THE OLD POISON-LORE. 
3 
§3-] 
Mead relates that the people of Marseilles of old had a poison, kept by 
the public authorities, in which cicuta was an ingredient : a dose 'was 
allowed to anyone who could show why he should desire death. What¬ 
ever use or abuse might be made of a few violent poisons, Greek and 
Roman knowledge of poisons, their effects and methods of detection, 
was stationary, primitive, and incomplete. 
Nicander of Colophon (204-138 b.c.) wrote two treatises, the most 
ancient works on this subject extant, the one describing the effects of 
snake venom ; the other, the properties of opium, henbane, certain 
fungi, colchicum, aconite, and conium. He divided poisons into those 
which kill quickly, and those which act slowly. As antidotes, those 
medicines are recommended which excite vomiting— e.g., lukewarm oil, 
warm water, mallow, linseed tea, etc. 
Apollodorus lived at the commencement of the third century b.c. : 
he wrote a work on poisonous animals, and one on deleterious medicines ; 
these works of Apollodorus were the sources from which Pliny, Heraclitus, 
and several of the later writers derived most of their knowledge of poisons. 
Dioscorides (a.d. 40-90) well detailed the effects of cantharides, 
sulphate of copper, mercury, lead, and arsenic. By arsenic he would 
appear sometimes to mean the sulphides, sometimes the white oxide. 
Dioscorides divided poisons, according to their origin, into three classes, 
viz.:— 
1. Animal Poisons. —Under this head were classed cantharides and 
allied beetles, toads, salamanders, poisonous snakes, a particular variety 
of honey, and the blood of the ox, probably the latter in a putrid state. 
He also speaks of the “ sea-hare The sea-hare was considered by the 
ancients very poisonous, and Domitian is said to have murdered Titus 
with it. It is supposed by naturalists to have been one of the genus 
Aplysia, among the Gasteropods. Both Pliny and Dioscorides depict the 
animal as something very formidable : it was not to be looked at, far 
less touched. The aplysia) exhale a very nauseous and foetid odour 
when they are approached : the best known of the species resembles, 
when in a state of repose, a mass of unformed flesh ; when in motion, it 
is like a common slug ; its colour is reddish-brown ; it has four horns 
on its head ; and the eyes, which are very small, are situated between 
the two hinder ones. This aplysia has an ink reservoir, like the sepia, 
and ejects the secretion in order to escape from its enemies ; it inhabits 
the muddy bottom of the water, and lives on small crabs, mollusca, etc. 
2. Poisons from Plants. —Dioscorides enumerates opium, black 
and white hyoscyamus (especially recognising the activity of the seeds), 
mandragora, which was probably a mixture of various solanaceae, conium 
(used to poison the condemned by the people of Athens and the dwellers 
of ancient Massilia), elaterin, and the juices of species of euphorbia and 
apocynese. He also makes a special mention of aconite, the name of 
