| BOTANICAL NAME : Conium maculatum COMMON NAMES : Bad Man's Oatmeal, Cartwheel, Break-your-mother's-heart, Curtains, Devil's porriridge, Devil's blossom, Bunk, Hecklow, Humclock, Cambuck, Kricksie's, Hemlic, Hylic, Beaver Poison, Keckie's, Kex, Musquash Root, Poison Parsley, Spotted Corobane, Water Parsley, Pickpocket, Gipsy flower, Nosebleed, PLANETARY RULER : Saturn ASSOCIATED DEITIES : Hecate The generic name "conium" is thought to be derived from the Greek word "kona" which mean's "to spin" or "to whirl about", because the plant, when eaten, causes vertigo and death. It's Common name is believed to come from the Anglo-Saxon word's "hem" meaning "border" or "shore" and "leac" meaning "leek", referring to the fact that the plant can be found in damp habitat's. The poisonous nature of hemlock has been recognised since ancient time's. In ancient Greece it was a method of execution. In Rome it was taken, mixed with opium, as a method of suicide by life-weary philosopher's. Hemlock's most famous victim was, of course, the Greek philosopher Socrates who was ordered by the authorities in Athens to do away with himself for daring to ask awkward philosophical and ethical questions and thereby corrupting the minds of Athenian youth. The symptoms described in Plato's account of the execution, the 'Phaedo' are those of poison hemlock, that is the slow numbing, first of the extremities of the limbs, then gradually spreading to the rest of the body with full consciousness being <b>...</b> | Views:11 1ratings |
