382 HELLEBORE. 



From its abundance in the isle of Anticyra, arose the proverb, 

 " naviga ad Anticyras," take a voyage to Anticyras, which was 

 the advice given by the ancients to those who had lost their 

 reason*. Its repute in maniacal disorders appears to have 

 arisen from its drastic purgative pi'operty of expelling the 

 atra b'd'is, from which such maladies were invariably thought to 

 originate ; but they doubtless attributed some efficacy to the 

 other medicines combined with it, and which tended to modify 

 its violent action -j-. Its properties, however, vary much 

 according to age ; when recent, it is acrid and poisonous, and 

 produces vesication of the skin ; properly dried, it causes 

 vomiting and purging, excites sneezing, and provokes the men- 

 strual evacuation, &c., but after being long kept, it retains 

 merely a slight purgative virtue. To this difference in the 

 sensible qualities of the root, are attributable the contradictory 

 statements given of its action. The anti-maniacal powers of 

 the Hellebore of the ancients, were again promulgated by 

 Antonius Musa Brassavolus ;[;, and more recently by Pechlinus §, 

 Lorry ||, and Vogel^. Its emmenagogue effects are strenuously 

 insisted on by Mead**, and though it has often failed, as with 



* Thus Horace, who considered avarice a mental disease, says ; — 

 " Danda est ellebori multa pars maxima avaris : 

 Nesclo an Anticyram ratio illis destinet omnem.'' 



Sat. iii. lib. 2. 



f " They werevery careful to giveit only to persons of robust constitutions, 

 carefully directing that it should never be prescribed for children or old 

 persons, or those of either sex whose habit of body was delicate. They pre- 

 pared the patient for seven days previous to its exhibition, by a regulated 

 diet, and frequent gentle aperient medicines. They had also several modes 

 of preparing and correcting it, which are unknown to us, except that they 

 selected only the fibres of the root, which they macerated a short time in 

 water, and then separated the bark and dried it in the shade. This was 

 administered (when powdered) in honey, or the pulp of raisins, to which 

 they generally added some aromatic seeds. Ettmuller states, that an apple, 

 particularly sweet, was chosen, and stuck full of the fibres of Hellebore root, 

 then roasted under hot embers, the fibres were then withdrawn, and the apple 

 eaten by the patient, which operated mildly, but effectually." Waller 1. c. 



J De 3Iedicamentis catharticis. 



§ De Purgant. p. 315. 



II De Melanch, tom. ii. p. 343. 



% Diss, de insania longa, p. 21. 



** Monita et precep. med. p. 138. 



