98 plint's natubal htstoet. [Book XXV. 



habit of taking it for the purpose of sharpening the intellectual 

 powers required by their literary investigations. Carneades, 

 for instance, made use of hellebore when about to answer the 

 treatises of Zeno ; Drusus ® too, among us, the most famous of 

 all the tribunes of the people, and whom in particular the 

 public, rising from their seats, greeted with loud applause — to 

 whom also the patricians imputed the Marsic war — is well 

 known to have been cured of epilepsy in the island of Anti- 

 cyra ;^* a place at which it is taken with more safety than else- 

 where, from the fact of sesamoides being combined with it, as 

 already'' stated. In Italy the name given to it is " veratrum." 

 These kinds of hellebore, reduced to powder and taken alone, 

 or else in combination with radicula, a plant used, as already 

 mentioned,^ for washing wool, act as a sternutatory, and are 

 both of them productive of narcotic eflPects. The thinnest and 

 shortest roots are selected, and among them the lower parts 

 in particular, which have all the appearance of having been 

 cut short ;^ for, as to the upper part, which is the thickest, and 

 bears a resemblance to an onion, it is given to dogs only, as a 

 purgative. The ancients used to select those roots the rind of 

 which was the most fleshy, from an idea that the pith extracted 

 therefrom was of a more refined^*' nature. This substance they 

 covered with wet sponges, and, when it began to swell, used 

 to split it longitudinally with a needle ; which done, the fila- 

 ments were dried in the shade, for future use. At the present 

 day, however, the fibres ^^ of the root with the thickest rind 

 are selected, and given to the patient just as they are. The 

 best hellebore is that which has an acrid, burning taste, and 

 when broken, emits a sort of dust. It retains its efficacy, they 

 say, so long as thirty years. 



CHAP. 22. TWENTY-FOUR REMEDIES DEBIVED FROM BLACK HELLE- 

 BORE. HOW IT SHOULD BE TAKEN. 



Elack hellebore is administered for the cure of paralysis, 

 insanity, dropsy — provided there is no fever — chronic gout, 

 imd diseases of the joints : it has the effect too, of carrying 



*' M. Livius Drusus. See B. xxviii. c. 42, and B. xxsiii. c. 6. 

 *'' Anticyra in Phocis was a peninsula, not an island. 

 ' In B. xxii. c. 64. » In B. xix. c. 18. 



3 Hence the Greek name "ectomon. ^"^ "Tenuior." 



'^ This is the meaning assigned by Hardouin to the word "ramulos." 

 Holland renders it " small shoots " or " slips," and he is probably right. 



