183 
_ 
with great danger to the puller; therefore, the upper part should be 
tied to a dog which was then coaxed away, thus uprooting the 
mandrake (Fig. 8). 
Simon Forman, a member of Magdalen College, wrote of the 
mandrake, in 1603, “Also [ have knowen the old saying prove true, 


AIOCKO PIAHC 
on ee, 




Pic. 8. A mandrake (Mandragora) being presented by Discovery (Eure- 
sis) to the physician Dioscorides. The plant is still tied to the dog whose 
life was sacrificed in order to get the root. From Julia Anicia Ms., about 
A.D. 512. Reproduced from Charles Singer, Studies in history and method 
of science. Vol. I, p. 62. (10,631) 
that whosoever cdiggith up a mandrake shall die within a yeare, and 
som have said they have heard them eri or shrike when they have 
been pulled up. ao 
Our American mandrake is quite another plant—Podophylluim 
peltatum, of the Barberry Family (Berberidaceae), commonly 
* Gunther, Robert T. The herbal of Apuleius Barbarus from the early 
twelfth-century manuscript formerly in the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds. 
Oxford. 1925, 
