SECT. XLI.—ON CONIUM OR HEMLOCK.
Hemlock, when drunk, brings on vertigo and dimness of vision, so that the person can no longer see even to a small distance; there is hiccough, disorder of the mind, and coldness of the extremities, and at last he is suffocated in convulsions, the breath in the arteria aspera being stopped. At first, therefore, as in other cases of poisoning, we must bring it up by vomiting, and afterwards, by means of an injection, evacuate whatever part had passed into the intestines; and then, as our great remedy, we have recourse to undiluted wine, giving it at intervals, during which we must administer the milk of cows or of asses, or wormwood with pepper, wine, and castor; and rue and mint, with wine, and a dram of cardamom or of storax; or of pepper, with nettle-seeds in wine; or the tender leaves of bay tree; and in like manner laserwort, or the juice thereof, with common wine or must; and sweet wine drunk alone answers well.
Commentary. Theophrastus seems to have been acquainted with the sedative properties of hemlock, for he recommends pepper and rosemary as antidotes to it. (H. P. ix, 24); and Athen. (Deip. ii, 73.) The operation of this poison in the case of Socrates is well described by Plato in his ‘Phædo.’ Socrates, after swallowing the poisoned cup, walked about for a short time as he was directed by the executioner: when he felt a sense of heaviness in his limbs he lay down on his back; his feet and legs first lost their sensibility, and became stiff and cold; and this state gradually extended upwards to the heart, when he died convulsed.
The symptoms, according to Nicander, are dimness of sight, vertigo, a sense of suffocation, coldness of the extremities, impeded respiration, and death. His remedies are emetics of oil, or undiluted wine, clysters of the same, and undiluted wine taken by the mouth, with pepper, nettle, assafœtida, and the like. Dioscorides, and all the other authorities, recommend much the same treatment. Pliny and Aëtius mention lividity, after death, as a symptom of poisoning by cicuta.
Theophrastus (H. P. vi, 2) and Pliny (H. N. xxv, 95) have described the conium. Schulze is satisfied that it is the conium maculatum, L., and in this opinion we fully agree with him. He adds, that the ancients have made no mention of the cicuta virosa.
Dioscorides and most of the others enumerate convulsions among the symptoms. It will be remarked, that in the abstract given above of the symptoms of poisoning by hemlock in the case of Socrates, we have stated that the great philosopher died convulsed. This we think the true interpretation of the term used by Plato (ἐκινήθη), although it has not been so understood by most of his interpreters. Dioscorides, in another place, states somnolency, coma, stertor, lividity, torpor, coldness, stupor, insensibility, and pruritus of the whole body, as the common symptoms of poisoning by opium, mandragora, or conium.
Schulze ranks, among ancient mistakes, the assertion of Galen, that narcotic substances may, in some instances, become digested and prove nutritive. But Dr. Christison says, that both vegetable and animal poisons may become digested, of which he gives an interesting example with regard to opium (On Poisons, p. 52.)