70 UMBELLIFER^ 



aftbrds, when gathered in autumn, a powerful and vahiable drug. Dr. Fother- 

 gill remarked of the Hemlock : "I know from repeated experiments that the 

 extract which has been prepared from this plant before it had arrived at 

 maturity is much inferior to that Avhich is made when the plant has 

 acquired its full vigour, and is rather on the verge of decline ; just when 

 the flowers fade, the rudiments of the seeds (fruit) become observable, and 

 the habit of the plant inclines to yellow, is the proper time for collecting 

 the Hemlock." 



The Hemlock has attained a general celebrity, from the belief that the 

 poison drunk by Socrates was made from its juices. The Koncion of the 

 ancients was evidently a powerful poison. It was given to him whom the 

 Areopagus had condemned to death. It was swallowed by ancient philoso- 

 phers who had grown weary of life and its cares and infirmities — by men who 

 knew not the solemn truth that our lives are not our own, and who had never 

 learned from Revelation that no life need be useless, since God may be 

 honoured by patient suffering as much as by active service, by a resigned and 

 thankful old age, as surely as by a fervid and vigorous youth. They came to 

 their last repast as to a banquet, and, crowning themselves with garlands, 

 drank the fatal Koneion, and surviving men praised the courage and fortitude 

 which inspired them. Both Linnteus and Lamarck believed that the juices of 

 the Hemlock furnished the poison, though recent writers have assigned other 

 plants as more probable, and the Drop wort Hemlock (the (Enanthe crocata) 

 has, as well as several other highly-poisonous herbs, been deemed the poison 

 of the ancients. Professor Burnett remarks on this subject: "Theramenes 

 and Phocion, as well as Socrates, Avere poisoned by the Koneion, and though 

 the effects recorded in the ' Phpedo ' are not exactly in correspondence with 

 those which we should look for from the common Hemlock, it must be 

 remembered, in the first place, that the diff'erence of a more southern climate 

 will affect the energy of the plant ; and secondly, that the historian is not a 

 physician from whom an exact detail of symptoms could be expected. That 

 the modern Conium was the Koncion of the Greeks is rendered probable by 

 its being very common in Peloponnesus — 'most abundant,' says Sibthorpe, 

 * between Athens and Megara ' — and that the Cicuta virosa, (Enanthe phellan- 

 drium, and CEthusa cyndpiuin, which have been occasionally referred to, are not 

 found in any part of that country." 



The Hemlock is rarely eaten by mistake, but the old botanists recom- 

 mended to such as had taken it inadvertently a draught of vinegar, " where- 

 with Tragus doth affirm, that he cured a woman that had eaten the root" — 

 a remedy still approved in cases where persons have eaten the berries of the 

 deadly nightshade. The Hemlock is mentioned in Scripture ; thus the prophet 

 Hosea says : " Judgment springeth up as Hemlock in the furrows of the 

 field." As the Hemlock, so common in our fields, is somewhat rare in those 

 of the Holy Land, many commentators believe that some other plant is 

 intended, and a species of nightshade has been supposed to be the Hem- 

 lock of Scripture. It is, however, now quite impossible to determine 

 with exactness what was the plant which formed the comparison of the 

 prophet. The most learned of the Rabbins considered it to be the Conium 

 iiiaculdtum. 



