180 DIVI BOTANICI. 



the effect of determining a profuse perspiration : and, last of all, to 

 complete their recovery, he enjoined a course of bathing in the 

 Thessalian fountain,* whose waters were long held in high estima- 

 tion for their property of removing the scurfy, leprous and other 

 sordid impurities of the skin. By this process of salutary discipline, 

 the frantic maidens regained their health and equanimity j and the 

 " doctor's honorarium" was the fairest of his fair patients, with a 

 fair inheritance in her father's kingdom. 



Melampodiuw the Plcnit. — Anciently this herb had the name 

 Hellebore, expressive of its deleterious qualities on being inordinate- 

 ly employed. When the daughters of Prnetus were delivered from 

 their melancholy delusions by the agency of its evacuating energies, 

 the name of their benefactor was bestowed upon the plant, as a tri- 

 bute of grateful respect from the herbarists for his discernment and 

 humanity. It continued for many ages after that event to be re- 

 cognized as the Melanipodium yt but, for reasons which satisfied 

 Linnseus, the term now distinguishes a genus of exotic vegetables 

 having characters every way dissimilar. The plant administered by 

 IMelampus was the Black Hellebore whose root, according to its 

 proportions, has immemorially been regarded as capable of acting 

 beneficially in dropsical, asthmatic, hysterical, epileptic, maniacal, 

 and other nervous maladies, when these are unattended with fever, 

 debility, inflammation or spitting of blood. 



Pliny expatiates with amusing minuteness on the Melamj}odiu7n,X 

 giving an enumeration of its names, kinds, habitats and uses, both 

 mystical and medicinal. Speaking through an English version, the 

 naturalist commences with the inquiry " Who hath not heard of 

 Melampus, the famous diviner and prophet ? He it was of whom 

 one of the Hellebores tooke the name, and was called Melampodion. 

 And yet some there be who attribute the finding of that herb vnto 



open the cutaneous pores, and thus to withdraw the causes of insanity from 

 the brain. 



* This was the source of the river Anigriis, to whose springs the qualities 

 of a mineral water are ascribed. The Centaurs washed with it the wounds 

 they received from the ariows of Hercules, in tlie reckless broil wliicli led 

 to the loss of Chiron's exemplary life. 



f It was also call.,d Eufemon and Poli/rrhizon, sometimes Veratnim, but 

 this last term generally denoted the while hellebore; and it is worthy of re- 

 mark that the Veratria, a modern vegetable alkali, prepared from this plant, 

 has precisely the same virtues attributed to it as those which were found to 

 exist in the herb itself, according to the earliest records of the healing 

 art. 



X Nalvral Historic of the World, Tombe ii, p. 217-20. 



