There is no tradition of poisonous properties associated with ebony, as there is with both henbane and yew, but in regard to henbane, a remarkable passage has been found in Holland’s translation of Pliny which was published in London just about the time when Shakespeare was writing “Hamlet.” Pliny, dealing with henbane, says (in this translation): “An oile is made of the seed thereof which if it be but dropped into the eares is ynough to trouble the braine.” Shakespeare must have been a voracious reader, he probably got Holland’s book as soon as it came out, and finding this passage, adopted the suggestion. He was no doubt familiar with the word hebon or hebonus, and chose that for his verse, perhaps without caring very much whether it was a correct interpretation of henbane or not. As a matter of fact, in the earlier editions of “Hamlet” the word appears as hebona. In the folios, which came later, hebonon is substituted, no doubt out of consideration for euphony. It is notable that the player who enacts the murder of the King (Act III., Sc. 2) describes the poison as a “Mixture rank of midnight weeds collected, With Hecat’s ban thrice blasted, thrice infected.” This of course does not correspond with the suggestion that the juice of hebenon was the product of some one poisonous plant. XIX SOME NOTED DRUGS. Who was the first cultivator of corn? Who first tamed and domesticated the animals whose strength we use, and whom we make our food? Or who first discovered the medicinal herbs which from the earliest times have been our resource against disease? CARDINAL NEWMAN: Sermon on _The World’s Benefactors_. The most valuable and original records of the history of drugs are to be found in “Pharmacographia” by F. A. Flückiger of Strasburg and Daniel Hanbury of London (published by Macmillan & Co.). I have as a rule avoided copying details from that work, although I have dealt with no subject without referring to it. In this section, however, the drugs named are of course treated in “Pharmacographia,” and necessarily the facts given must to some extent correspond. But comparison would show that I have only selected subjects which were capable of discussion from a somewhat different point of view from that which guided Messrs. Flückiger and Hanbury.[1] ALOES. Dioscorides is the earliest medical writer to mention aloes as a medicine. According to him it should be given in doses of from half a drachm to one drachm as a gentle purge, or of three drachms if its full cathartic effect were required. The drug is not named by Hippocrates nor by Theophrastus.