90 Observations on some of the Medical Plants 
The Caltha I take to be the Mary-buds of Shakspeare. 
«« And winking mary-buds begin 
To ope their golden eyes, 
With everything that pretty bin, 
My lady sweet arise.’’—Cymbeline, act il. sc. 3. 
The Marygold is the Calendula. 
«The marygold that goes to bed with the sun, 
And with him rises weeping.”’—Winter’s Tale, activ. sc. 3. 
Hebenon. Shakspeare ascribes the death of Hamlet to the 
juice of hebenon having been poured into his ear. As he 
beautifully describes the action of the poison, I transcribe the 
entire passage. 
Ghost. ‘* Sleeping within mine orchard, 
(My custom always of the afternoon, ) 
Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, 
With juice of cursed hebenon ina vial, 
And in the porches of mine ears did pour 
The leperous distilment; whose effect 
Holds such an enmity with blood of man, 
That, swift as quicksilver, it courses through 
The natural gates and alleys of the body, 
And, with a sudden vigour, it doth posset 
And curd, like eager droppings into milk, 
The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine; 
And a most instant tetter bark’d about, 
Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, 
All my smooth body.”’—Hamlet, act i. sc. 5. 
The word hebenon means black, the / being a non-essential 
letter.* Hence I conceive this plant to have been the Atropa 
Belladonna, which, where it is wild in Glocestershire, is by the 
country people called, from the colour of its fruit, Inkberries. 
From the following passage, I think it may have been used for 
poisoning darts and javelins: 
“« Love’s golden arrow at him should have fled, 
And not death’s ebon dart, to strike him dead.” —Ven. and Adon. 
I make no doubt that the name of Henbane is a corruption 
of hebenon, and strictly applicable to the blackberry of the 
Dwale, so called from its effect in making us dud/ and sullen. 
(Hence Solanum? Lethale.) 
« And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed 
That roots itself in ease on Lethe’s wharf, 
Wouldst thou not stir in this.?”>—Hamlet, acti. sc. 5. 
As for the word nightshade, given probably from its forming 
a shed for the night, this seems appropriate to the dulcamara, 
whose bending twigs form an arbour like the clematis. I once 
imagined, though I have not had an opportunity of proving 
it, that the nightshade possessed the property of shedding 
and diffusing a peculiar smell during the night, and that it 
* Vide Mandrake, p. 87. 
