HELLEBORUS FCETIDUS. FffiTID HELLEBORE. 
BEAR’S-FOOT, OR SETTER WORT. 
Class VIII. POLYANDRIA. — Order VI. POLYGYNIA. 
Natural Order, RANUNCULACEaE. THE CROW-FOOT TRIBE. 
Fig. (a) represents the stamens, with the situation of nectariferous petals, (6) the capsules. 
This is an evergreen perennial plant, growing naturally in many parts of Britain, on pastures and in 
thickets, particularly on a calcareous soil. According to Sir James E. Smith, it grows abundantly on the 
castle hill at Castle- Acre, Norfolk ; and Gerarde, who lived in the 16th century, says that it was wild in his 
time in many woods and shady places in England. Sir William Hooker, in his Flora of Scotland, states, 
that it occurs also plentifully on the banks of the Clyde at Blantyre Priory ; on old walls at Barncluish, in 
the vicinity of Glasgow ; and between Anstruther and Kepply, near Edinburgh; but that it is scarcely 
indigenous. It is a well-known plant in gardens ; flowering in March and April. 
The root is small, bent, and surrounded by numerous dark-coloured fibres ; the stem rises to about 
two feet in height ; towards the bottom it is strong, round, naked, and marked with alternate cicatrices, the 
vestiges of former leaves; is divided, and subdivided into branches, and compressed at the top, producing 
many flowers. The leaves, which stand upon long channelled footstalks, surrounding the middle of the 
stem, are divided, as in black hellebore, into several leaflets, usually seven or nine in number, long, narrow, 
serrated, lanceolated, and of a dark green colour. The scaly leaves or bracteas, placed at each ramification 
of the flower-stem, are smooth, trifid at the lower part and bifid towards the top; but those near the flowers 
are ovate, pointed, and of a much paler green than the proper leaves. The several stages of transformation 
of the foliage from proper leaves to bracteee, is particularly well seen in this plant, where the pedate leaves 
gradually abort their lobes, and the fimbriate bracteas, losing their divisions become trifid, bifid, and at last, 
near the flowers, entire. The flowers are numerous, terminal, drooping, of a pale green, and stand upon 
long footstalks, forming a sort of panicle : the sepals are five, ovate or heart-shaped, concave, permanent, 
and tinged at the apex with reddish purple : the petals are eight or ten, minute, tubular, placed in a circle 
within the sepals, and at the base nectariferous: the petals were mistaken for nectaries by Linneeus, and 
the true sepals, &c. described by him as petals, the plants being considered then devoid of calyx. The 
stamens are very numerous, the length of the sepals, supporting white anthers; the germens three or four, 
becoming beaked follicles like those of black hellebore, containing many small oval seeds disposed in 
two rows. 
Qualities. — The smell of the recent plant is very foetid, its taste bitter, and remarkably acrid, 
excoriating the mouth and fauces. “The bracteae possess these qualities in a greater degree than the pro- 
per leaves.” The plant looses much of its acrimony by drying. 
Poisonous Effects. — When administered in an undue quantity, this plant proves an extremely 
virulent poison. Its action, although more powerful, seems very much to resemble that of helleborus niger ; 
occasioning sickness, pain in the stomach, violent catharsis, convulsions, and death. In West- 
moreland, where this plant grows in great abundance, it has obtained, from its pernicious quality, the 
name of felon-grass. From the following fact, related by Mr. Martin, on the authority of Dr. Milne, it 
would appear that it is also a poison to sheep. Several years ago when the ground was covered with a 
deep snow, a flock of sheep in Ox-meadow, near Fulborn, in Cambridgeshire, finding nothing but this herb 
above the snow, ate plentifully of it. They soon appeared terribly disordered, and most of them died; a few 
being saved by having a quantity of oil administered to them in time, which made them vomit up the per- 
nicious herb. Some of those which died, on being opened, were found to have their stomachs greatly in- 
flamed. Notwithstanding its deleterious properties, the helleborus fcetidus is sometimes employed by the 
common people, and also by itinerant quacks, for the destruction of worms, and not unfrequently proves 
fatal. The following account, by a Mr. Cooke of Leigh, in Essex, is taken from the Oxford Magazine for 
1769, vol. ii. p. 99. 
“It is much used by venturesome quacks in decoction and coarse powder to kill worms in the belly, 
which it never fails to do. But it has a deleterious, poisonous quality, which some bodies cannot overcome, 
and then it is dangerous. Where it killeth not the patient, it would certainly kill the worms ; but the worst 
of it is, it will sometimes kill both. Wherefore it is so dangerous a drug, it ought never to be internally 
