In order to secure a beneficial result, due precautions must be taken not to administer hellebore in cloudy weather; for if given at such a time, it is sure to be productive of excruciating agonies. Indeed there is no doubt that summer is a better time for giving it than winter: the body too, by an abstinence from wine, must be prepared for it seven days previously, emetics being taken on the fourth and third days before, and the patient going without his evening meal the previous day. White hellebore, too, is administered in a sweet[1] medium, though lentils or pottage are found to be the best for the purpose. There has been a plan also, lately discovered, of splitting a radish, and inserting the hellebore in it, after which the sections are pressed together; the object being that the strength of the hellebore may be incorporated with the radish, and modified thereby.

At the end of about four hours it generally begins to be brought up again; and within seven it has operated to the full extent. Administered in this manner, it is good for epilepsy, as already[2] stated, vertigo, melancholy, insanity, delirium, white elephantiasis, leprosy, tetanus, palsy, gout, dropsy, incipient tympanitis, stomachic affections, cynic spasms,[3] sciatica, quartan fevers which defy all other treatment, chronic coughs, flatulency, and recurrent grippings in the bowels.