in botany: A genus of plants of the class of polygamia, and order of monoeia; and in the natural system arranged under the 10th order, Coronariae. There is no calyx; the corolla has five petals; there are six stamens; the hermaphrodite flowers have three pistils and three capsules. There are three species, none of which are natives of Britain.
The most important is the album, or hellebore, the root of which is perennial, about an inch thick, externally brown, internally white, and beset with many strong fibres; the Veratum stalk is thick, strong, round, upright, hairy, and usually rises four feet in height: the leaves are numerous, very large, oval, entire, ribbed, plaited, without footstalks, of a yellowish green colour, and surround the stem at its base: the flowers are of a greenish colour, and appear from June to August in very long, branched, terminal spikes.
It appears from various instances, that every part of the plant is extremely acid and poisonous, as its leaves and even seeds prove deleterious to different animals.
The ancients, though sufficiently acquainted with the virulence of their white hellebore, were not deterred from employing it internally in several diseases, especially those of a chronic and obstinate kind, as mania, melancholia, hydrophobia, elephantiasis, epilepsy, vitiligo, lepra, rabies canina, &c. They considered it the safer when it excited vomiting, and Hippocrates wished this to be its first effect. To those of weak constitutions, as women, children, old men, and those labouring under pulmonary complaints, its exhibition was deemed unsafe; and even when given to the robust, it was thought necessary to moderate its violence by different combinations and preparations; for it was frequently ordered to effect a cure, not only by its immediate action upon the prime via, but when no sensible evacuations was promoted by its use.
Greding employed it in a great number of cases of the manic and melancholic kind; the majority of these, as might be expected, derived no permanent benefit; several, however, were relieved, and five completely cured by this medicine. It was the bark of the root, collected in the spring, which he gave in powder, beginning with one grain: this dose was gradually increased according to its effects. With some patients one or two grains excited nausea and vomiting, but generally eight grains were required to produce this effect, though in a few instances a ferule and even more was given.
Veratum has likewise been found useful in epilepsy, and other convulsive complaints; but the diseases in which its efficacy seems least equivocal, are those of the skin; as scabies and different prurient eruptions, herpes, morbus pediculosus, lepra, scrofula, &c., and in many of these it has been successfully employed both internally and externally.
As a powerful stimulant, and irritating medicine, its use has been referred to only in desperate cases, and then it is first to be tried in very small doses in a diluted state, and to be gradually increased according to the effects.