85 
MEDICAL PLANTS MENTIONED BY SHAKSPEARE. 
Observations upon some of the Medical Plants mentioned by 
Shakspeare. Communicated by Samvuet Roorsey, Esq., 
Corresponding Member of the Medico-Botanical Society. 
Hemlock. 1 was lately inquiring the particular species 
which the Welsh call Cegyd, and was told it differed from 
hemlock. Hemlock, they said, grew in gardens, like parsley; 
but Cegyd grew in moist hedges, with a smooth spotted stalk. 
Shakspeare likewise speaks of hemlock as a corn-field plant, 
which can be no other than the Aithusa Cynapium. 
« Crown’d with rank fumiter and furrow weeds, 
With barlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckow-flowers, 
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow 
In our sustaining corn.”—Lear, act 1v. sc. 4. 
In another place he is very precise in distinguishing it from 
kecksies, by which name I have always heard the Conium 
maculatum distinguished in Essex. 
«« Her fallow leas 
The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory 
Doth feed upon, while that the coulter rusts 
That should deracinate such savagery. 
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth 
The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, 
Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected rank 
Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems 
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, 
Losing both beauty and utility.”—K. Henry V., acty. sc. 2. 
This word kecksies is evidently the Welsh Cegyd, and the 
Latin Cicuta. 
It was the root of hemlock which was used as an ingredient 
in the poisonous cauldron of the Witches in Macbeth. 
** The root of hemlock digg’d in the dark.”’—Act iv. sc. 1. 
As the Conium maculatum is likely to be meant in this 
place, I think the Aithusa should be called by Withering’s 
name of lesser hemlock. 
The etymology of the word hemlock is obscure. I consi- 
der that the word is derived from its ill smell, and consists of 
the aspirate H prefixed to the radix, which in Greek is Moly, 
from porwrw, to moil, or defile. Hence it is properly applica- 
ble to the Allium Moly, and the Ligusticum Pelopponense, 
which latter I suppose to have been the Concion of the 
Greeks, 
Fumiter, or Fumitory. This double orthography of our 
poet illustrates the etymology of this word. It takes its 
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