BISH AND ATIS. 117 
Whether the Indian Bish ever reached the drug-shops of Europe until quite recent- 
ly is very doubtful. It is true that Mathaeus Sylvaticus of Salerno (about 1300) has 
« Bissum i. Napellus” and “Bix i. Napellus” in his Liber Pandectorum, but the paragraph 
is merely an abridged version of Avicenna’s chapter on “Bis” Then it is lost sight 
of, and the herbalists of the 15th and the following centuries do not seem to have 
known it at all. Yet ic was in the 16th century that the drug was rediscovered by 
two European travellers in the East, independently of each other. Christobal Acosta, 
who travelled in India about the middle of the 16th century and was much associated 
with the celebrated Garcia d'Orto, mentions the Bish root in his “ Tractads” (Tract. Drog. 
y Medic. Ind. Orient., 1578, p. 90) as an ingredient of certain pills prepared by the Brah- 
man doctors with these words: “Y rayz de Bisa (que es una rays, que viene de las 
sierras de Bengala y Pattane),” the first direct reference to the Central Himalaya as the 
home of the Bish plant; but he does not seem to have seen the root itself, nor to have 
clearly connected it with Ларейиз, although in speaking of the poisons used by the 
doctors of the East, he mentions JVapelius on p.180: “Y tambien usan por veneno del 
Anapelo? (for “ Anapelo” stands “ХареПо” in the Italian edition) There is, how- 
ever, another reference to the same article in Acosta’s Tracíads on p. 179. Criticising 
Laguna’s statement (in his Commentary of Dioscorides, libr. i, cap. vi) that there existed 
a suspicious kind of Spica Nardi in India, he says: “Y que la Spica Nardi es 
sospechosa en la India, porque della se haze une suerte da veneno mortifero llamado 
Piso; el qual no solamente bevido pero tambien aplicado a un hombre quando suda le 
mata. Por lo qual el uso del Nardo en aquellas partes es tenido por sospechoso . , . 
ni veneno que se llame Piso nunca el Doctor Orta con su diligencia lo pudo saber en la 
India, ni yo por aquellas partes, aunque lo pregunti a muchos." This deadly poison 
<“ Piso 7 is certainly nothing but “bis ” or “bisl” in disguise, and Laguna’s strange 
association of it with the spikenard may perhaps be due to a misunderstanding cf the 
statement of the Arab writers, already referred to, that the “bish” grows by the side 
of the spikenard. 1% is not to be wondered that Acosta and Orta failed to trace the 
poisonous Spica nardi, called “Piso.” About the same time (1549 or 1550), the French 
traveller Belon visited the bazaars of Alexandria, and this is what he relates in his * Or- 
servations” (Lat, Transl. in Clus. Hist. Ezet. Plant. p. 98): “Inter singularia quae nobis 
Florentinus Consul ostendit, cum aromata nos requirere animadvertisset, degustandam 
dedit radicem Arabibus Bisch nominatam: ea nobis tantum calorem in ore per 
integrum biduum excitavit, ut flagrare videretur . . . Exigua est, parvi nspi instar 
(alii Napellum vocant) et adeo vulgaris Turcicis aromataris ut nullus eorum venalem 
non habeat." This is unmistakably the “bish? of India,  Belon's account seems, 
however, to have been overlooked entirely by later writers, and the only reference 
to Acosta’s “bish?” which I find is іп Bauhinus’ Pinas Theatri (1623), p. 259, 
under Symphytum: “VI. Symphyto viribus affinis: Bisa radix que ех Bengale 
et Patane montibus adfertur; Acosta сар. de Datura; sed quid?” 
Whilst in the. West, after the downfal of the Arab civilisation, the knowledge 
of the Bish of India was soon lost, ccnservatism and a pious regard for the authority 
of the Arab writers secured the drug а safe place in the Persian Pharmacopeas; 
put nothing was added that might have thrown further light on it. There is, how- 
ever, a strange paanga in the Labo зым which а French Carmelite monk, Frater 
Angelus, gave of a Persian Pharmacopoa in 1681, recalling to some extent the 
fabulous account of Ebn Samhun's “halahil” Бө). He tells us (1. с., pp. 858 and 929) 
Axx Roy. Bor. Garp Catc., Vor. X. 
