I'RUCTUS CONIL 299 



FRUCTUS CONII. 



Hemlock fruits ; F. Fruits de Cigae ; G. Schierlingsfnicht. 



Botanical Origin — Conium iimculatwm L., an erect biennial 

 herbaceous plant, flourishing by the sides of fields and streams, and 

 in neglected spots of cultivated ground, throughout temperate Euro|)e 

 and Asia. It occurs in Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands, and 

 has been naturalized in North and South America. But the plant is 

 very unevenly distributed, and in many districts is entirely wanting. 

 It is found in most parts of Britain from Kent and Cornwall to the 

 Orkneys. 



History — K.u)veiov, occurring as early as the fourth or fifth 

 century B.c. in the Greek literature, was the plant under notice, at 

 lea.st in most cases. The famous hemlock potion of the Greeks by 

 which criminals were put to death^ was essentially composed of the 

 juice of this plant. The old Roman name of Conium was ClciUa; it 

 prevails in the mediaeval Latin literature, but was applied, about 

 15-il, by Gesner (and probably before him by others) to Gicivta virosa 

 L., another umbelliferous plant which is altogether wanting in Greece 

 and in Southern Europe generally, and does not contain any poisonous 

 alkaloid. To avoid the confusion arising from the same appellation 

 given to these widely different and quite dissimilar plants, Linnaeus, in 

 1737, restoring the classical Greek name, called it Conium maculatum.* 



Hemlock was used in Anglo-Saxon medicine. It is mentioned as 

 early as the 10th century in the vocabulary of Alfric, archbishop of 

 Canterbury, as " Gicuta, hemlic,"^ and also in the Meddygon Myddfai. 

 Hemlock is derived from the Anglo-Saxon words " hem," border, shore, 

 and " leac " leek. Its use in modern medicine is due chiefly to the 

 recommendation of Storck of Vienna, since wnose time (1760) the plant 

 has been much employed. The extreme uncertainty and even inertness 

 of its preparations, which had long been known to physicians and had 

 caused its rejection by many, have been recently investigated by 

 Harley.* The careful experiments of this physician show what are the 

 real powers of the drug, and by what method its active properties may 

 be utilized. 



Description — The fruit has the structure usual to the order; it is 

 broadly ovoid, somewhat compressed laterally, and constricted towards 

 the commissure, attenuated towards the apex, which is crowned with a 

 depressed stylopodium. As met with in the shops, it consists of the 

 separated mericarps which are about \ of an inch long. The dorsal 

 surface of these has 5 prominent longitudinal ridges, the edges of which 

 are marked with little protuberances giving them a jagged or crenate 

 outline, which is most conspicuous before the fruits are fully ripe. The 

 furrows are glabrous but slightly wrinkled longitudinally; they are 



* See Imbert-Goirrbeyre, De la rnort de first part) 155-203 and lii. (1877) first part, 



Socrale par la CUjue, Paris, 1876. 1-52. 



2 An extensive paper has been devoted ' Volume of Vocabularies, edited by 



by Albert Regel to the History of Conium Wright, 1857. 31. 



and C'ic'ita in the Bulletin ck la Soc. imp. des * Fharm. Journ. viii. (1867) 460-710; ix. 



jyalurallstes de Moscou, tome li. (1876, (1868) 53. 



