and its Alkaloid Conia. 399 
Having now accomplished the chief object of this paper, I 
ought perhaps to conclude; but there is a topic remotely con- 
nected with it, to which I may be allowed briefly to advert. 
I have several times been asked by my literary friends what the 
poison could have been which was used by the ancient Greeks, 
and particularly the Athenians, for putting state-criminals to 
death. This question has engaged the attention of many com- 
mentators, and of some modern physiologists attached to the 
literature and medicine of the classic ages ; and the general re- 
sult has been a belief that our hemlock, the Coniuwm maculatum of 
botanists, is the Cicuta of the Romans, the Kaveoy of the Greeks, 
and the Athenian state-poison. Others, however, have doubted 
the correspondence here supposed. And, although the adoption by 
modern botanists of the term Conium, for designating the genus 
to which our spotted hemlock belongs, may seem to set the mat- 
ter at rest, the question is really far from settled ; and the proofs 
given above of the erroneous or imperfect ideas entertained, even 
in the present day, of the effects of hemlock, would reopen it 
even if it had been closed. 
This inquiry is obviously one of much interest to every scholar 
and physician ; for, on the one hand, it involves the identification 
of an ancient medicine of no mean repute ; and on the other, it 
tends to enliven our conceptions of one of the most interesting 
periods of classic history, by enabling us to point to a known 
substance as the poison by which Socrarrs and Puocron died. 
In considering the subject, it is right to inquire, in the first 
place, whether our knowledge of the botanical and poisonous pro- 
perties of hemlock corresponds with what ancient medical authors 
have said of the plant Kaveov. Here we ought to be at no loss ; for 
both Pxrvy and Droscorzves have left tolerably minute descrip- 
tions of the plant ; and Nzcanpez, in his poetical treatise on poi- 
sons, has described its effects on the body, and been followed in his 
description by succeeding writers. Droscorzpes,in his fourth book, 
thus lays down its botanical characters :—“ 'The plant Kaveoy pro- 
