There are several allusions to the custom of poisoning with mushrooms to be found in Juvenal,—for example, in the first and fifth satires.
Tacitus says that when Claudius was poisoned the poison “was poured into a dish of mushrooms.”—(“Annals,” Oxford translation, Bohn, London, 1871, lib. 12.)
After the Emperor Claudius had been poisoned by mushrooms given by his wife Messalina, the Emperor Nero, his successor, was wont to call the boletus “the food of the gods.” (See footnote to Rev. Lewis Evans’s translation of the sixth satire of Juvenal, p. 64, edition of New York, 1860, citing Suetonius’s “Nero,” Tacitus’s “Annals,” and Martial’s “Epigrams,” I. epistle XXI.)
Plutarch says that it was a common opinion that “thunder engenders mushrooms.”—(“Morals,” Goodwin’s English edition, Boston, 1870, vol. iii. p. 298.)
Gilder, who crossed over Siberia from Behring’s Straits to St. Petersburgh, stopping en route with many of the wild tribes, makes no allusion to the use of the “muck-a-moor” or to any Ur-orgy. (See “Ice-pack and Tundra,” New York, 1883.)
“The Agaricus muscarius is used by the natives of Kamtchatka and Korea to produce intoxication.”—(Ure’s “Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines,” London, 1878, vol. ii. article “Fungi.”)
“Their reputation as aphrodisiacs is thought to be unfounded, having its origin in the old doctrine of resemblances.” (American Cyclopædia, New York, 1881, article “Fungi.”) Probably from the appearance of the “phallus” fungus.
There seems to have been some superstition attaching to the elder dating from very remote times. It is said in Gerrard’s “Herbal,” Johnson’s edition, page 1428, “that the arbor Judæ is thought to be that whereon Judas hanged himself, and not upon the elder-tree, as is vulgarly said.” I am clear that the mushrooms or excrescences of the elder-tree, called auriculæ Judæ in Latin, and commonly rendered “Jew’s-ears,” ought to be translated “Judas’s-ears,” from the popular superstition above mentioned. Coles, in his “Adam in Eden,” speaking of “Jew’s-ears,” says: “It is called in Latin Fungus Sambucinum and Auriculæ Judæ, some having supposed the elder-tree to be that whereon Judas hanged himself, and that ever since these mushrooms like unto ears have grown thereon, which I will not persuade you to believe.” In “Paradoxical Assertions,” is a silly question,—“why Jews are said to stink naturally. Is it because the ‘Jew’s ears’ grow on stinking elder, which tree the fox-headed Judas was supposed to have hanged himself on, so that natural stink hath been entailed on them and their posterity as it were ex traduce? The elder seems to have been given in the time of Queen Elizabeth as a token of disgrace. It was credited with the power to cure epilepsy, to strengthen the loins of men, especially in riding, as it prevented all gall and chafing, etc., and had additionally the property of making horses stale.”—(Brand, “Popular Antiquities,” London, 1872, vol. iii. p. 283, article “Physical Charms.”)
Sambucus (elder) is mentioned by Frommann as a remedy for epilepsy.—(“Tractatus de Fascinatione,” Nuremberg, 1675, p. 270.)
Have we not a right to inquire why in primitive pharmacy certain remedies were employed? The principle of similia similibus is very old and deeply rooted. Perhaps the fungus of the elder may have once been employed in inducing intoxication and frenzy.