and its Alkaloid Conia. 399 



Having now accomplished the chief object of this paper, I 

 ought perhaps to conclude ; but there is a topic remotely con- 

 nected with it, to which I may be allowed briefly to advert. 



I have several times been asked by my literary friends what the 

 poison could have been which was used by the ancient Greeks, 

 and particularly the Athenians, for putting state-criminals to 

 death. This question has engaged the attention of many com- 

 mentators, and of some modern physiologists attached to the 

 literature and medicine of the classic ages ; and the general re- 

 sult has been a belief that our hemlock, the Conium maculatum of 

 botanists, is the Cicuta of the Romans, the ILuv&ov of the Greeks, 

 and the Athenian state-poison. Others, however, have doubted 

 the correspondence here supposed. And, although the adoption by 

 modern botanists of the term Conium, for designating the genus 

 to which our spotted hemlock belongs, may seem to set the mat- 

 ter at rest, the question is really far from settled ; and the proofs 

 given above of the erroneous or imperfect ideas entertained, even 

 in the present day, of the effects of hemlock, would reopen it 

 even if it had been closed. 



This inquiry is obviously one of much interest to every scholar 

 and physician ; for, on the one hand, it involves the identification 

 of an ancient medicine of no mean repute ; and on the other, it 

 tends to enliven our conceptions of one of the most interesting 

 periods of classic history, by enabling us to point to a known 

 substance as the poison by which Socrates and Phocion died. 



In considering the subject, it is right to inquire, in the first 

 place, whether our knowledge of the botanical and poisonous pro- 

 perties of hemlock corresponds with what ancient medical authors 

 have said of the plant Kuwov. Here we ought to be at no loss ; for 

 both Pliny and Dioscorides have left tolerably minute descrip- 

 tions of the plant ; and JVicandeu, in his poetical treatise on poi- 

 sons, has described its effects on the body, and been followed in his 

 description by succeeding writers. DioscoRiDES,'m his fourth book, 

 thus lays down its botanical characters :— " The plant Kuwov pro- 



