POISONOUS ACTION OF ACONITE. 
395 
“Ariel. Anoint the sword which pierced him 
With this weapon salve, and wrap it close from air 
Till I have time to visit it again.” 
Again, in sc. 4, Miranda enters with Hippolito’s sword 
wrapt up. 
“Hip. O my wounds pain me. She unwraps the sword . 
Mir. I am come to cure you. 
Hip. Alas ! I feel the cold air come to me ; 
My wound shoots worse than ever. 
Mir. Does it still grieve you ? 
[She wipes and anoints the sword. 
Hip. Now, methinks, there’s something laid upon it. 
’ Mir. Do you find no ease ? 
Hip. Yes, yes — upon the sudden all this pain 
Is leaving me — sweet heaven ! how am I eased ?” 
Then again, Sir Walter Scott, in The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel : — 
“ But she has ta’en the broken lance, 
And wash’d it from the clotted gore, 
And salved the splinter o’er and o’er. 
William of Deloraine, in trance, 
When’er she turn’d it round and round, 
Twisted, as if she gall’d his wound ; 
Then to her maidens she did say, 
That he should be whole man and sound.” 
Canto iii, st. xxii. 
POISONOUS ACTION OP ACONITE. 
Aconite appears to have been known to the ancients as a 
virulent poison, and was resorted to by some of them for 
secret poisoning on account of the quickness and certainty of 
its action. 
Alexander the Great was poisoned at Babylon by his cup- 
bearer. The historians tell us that the poison was c£ so strong 
that it could not be contained in brass, nor iron, nor shell, 
but only in a horse’s hoof.” The same properties are attributed 
to the waters of the Styx, and as Stygium was an epithet 
sometimes applied to aconite, it is supposed that it was with 
this agent Alexander was poisoned. — Dr. Pickells. 
