Wormwood was also kept in drawers and closets. To dream of the plant was of good augury: happiness and domestic enjoyment were supposed to result. Mugwort is another old name for the plant.
MONK'S-HOOD (Aconitum Napellus). This plant has three names: monk's-hood, wolf's-bane, and aconite. Aconite is the "dram of poison" that Romeo calls for,[83] and Shakespeare alludes to aconitum in "King Henry IV," where the king, addressing Thomas of Clarence, compares its strength and that of gunpowder. "Though it do work as strong as aconitum or rash gunpowder."[84] Aconite was supposed in Elizabethan days to be an antidote against the most deadly poison. Ben Jonson in "Sejanus" makes one of his characters remark:
I have heard that aconite
Being timely taken hath a healing might
Against the scorpion's sting.[85]
Lord Bacon in "Sylva" calls Napellus "the most powerful poison of all vegetables."
[83] "Romeo and Juliet"; Act V, Scene I.
[84] Part II, Act IV, Scene IV.
[85] Act III, Scene III.
Yet despite its poisonous qualities, an English garden lover writes, "the plant has always held, and deservedly, a place among the ornamental plants of our gardens; its stately habit and its handsome leaves and flowers make it a favorite."
The ancients, who were unacquainted with mineral poisons, regarded aconite as the most deadly of all poisons and believed that Hecate had caused the plant to spring from the venomous foam frothing from the mouth of the three-headed dog, Cerberus, when Hercules took him from Pluto's dark realm on one of his Twelve Labors. Ovid describes the aconite as