166 
ON BLACi: HELLEBORE. 
this root, and found it to contain volatile oil, fatty oil, 
volatile acid, resirious matter, wax, bitter principle, iilnnin, 
gallate of potash, ammoniacal salts. Vauquelin had pre- 
▼iously obtained a very acrid oil, extractive, starch, 
vegeto-animal matter, sugar, lignin. Bouchardat thinks 
that the active part may be the volatile acid, which is closely 
connected with the fatty matter. The acrid oil of Vauque- 
lin is evidently a compound of the three first principles of 
Feneulle acid Capron. All of which may be active, as well 
as the resinous and bitter substance. 
Ther/mWozY, (soft resin, Gmelin,) ^e//e6c>n/2, is odourless, 
has an acrid taste, and is soluble in spirit. According to 
M. Orfila, age has a decided influence in causing deteriora- 
tion, from which would be inferred the volatile character 
of the active principle. 
Black hellebore is a medicine of great antiquity ; the ear- 
liest notice of it in any work on Materia Medica, we have 
in that of Theophrastus. The first precise specific account of 
It is in the work of Dioscorides, and it was for a long time 
supposed that the B%%e^o^oi niaa? of that author was the 
Hellehorus niger, of Europe. Matthiolus, his commenta- 
tor, was of opinion that the same plant, or one of the 
European species, constituted the far-famed Grecian one, 
for he mentions three species, one of which appears not to 
belong to Hellehorus.* The terms of description employed 
by Dioscorides as not applying to the H. 7nger, seem to have 
struck ScalLger,t but it was not until in 1700, when 
Tournefort made his celebrated voyage into the Levant, 
that the discrepancy was explained. This traveller there 
found a speciesrof Hellehorus which corresponded to the de- 
scription of Dioscorides, growing in the greatest profusion 
in Anticyra, also in Boetia, Eubea and upon Mt. Helicon. 
*In fact, there seems to have been a confusion between the species 
of Helleboras and Veratrum. The Latins confounded both genera 
under the head of Hellehorus. 
t Commentary on Theophrastus. Amsterdam; 1644. 
