Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

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From Pæon sprung, their patron-god imparts

To all the Pharian race his healing arts.”

Pope’s Homer’s Odyssey, b. iv.

Diodorus Siculus states that the Egyptians laid much stress on the circumstance that the plant used by Helen had been given her by a woman of Egyptian Thebes, whence they argued that Homer must have lived amongst them, since the women of Thebes were celebrated for possessing a secret whereby they could dissipate anger or melancholy. This secret is supposed to have been a knowledge of the narcotic properties of hemp. The plant was known to the Romans, and largely used by them in the time of Pliny for the manufacture of cordage, and there is scarce a doubt that they were acquainted with its other properties. Galen refers to the intoxicating power of hemp, for he relates that in his time it was customary to give hemp-seed to the guests at banquets as a promoter of hilarity and enjoyment. Slow poisons and secret poisoning was an art with which the Romans were not at all unfamiliar. What the medium was through which they committed these criminal acts, can only be conjectured from the scanty information remaining. Hemp, or opium, or both, may have had some share in the work, since the poppy was sacred to Somnus, and known to possess narcotic properties.