If You’re Sad and Have the Urge, Eat Hellebore and Take a Purge!

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy:

“Black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous purger of melancholy, which all antiquity so much used and admired, was first found out by Melanpodius a shepherd, as Pliny records, lib. 25. cap. 5 who, seeing it to purge his goats when they raved, practised it upon Elige and Calene, King Praetus’ daughters, that ruled in Arcadia, near the fountain Clitorius, and restored them to their former health. In Hippocrates’s time it was in only request, insomuch that he writ a book of it, a fragment of which remains yet.


Cornelius Celsus only remaining of the old Latins, lib. 3. cap. 23, extol and admire this excellent plant; and it was generally so much esteemed of the ancients for this disease amongst the rest, that they sent all such as were crazed, or that doted, to the Anticyrae, or to Phocis in Achaia, to be purged, where this plant was in abundance to be had. In Strabo’s time it was an ordinary voyage, Naviget Anticyras [let him sail to Anticyra]; a common proverb among the Greeks and 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 Comoedian, told Simo and Ballio, two doting fellows, that they had need to be purged with this plant. When that proud Menacrates ὀ ζεὺς, had writ an arrogant letter to Philip of Macedon, he sent back no other answer but this, Consulo tibi ut ad Anticyram te conferas [I advise you to go to Anticyra], noting thereby that he was crazed, atque ellebore indigere, had much need of a good purge.”


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