The same physician
used hellebore as a purgative on the daughters of King Proteus, who were
labouring under hypochondriasis or melancholy. Bleeding was also a
remedy of very early origin, and said to have been first suggested by
the hypopotamus or sea horse, which at a certain time of the year was
observed to cast itself on the sea shore, and to wound itself among the
rocks or stones, to relieve its plethora. Podalerius, on his return from
the Trojan war, cured the daughter of Damaethus, who had fallen from a
height, by bleeding her in both arms. Opium, the concrete juice of the
poppy, was known in the earliest ages; and probably it was opium that
Helen mixed with wine, and gave to the guests of Menelaus, under the
expressive name of _Nepenthe_, to drown their cares, and encrease their
hilarity. This conjecture, in a considerable degree, is supported from
the fact, that Homer's Nepenthe was procured from the Egyptian Thebes,
whence the tincture of opium, according to the nomenclature of the
pharmacopeia about fifty years ago, and still known by this name in the
older writers; and, if Dr.
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