98 
PLimr^S NATFBAL HISTOET. 
[Book XXV. 
habit of taking it for the purpose of sharpening the intellectual 
powers required by their literary investigations. Carneades, 
for instance, made use of hellebore when about to answer the 
treatises of Zeno ; Drusus ^ too, among us, the most famous of 
all the tribunes of the people, and whom in particular the 
public, rising from their seats, greeted with loud applause — to 
whom also the patricians imputed the Marsic war — is well 
known to have been cured of epilepsy in the island of Anti- 
cyra a place at which it is taken with more safety than else- 
where, from the fact of sesamo'ides being combined with it, as 
already"^ stated. In Italy the name given to it is " veratrum/' 
These kinds of hellebore, reduced to powder and taken alone, 
or else in combination with radicula, a plant used, as already 
mentioned,^ for washing wool, act as a sternutatory, and are 
both of them productive of narcotic effects. The thinnest and 
shortest roots are selected, and among them the lower parts 
in particular, which have all the appearance of having been 
cut short f for, as to the upper part, which is the thickest, and 
bears a resemblance to an onion, it is given to dogs only, as a 
purgative. The ancients used to select those roots the rind of 
which was the most fleshy, from an idea that the pith extracted 
therefrom was of a more refined nature. This substance they 
covered with wet sponges, and, when it began to swell, used 
to split it longitudinally with a needle ; which done, the fila- 
ments were dried in the shade, for future use. At the present 
day, however, the fibres of the root with the thickest rind 
are selected, and given to the patient just as they are. The 
best hellebore is that which has an acrid, burning taste, and 
when broken, emits a sort of dust. It retains its efficacy, they 
say, so long as thirty years. 
CHAP. 22. TWENTY- FOUR EEMEDIES DERIVED FROM BLACK HELLE- 
BORE. HOW IT SHOULD BE TAKEN. 
Elack hellebore is administered for the cure of paralysis, 
insanity, dropsy — provided there is no fever — chronic gout, 
and diseases of the joints : it has the efiect too, of carrying 
^ M. Livius Drusus. See B. xxviii. c. 42, and B. xxxiii. c. 6. 
^* Anticyra in Phocis was a peninsula, not an island. 
' In B. xxii. c. 64. » In B. xix. c. 18. 
^ Hence the Greek name "ectomon. '*Tenuior.'* 
1^ This is the meaning assigned by Hardouin to the word *'ramulos." 
Holland renders it "small shoots " or " slips," and he is probably right. 
