n their attempts at healing. These
herbs were greatly esteemed: such, for instance, as the _cynocephalia_,
or, as the Egyptians themselves termed the _asyrites_,[133] which was used
as a preventive against witchcraft; and the nepenthes which Helen
presented in a potion to Menelaus, and which was believed to be powerful
in banishing sadness, and in restoring the mind to its accustomed, or
even to greater, cheerfulness, were of Egyptian growth. But whatever may
be the virtues of such herbs, they were used rather for their magical,
than for their medicinal qualities; every cure was cunningly ascribed to
the presiding demons, with which not a few boasted that they were, by
means of their art, intimately connected.

There can be no question, as attested by the earliest records, that the
ancients were in possession of many potent remedies. Melampus of Argos,
the most ancient Greek physician with whom we are acquainted, is reputed
to have cured one of the Argonauts of barrenness, by exhibiting the rust
of iron dissolved in wine, for the space of ten days. The same physician
used hellebore as a purgative on the daughters of King Proteus, who were
labouring under hypochondriasis or melancholy. Bleeding was also a
remedy of very early origin, and said to have been first suggested by
the hypopotamus or sea horse, which at a certain time of the year was
observed to cast itself on the sea shore, and to wound itself among the
rocks or stones, to relieve its plethora. Podalerius, on his return from
the Trojan war, cured the daughter of Damaethus, who had fallen from a
height, by bleeding her in both arms. Opium, the concrete juice of the
poppy, was known in the earliest ages; and probably it was opium that
Helen mixed with wine, and gave to the guests of Menelaus, under the
expressive name of _Nepenthe_, to drown their cares, and encrease their
hilarity. This conjecture, in a considerable degree, is supported from
the fact, that Homer's Nepenthe was procured from the Egyptian Thebes,
whence the tincture of opium, according to the nomenclature of the
pharmacopeia about fifty years ago, and still known by this name in the
older writers; and, if Dr. Darwin may be credited, the Cumaean Sybil
never sat on the portending tripod without first swallowing a few drops
of juice of the cherry-laurel.

There is every reason to believe that the Pagan priesthood were under
the influence of some narcotic preparation during the display of their
oracu