RANDOLPH. — MANDRAGORA IN FOLK-LORE AND MEDICINE. 495 



(Pseudo-) Pythagoras,* according to the interpolator in Dioscorides, 

 called the mandragora " anthropomorphic," f and Columella speaks of it 

 as " half human." | These words without doubt refer to a fancied 

 resemblance of the root to the lower part of tlie human body. § 



Furthermore, Pliny writes about the plant erynge that its root presents 

 the characteristics of either sex.|| 



We know, then, that the mandragora comprised two species, called 

 "male" and "female"; that the lower part of the root was thought 

 to resemble the human form ; and that it was claimed for another plant 

 that it possessed the marks of sex. What was more natural, in the case 

 of a plant about which various strange beliefs were already entertained, 

 than that these three features should be combined ? 



The climax of these superstitions seems to have been reached toward 

 the end of the middle ages. The following passage from Schmidel's 

 dissertation will serve to illustrate the absurd beliefs once entertained by 

 the credulous in regard to this plant, and evidently believed to a con- 

 siderable extent even in his day. ^ 



§ 53 : At the foot of the gallows on which a man has been unjustly 

 hanged for theft, it is said that there springs from the urine voided just 

 before death, a plant with broad leaves, a yellow flower, and a root which 

 exactly represents the human form, even to the hair and sexual organs. 

 Some say that this plant was alive under the ground. . . . The Germans 

 call it the aJraun. To dig it is said to be attended with great danger, for 

 it gives forth such groans when drawn from the earth, that the digger, if he 

 hears them, dies on the spot. 



Even in this form the greater part of the story may be traced back 

 to antiquity. The part of it referring to the hanged thief is plainly an 



* Author of a lost work on tlie properties of plants, who wrote in the age of 

 the Ptolemies, according to Ascherson, p. 736. 

 t dvdpanrSfxopcpoi', Diosc, 1. 570. 



I semihominis . . . Mandragorae, De Re Rust., 10. 19 f. 



§ Tills resemblance is readily seen in the picture of the mandragora in Bo- 

 daeus's Theophrastus (Amst., 1644), p. 585. See also the illustration in the Standard 

 Dictionary under the word mandragora. 



II Plin., 22. 20. 



IF Tills, with the passage quoted above from the same section, is a typical ver- 

 sion of the middle-age story, and presents all the essentials ; it appears elsewhere 

 with slight ditferences in the details. For example, according to one account the 

 criminal must be a hereditary tliief ; according to another, a thief who has never 

 had sexual intercourse ; another version says that the dog must be snow-white, etc. 



