RANDOLPH. — MANDRAGORA IN FOLK-LORE AND MEDICINE. 519 



The suggestion made above, that in the word plus used by Serapion 

 we h.ave evidence of an addition to Dioscorides, is nicely confirmed by an 

 examination of Avicenna's words. Serapion says tliat one who has taken 

 mandragora before an operation does not feel the pain because of the 

 stupor lohich ensues {propter suhdt quod accidit) ; furthermore, that when 

 physicians wish the patients not to feel the pain (i. e., when they wish 

 to produce subut [an Arabic word which the translator was not able to 

 give in Latin]) they must administer more than when they merely wish 

 to relieve insomnia (i. e., merely wish to produce sleep \_sommis~\). One 

 immediately itifers that there is a distinction between subdt and somnus ; 

 and the Arabic bears us out : the word subut, primarily meaning rest, while 

 it may occasionally be used of ordinary sleep, properly denotes a deep 

 sleep or sttipor.* And that these writers had this distinction in mind is 

 conclusively proven by two passages from Avicenna : 



It produces stupor (auhal), and it produces sleep (somnum). 

 To produce stupor moke is given, to produce sleep less. 



Furthermore, the repetition of Serapion's mo7'e (plus) here, with the 

 less (minus) in tlie following clause removes any suspicion that plus got 

 into the Latin version of Serapion merely through the carelessness of 

 the translator.! 



In the writings of these two physicians, then, we have a distinct addi- 

 tion to the words of Dioscorides and his successors who wrote about the 

 plant, and good evidence, I think, that they both had a personal knowledge 

 of its use as an anaesthetic. 



7. Dynamidia. Little is known about the authorship of this work, 

 which Teuffel includes in a list of Latin writings derived from Greek 

 sources composed on the border-line of antiquity and the middle ages.| 

 The chapter on mandragora is drawn mostly from Dioscorides, and the 

 statement about its use as an anaesthetic is manifestly taken from him. 

 There is no reason to think that we have here any independent evidence. 



* For tlie proper interpretation of this word, and for other helpful suggestions, 

 I am indebted to Professor George F. Moore, of Harvard University. 



t Some one might object here that, granting that Serapion wrote plus, Avicenna 

 probably copied his account from him, I am confident that any one who will 

 compare the accounts of mandragora given by these writers with each other and 

 with their sources will agree with me that Avicenna is the more independent of 

 the two in his treatment of the subject. It seems therefore very unlikely that he 

 would have blindly taken from his predecessor a fact of such importance in connec- 

 tion with the plant. • | See footnote, p. 515. 



