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

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When the Roman soldiers retreated from the Parthians, under the command of Antony, Plutarch narrates of them that they suffered great distress for want of provisions, and were urged to eat unknown plants. Among others, they met with a herb that was mortal; he that had eaten of it lost his memory and his senses, and employed himself wholly in turning about all the stones he could find, and, after vomiting up bile, fell down dead. Attempts to unravel the mysteries of this plant have ended, in some cases at least, in referring it to the belladonna, a plant common enough in these our days, and known to possess poisonous properties of a narcotico-acrid character.

An analogous circumstance occurred in the retreat of the Ten Thousand, as related by Xenophon. Near Trebizond were a number of beehives, and as many of the soldiers as ate of the honeycombs became senseless, and were seized with vomiting and diarrhœa, and not one of them could stand erect. Those who had swallowed but little looked very like drunken men, those who ate much were like madmen, and some lay as if dying; and thus they lay in such numbers, as on a field of battle after a defeat. And the consternation was great; yet no one was found to have died; all recovered their senses about the same hour on the following day; and on the third or fourth day thereafter, they rose up as if they had suffered from the drinking of poison.