_Aconite._[450] This plant, from the deadly virulence of its juice, which, Mr. Turner says, "is of all poysones the most hastie poysone," is compared by Shakespeare to gunpowder, as in "2 Henry IV." (iv. 4):
"the united vessel of their blood, Mingled with venom of suggestion, As, force perforce, the age will pour it in, Shall never leak, though it do work as strong As aconitum, or rash gunpowder."
[450] _Aconitum napellus_, Wolf's-bane or Monk's-hood.
It is, too, probably alluded to in the following passage in "Romeo and Juliet" (v. 1), where Romeo says:
"let me have A dram of poison; such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins, That the life-weary taker may fall dead; And that the trunk may be discharg'd of breath As violently, as hasty powder fir'd Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb."
According to Ovid, it derived its name from growing upon rock (Metamorphoses, bk. vii. l. 418):
"Quæ, quia nascuntur, dura vivacia caute, Agrestes aconita vocant."
It is probably derived from the Greek [Greek: akonitos], "without a struggle," in allusion to the intensity of its poisonous qualities. Vergil[451] speaks of it, and tells us how the aconite deceives the wretched gatherers, because often mistaken for some harmless plant.[452] The ancients fabled it as the invention of Hecate,[453] who caused the plant to spring from the foam of Cerberus, when Hercules dragged him from the gloomy regions of Pluto. Ovid pictures the stepdame as preparing a deadly potion of aconite (Metamorphoses, bk. i. l. 147):
"Lurida terribiles miscent aconita novercæ."
[451] "Miseros fallunt aconita legentis" (Georgics, bk. ii. l. 152).
[452] See Ellacombe's "Plant-Lore of Shakespeare," 1878, pp. 7, 8.
[453] Dr. Prior's "Popular Names of British Plants," 1870, pp. 1, 2.
In hunting, the ancients poisoned their arrows with this venomous plant, as "also when following their mortal brutal trade of slaughtering their fellow-creatures."[454] Numerous instances are on record of fatal results through persons eating this plant. In the "Philosophical Transactions" (1732, vol. xxxvii.) we read of a man who was poisoned in that year, by eating some of it in a salad, instead of celery. Dr. Turner mentions the case of some Frenchmen at Antwerp, who, eating the shoots of this plant for masterwort, all died, with the exception of two, in forty-eight hours. The aconitum is equally pernicious to animals.