HELLEBORUS. HELLEBORE. A genus of the polygynia order, belonging to the pentandria class of plants; and in the natural method ranking under the 26th order, Multiflora. There is no calyx; but five or more petals; the nectaria are bilabiated and tubular; the capsules polyspermous, and a little erect.
Species. The most remarkable species of this plant is the niger, commonly called Christmas rose. It hath roots composed of many thick fleshy spreading fibres, crowned by a large cluster of lobed leaves, consisting each of seven or eight obtuse fleshy lobes, united to one foot-stalk; and between the leaves several thick fleshy flower-stalks three or four inches high, surmounted by large beautiful white flowers of five roundish petals, and numerous filaments, appearing in winter, about or soon after Christmas.
Culture. This plant may be propagated either by feeds or parting the roots. It prospers in the open borders, or may be planted in pots to move when in bloom in order to adorn any particular place; but it always flowers fairest and most abundantly in the front of a warm sunny border. The plants may be removed, and the roots divided for propagation, in September, October, or November; but the sooner in autumn it is done, the stronger will the plants flower at their proper season.
Use. The root of this plant was anciently used as a cathartic. The taste of it is acrid and bitter. Its acrimony, as Dr Grew observes, is first felt on the tip of the tongue, and then spreads itself immediately to the middle, without being much perceived in the intermediate part. On chewing the root for a few minutes, the tongue seems benumbed, and affected with a kind of paralytic stupor, as when burnt by eating any thing too hot. The fibres are more acrimonious than the head of the root from whence they issue. Black hellebore root, taken from 15 to 30 grains, proves a strong cathartic; and, as such, has been celebrated for the cure of maniacal and other disorders proceeding from what the ancients called the airabilis; in which cases, medicines of this kind are doubtless occasionally of use, though they are by no means possessed of any specific power. It does not however appear, that our black hellebore acts with so much violence as that of the ancients; whence many have supposed it to be a different species of plant: and indeed the descriptions which the ancients have left us of their hellebore, do not agree with those of any of the sorts usually taken notice of by modern botanists. Another species has been discovered in the eastern countries, which Tournefort distinguishes by the name of helleborus niger orientalis, amplissimo folio, caule prostrato, flore purpurascente, and supposes to be the true ancient hellebore, from its growing in plenty about mount Olympus, and in the island of Anticyra, celebrated of old for the production of this antimaniacal drug: he relates, that a scruple of this sort, given for a dose, occasioned convulsions.—Our hellebore is at present looked upon principally as an alterative; and in this light is frequently employed, in small doses, for attenuating viscid humours, promoting the uterine and urinary discharges, and opening
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Hellen inveterate obstructions of the remoter glands. It often proves a powerful emmenagogue in plethoric habits, where stool is ineffectual or improper. In some parts of Germany, a species of black hellebore has been made use of, which frequently produced violent, and sometimes deleterious, effects. It appears to be the fetid kind of Linnaeus, called in English sentlewort, setterwort, or bastard hellebore. The roots of this may be distinguished from those of the true kind, by their being less black.