Diospolis for dispelling anger and grief. Early Sanscrit and Chinese 

 writings tell of a magic plant used as a hypnotic, or narcotic, in all 

 probabilit}^ identical with the metel-nut, or dhatura, which Christoval 

 Acosta, in his account of the drugs of the East Indies, says was so 

 skillfully dispensed that adepts were able to gauge doses, the effects 

 of which were to last for as many hours as it was wished to render 

 the subject unconscious. 



That Shakespeare was familiar with narcotic plants of this kind 

 is indicated in several of his plays. The gentle Juliet, when in her 

 distress she seeks the holy friar, skilled in physic, receives from him 

 a potion with these directions : 



Take thou this phial, being then in bed, 



And this distilled liquor drink thou off; 



When presently through all thy veins shall run 



A cold and drowsy humor, which shall seize 



Each vital spirit ; for no pulse shall keep 



His natural progress, but surcease to beat ; 



No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livst; 



The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade 



To paly ashes, thy eyes' windows fall, 



Like death, when he shuts up the day of life ; 



Each part deprived of supple government, 



Shall stiff and stark and cold, appear like death : 



And in this borrow'd likeness of shrunk death 



Thou shalt continue two-and-forty-hours. 



And then awake as from a pleasant sleep. 3 



That Shakespeare was familiar with the mandrake, or man- 

 dragora, whose shrieks when uprooted were declared by early her- 

 balists to cause madness, is indicated by Juliet's reply : 



How if, when I am laid into the tomb, 



I wake before the time that Romeo 



Come to redeem me? There's a fearful point! 



******* 



Alack, alack ! is it not like that I, 



So early waking, what with loathsome smells, 



And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth. 



That living mortals, hearing them, run mad — 



O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught, 



Environed with all these hideous fears? 3 



2 Romeo and Juliet, act 4, scene 1. 



3 Ibid., act 4, scene 3. 



