From time immemorial this substance has been considered an efficacious
remedy in mania. The Greeks pretended that the daughters of Proetus,
smitten with insanity by Bacchus, were restored to reason by the shepherd
Melampus, who gave them some milk drawn from goats that had eaten
hellebore. It is supposed that the use of purgatives arose from this
fabulous tradition, whence this plant was called _melampodium_.
The ancients described two varieties, the white and the black. The first,
according to Theophrastus, was found on a part of Mount Oeta called
Pyra, on which the body of Hercules was burnt. It is not certain whether
they confounded our hellebore with our veratrum. Pinel supposes that the
veratrum album was their hellebore, as it is not probable that the
veratrum nigrum should have been thus confounded. Tournefort, in his
travels in the Levant, fancied that he had discovered the root of the
ancients in one that the Turks called _zopteme_, which answered in its
character to the description recorded in older writers.
Howbeit, it was considered a powerful purgative and emetic, especially
indicated in the treatment of mental affections. Celsus forbade its
exhibition in summer and during the winter, or whenever febrile symptoms
were prevalent. This precaution, however, applied to all purgative
medicines; and to this day, in several parts of the continent, similar
injunctions are usual; and even in France practitioners of the old school
prepare a patient several days before any opening medicine is given,--a
learned precaution, that has but too frequently rendered every medicine
useless.
The exhibition of this drug was a matter of so much importance amongst the
ancients, that it was specifically termed _helleborism_; and it was
considered of so powerful a nature in mania, that the treatment of the
malady was called _navigare Anticyras_, since it was near the town of
Anticyras that the plant was generally gathered. If this process of
helleborism proved efficacious, it is more than probable that its
beneficial results proceeded from the violent evacuations that preceded
it. The following was the mode adopted with the helleborised: The patient
was first well fed for several days until the decline of the moon, when a
powerful emetic was given to him; five days after a similar dose was
prescribed, and then good living ordered for a month: at the expiration of
this invigorating respite, emetics began again to work him every three
days. After the last attack on his digestive head-quarters, he was bathed,
fed again, and hellebore was given after he had been submitted to several
hours' friction with olive oil. The emetics were invariably administered
on a full stomach, which was cleared either by medicine or the excitement
of the beard of a quill poked down the unfortunate patient's throat. At
other times, (by way, no doubt, of variety,) rejection was excited by
making the patient eat a pound or more of horseradish; after which he was
walked about for some time; and then, after a short repose, the fingers or
the quill were brought into action. After this operation he was lulled to
sleep by a regular shampooing. It appears that, despite of all these
practices, the stomachs of the ancients were sometimes so pertinaciously
retentive, that more powerful means to _relieve_ them were adopted; and
when the longest feather that could be plucked from a goose proved
unavailing, gloves dipped in the oil of cyprus were put on, and the
fingers thus inuncted replaced the feathers. When this failed, the
obstinate sufferer was made to swallow a quart or two of honey and hot
water, in which rue had been infused; and when this proved ineffectual, he
was slung in a hammock to produce the sensation of sea-sickness. In some
cases it appears that, despite this practice, the patient thought proper
to faint. On such occasions little wedges of wood were driven between his
obstinate and rebellious teeth clenched against medicine, so as to allow
the introduction of the goose-quill, while cephalic snuff of the precious
hellebore and euphorbia was blown up his nostrils to produce sneezing. The
last trial to relieve him was tossing the ill-fated wight in a blanket.
After this experiment the patient was left to nature or to his friends, if
he _would_ not recover. These friends immediately proceeded to give him
punches in the stomach, roll him about the floor, and endeavour to restore
him to his senses by driving him out of them by every possible noise that
could frighten him, if his _frightful_ condition was at all susceptible of
any thing left in the arsenal of medicinal ingenuity.[45]
Small doses of hellebore seem to have been taken not only with impunity,
but were supposed to assist the mental faculties. According to Valerius
Maximus and Aulus Gellius, orators were in the practice of using this
stimulus before their disputations. Such, it is said, was the habit of
Carneades, whose doctrines might well have been applied to this very day
to many theories, since he denied that any thing in the world could be
perceived or understood.
Hellebore is to this day an ingredient in many of the fashionable pills
vended by successful quacks. This introduction, at any rate, shows that
their compounders have candour enough to think (although they may not
acknowledge it) that the intellectual faculties of the purchasers of their
nostrums do stand in need of some medicinal aid.