Latins, to bid a dizzard or a mad man go take
hellebore; as in Lucian, Menippus to Tantalus, _Tantale desipis, helleboro
epoto tibi opus est, eoque sane meraco_, thou art out of thy little wit, O
Tantalus, and must needs drink hellebore, and that without mixture.
Aristophanes _in Vespis_, drink hellebore, &c. and Harpax in the [4222]
Comoedian, told Simo and Ballio, two doting fellows, that they had need to
be purged with this plant. When that proud Menacrates [Greek: o zeus], had
writ an arrogant letter to Philip of Macedon, he sent back no other answer
but this, _Consulo tibi ut ad Anticyram te conferas_, noting thereby that
he was crazed, _atque ellebore indigere_, had much need of a good purge.
Lilius Geraldus saith, that Hercules, after all his mad pranks upon his
wife and children, was perfectly cured by a purge of hellebore, which an
Anticyrian administered unto him. They that were sound commonly took it to
quicken their wits, (as Ennis of old, [4223]_Qui non nisi potus ad
arma--prosiluit dicenda_, and as our poets drink sack to improve their
inventions (I find it so registered by Agellius _lib. 17. cap. 15._)
Cameades the academic, when he was to write against Zeno the stoic, purged
himself with hellebore first, which [4224]Petronius puts upon Chrysippus.
In such esteem it continued for many ages, till at length Mesue and some
other Arabians began to reject and reprehend it, upon whose authority for
many following lustres, it was much debased and quite out of request, held
to be poison and no medicine; and is still oppugned to this day by [4225]
Crato and some junior physicians. Their reasons are, because Aristotle _l.
1. de plant. c. 3._ said, henbane and hellebore were poison; and Alexander
Aphrodiseus, in the preface of his problems, gave out, that (speaking of
hellebore) [4226]"Quails fed on that which was poison to men." Galen. _l.
6. Epid. com. 5. Text. 35._ confirms as much: [4227]Constantine the emperor
in his Geoponicks, attributes no other virtue to it, than to kill mice and
rats, flies and mouldwarps, and so Mizaldus, Nicander of old, Gervinus,
Sckenkius, and some other Neoterics that have written of poisons, speak of
hellebore in a chief place. [4228]Nicholas Leonicus hath a story of Solon,
that besieging, I know not what city, steeped hellebore in a spring of
water, which by pipes was conveyed into the middle of the town, and so
either poisoned, or else made them so feeble and weak by purging, that the