HEN, a female bird, especially the female of the common fowl (q.v.). The O. Eng. hæn is the feminine form of hana, the male bird, a correlation of words which is represented in other Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. Hahn, Henne, Dutch haan, hen, Swed. hane, hönne, &c. The O. Eng. name for the male bird has disappeared, its place being taken by “cock,” a word probably of onomatopoeic origin, being from a base kuk- or kik-, seen also in “chicken.” This word also appears in Fr. coq, and medieval Lat. coccus.
HÉNAULT, CHARLES JEAN FRANÇOIS (1685-1770), French historian, was born in Paris on the 8th of February 1685. His father, a farmer-general of taxes, was a man of literary tastes, and young Hénault obtained a good education at the Jesuit college. Captivated by the eloquence of Massillon, in his fifteenth year he entered the Oratory with the view of becoming a preacher, but after two years’ residence he changed his intention, and, inheriting a position which secured him access to the most select society of Paris, he achieved distinction at an early period by his gay, witty and graceful manners. His literary talent, manifested in the composition of various light poetical pieces, an opera, a tragedy (Cornélie vestale, 1710), &c., obtained his entrance to the Academy (1723). Petit-maître as he was, he had also serious capacity, for he became councillor of the parlement of Paris (1705), and in 1710 he was chosen president of the court of enquêtes. After the death of the count de Rieux (son of the famous financier, Samuel Bernard) he became (1753) superintendent of the household of Queen Marie Leszczynska, whose intimate friendship he had previously enjoyed. On his recovery in his eightieth year from a dangerous malady (1765) he professed to have undergone religious conversion and retired into private life, devoting the remainder of his days to study and devotion. His religion was, however, according to the marquis d’Argenson, “exempt from fanaticism, persecution, bitterness and intrigue”; and it did not prevent him from continuing his friendship with Voltaire, to whom it is said he had formerly rendered the service of saving the manuscript of La Henriade, when its author was about to commit it to the flames. The literary work on which Hénault bestowed his chief attention was the Abrégé chronologique de l’histoire de France, first published in 1744 without the author’s name. In the compass of two volumes he comprised the whole history of France from the earliest times to the death of Louis XIV. The work has no originality. Hénault had kept his note-books of the history lectures at the Jesuit college, of which the substance was taken from Mézeray and P. Daniel. He revised them first in 1723, and later put them in the form of question and answer on the model of P. le Ragois, and by following Dubos and Boulainvilliers and with the aid of the abbé Boudot he compiled his Abrégé. The research is all on the surface and is only borrowed. But the work had a prodigious success, and was translated into several languages, even into Chinese. This was due partly to Hénault’s popularity and position, partly to the agreeable style which made the history readable. He inserted, according to the fashion of the period, moral and political reflections, which are always brief and generally as fresh and pleasing as they are just. A few masterly strokes reproduced the leading features of each age and the characters of its illustrious men; accurate chronological tables set forth the most interesting events in the history of each sovereign and the names of the great men who flourished during his reign; and interspersed throughout the work are occasional chapters on the social and civil state of the country at the close of each era in its history. Continuations of the work have been made at separate periods by Fantin des Odoards, by Anguis with notes by Walckenaer, and by Michaud. He died at Paris on the 24th of November 1770.
Bibliography.—Hénault’s Mémoires have come down to us in two different versions, both claiming to be authentic. One was published in 1855 by M. du Vigan; the other was owned by the Comte de Coutades, who permitted Lucien Perey to give long extracts in his work on President Hénault (Paris, 1893). The memoirs are fragmentary and disconnected, but contain interesting anecdotes and details concerning persons of note. See the Correspondance of Grimm, of Madame du Deffand and of Voltaire; the notice by Walckenaer in the edition of the Abrégé; Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi, vol. xi.; and the Origines de l’abrégé (Ann. Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France, 1901). Also H. Lion, Le Président Hénault (Paris, 1903).
