
45 
But it must have been worth doing. Roman nobles, we 
are told, used to go and stay at Anticyra for the Hellebore 
cure, and truly its reputation was marvellous. It was a 
panacea for paralysis, madness, dropsy, fever, inveterate gout, 
bile, cold in the head, cataract, wens, and warts. But again 
you must be careful how you take it. Never on a cloudy day, 
for instance, in summer rather than winter. Seven days’ 
preparation is necessary with acid food, and no wine ; emetics 
must be taken on the 3rd and 4th days, and no supper on the 
last but one. The action lasts seven hours (note the mystic 
number again), and there is no disease under the sun, even 
melancholy, which will not yield to its potency. 
Culpepper says: “It is an herb of Saturn, and therefore 
no marvel, if it has some sullen conditions with it: it is very 
effectual against all melancholy diseases, as quartan agues and 
madness : if a beast be troubled with a cough, they bore a hole 
through his ear, and put a piece of the root in it, and this will 
help him in 24 hours time.” 
With the Hellebore we must end, although one might touch 
upon many other plants regarded as mystical or magical by 
the old Greeks and Romans, such as the Nepenthes, which 
Helen poured in the cup of Menelaus and Telemachus, to make 
them forget their sorrows—given her by the Queen of Egypt, 
the land of enchantment, or the Anemone and Narcissus, and 
the Telephilum, much in request amongst anxious lovers. 
No doubt it is true, as Dr. Cooke says, that it is in Oriental 
countries, where imagination may run riot, that flowers have 
acquired a deeper meaning, and take a more real part in the 
mysticism of their religions; but, perhaps, that is in part 
because we know the Greeks and Romans through their 
literature only, the production of the upper, enlightened 
classes. But in such writers as Pausanias, and Aelian, there 
are enough hints and incidental remarks to show that beside 
their esthetic appreciation of form and colour, the Greeks of 
classical times had not quite forgotten the plant-lore of their 
ancestors, and, in fact, though sceptical, were not quite 
certain that the Hyacinth was not somehow or other con- 
nected with the blood of Ajax, and that the mandrake did not 
shriek when torn from the earth, at any rate ‘‘ loud enough to 
kill a dog,” if not a human being. 
The lecture, which was interspersed with anecdotes about 
flowers, was illustrated by about 20 views of plants, as depicted 
on vases, coins, and capitals. 
