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

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The lettuce, which has not been known to us three hundred years, was also known to the ancients, and its narcotic properties recognized. Dioscorides writes of it, and so also Theophrastus. It is referred to by Galen, and, if we mistake not, spoken of by Pliny. It was certainly wild, in some of its species, on the hills of Greece, and was cultivated for the tables of the salad-loving Greeks and Romans. It had been better that some of them had spent more of their time in eating lettuce salads, and by that means had less time to spare for other occupations of a far more reprehensible kind.

The “nepenthes” of Homer has already been shown to have found a representative in hemp. There have also been claims made for considering it as the crocus, or the stigmas of that flower known to us as saffron. Pliny states that it has the power of allaying the fumes of wine, and preventing drunkenness; and it was taken in drink by great winebibbers, to enable them to drink largely without intoxication. Its properties are of a peculiar character, causing, in large doses, fits of immoderate laughter. The evidence in favour of this being the true “nepenthes” is, however, we consider very incomplete, and not so satisfactory, by any means, as that given on behalf of the Indian hemp.