HENBANE (Fr. jusquiaume, from the Gr. ὑοσκύαμος, or hog’s-bean; Ital. giusquiamo; Ger. Schwarzes Bilsenkraut, Hühnertod, Saubohne and Zigeuner-Korn or “gipsies’ corn”), the common name of the plant Hyoscyamus niger, a member of the natural order Solanaceae, indigenous to Britain, found wild in waste places, on rubbish about villages and old castles, and cultivated for medicinal use in various counties in the south and east of England. It occurs also in central and southern Europe and in western Asia extending to India and Siberia, and has long been naturalized in the United States. There are two forms of the plant, an annual and a biennial, which spring indifferently from the same crop of seed—the one growing on during summer to a height of from 1 to 2 ft., and flowering and perfecting seed; the other producing the first season only a tuft of radical leaves, which disappear in winter, leaving underground a thick fleshy root, from the crown of which arises in spring a branched flowering stem, usually much taller and more vigorous than the flowering stems of the annual plants. The biennial form is that which is considered officinal. The radical leaves of this biennial plant spread out flat on all sides from the crown of the root; they are ovate-oblong, acute, stalked, and more or less incisely-toothed, of a greyish-green colour, and covered with viscid hairs; these leaves perish at the approach of winter. The flowering stem pushes up from the root-crown in spring, ultimately reaching from 3 to 4 ft. in height, and as it grows becoming branched, and furnished with alternate sessile leaves, which are stem-clasping, oblong, unequally-lobed, clothed with glandular clammy hairs, and of a dull grey-green, the whole plant having a powerful nauseous odour. The flowers are shortly-stalked, the lower ones growing in the fork of the branches, the upper ones sessile in one-sided leafy spikes which are rolled back at the top before flowering, the leaves becoming smaller upwards and taking the place of bracts. The flowers have an urn-shaped calyx which persists around the fruit and is strongly veined, with five stiff, broad, almost prickly lobes; these, when the soft matter is removed by maceration, form very elegant specimens when associated with leaves prepared in a similar way. The corollas are obliquely funnel-shaped, of a dirty yellow or buff, marked with a close reticulation of purple veins. The capsule opens transversely by a convex lid and contains numerous seeds. Both the leaves and the seeds are employed in pharmacy. The Mahommedan doctors of India are accustomed to prescribe the seeds. Henbane yields a poisonous alkaloid, hyoscyamine, which is stated to have properties almost identical with those of atropine, from which it differs in being more soluble in water. It is usually obtained in an amorphous, scarcely ever in a crystalline state. Its properties have been investigated in Germany by T. Husemann, Schroff, Höhn, &c. Höhn finds its chemical composition expressed by C18H28N2O3. (Compare Hellmann, Beiträge zur Kenntnis der physiolog. Wirkung des Hyoscyamins, &c., Jena, 1874.) In small and repeated doses henbane has been found to have a tranquillizing effect upon persons affected by severe nervous irritability. In poisonous doses it causes loss of speech, distortion and paralysis. In the form of extract or tincture it is a valuable remedy in the hands of a medical man, either as an anodyne, a hypnotic or a sedative. The extract of henbane is rich in nitrate of potassium and other inorganic salts. The smoking of the seeds and capsules of henbane is noted in books as a somewhat dangerous remedy adopted by country people for toothache. Accidental poisoning from henbane occasionally occurs, owing sometimes to the apparent edibility and wholesomeness of the root.
See Bentley and Trumen, Medicinal Plants, 194 (1880).
HENCHMAN, originally, probably, one who attended on a horse, a groom, and hence, like groom (q.v.), a title of a subordinate official in royal or noble households. The first part of the word is the O. Eng. hengest, a horse, a word which occurs in many Teutonic languages, cf. Ger. and Dutch hengst. The word appears in the name, Hengest, of the Saxon chieftain (see [Hengest and Horsa]) and still survives in English in place and other names beginning with Hingst- or Hinx-. Henchmen, pages of honour or squires, rode or walked at the side of their master in processions and the like, and appear in the English royal household from the 14th century till Elizabeth abolished the royal henchmen, known also as the “children of honour.” The word was obsolete in English from the middle of the 17th century, and seems to have been revived through Sir Walter Scott, who took the word and its derivation, according to the New English Dictionary, from Edward Burt’s Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland, together with its erroneous derivation from “haunch.” The word is, in this sense, used as synonymous with “gillie,” the faithful personal follower of a Highland chieftain, the man who stands at his master’s “haunch,” ready for any emergency. It is this sense that usually survives in modern usage of the word, where it is often used of an out-and-out adherent or partisan, ready to do anything.