RELLEBORUS NIGER.. ORD. XXVI. Multisilique. _ hts 
burnt with eating or supping any thing too hot.’* It also emits a 
nauseous acrid smell, but being long kept, both its sensible quali- 
ties and medicinal. activity suffer very considerable diminution. 
Bergius has very properly attended to this circumstance, for in 
defining its virtues he considers.it under three different degrees of 
dryness :*-“« VIRTUS: rec, venenata, rubefaciens, vesicans; recenter 
siccat®:; emetica, purgans, emmenagoga, antiphthiriaca, sternuta-- 
toria; diw conservate: vix purgans, alterans, diuretica,” Although: 
many writers consider this root to be a perfectly innocent and safe 
medicine, yet we find several proofs of its poisonous effects,* 
from which: Murray collects the following symptoms:—* Fateor, . 
dispersas hinc inde extare observationes contrarias, querelas. 
moveri de vomitionibus effrenis inde contractis, hypercatharsi,. 
torminibus, anxietate, siti, singultu, animi deliquiis, sudoribus: 
frigidis, faucium strangulatione, convulsionibus, sternutatione, * 
torpore quodum artuum et insueta rigiditate, inflammatione ven- 
triculi et intestinorum, quin morte pedissequa previis variis 
dictis malis.” 
It seems to have been principally from its purgative quality that 
the ancients esteemed this root such a powerful remed 
maniacal disorders, with a view to evacuate the atra bilis, Pst 
which these mental diseases were supposed to be produced; but 
though evacuations be often found necessary in various cases of 
alienations of mind, yet as they can be procured with more cer- 
tainty and safety by other medicines, this catholicon of antiquity 
© On tastes, vide Anatomy of Plants, p. 283. . 
4 Mat. Med. p. 496. | 
* Vide Doering De Medicina et Medicis, p. 242. Act. Helv. vol. 5. p. 326. 
Buchner Diss. de salut. et noxio ENlebori Nigri usu. p. 22. Hildanus Obs. Med. 
chir. cent. 4. obs. 12. Scopoli Fi. carn. ed. 1. p. 557. Morgagni de sed. & 
caus. morb. Epist. 59. art. 15, et Act. Helv. 1. c,. Hartman Vet, Acad. Hand}, ; 
a 1762. p. 276, Schultz Mat. Med. p. 152. 
