ACONITE, or monk's-hood, whose purple flower, shaped like a helmet or monk's hood, is a familiar feature in our country gardens, ranks as one of the most ancient of vegetable poisons. The name aconite was derived from Akon, a city of Heraclea, and the plant, owing to its deadly nature, was supposed by the early Greeks to have originated from the foam of the dog Cerberus. Aconite was largely used as an arrow poison by the ancients, and also employed for that purpose by the Chinese and the wild hill tribes of India. It was used by the ancient Greeks and Romans to destroy life, and they believed they could cause death to take place at a certain time by regulating the dose of poison. Thus Theophrastus writes: "The ordering of this poison was different according as it was designed to kill in two or three months, or a year." The poison cup of the ancients was probably a compound, of which hemlock and aconite were the chief ingredients. This was used for carrying out the criminal death penalty, and also for purposes of suicide when so desired. A curious relic of this ancient custom was practised at Marseilles, where a poison was kept by the public authorities of which hemlock was an ingredient. A dose of this was allowed by the magistrates "to any one who could show a sufficient reason why he should deserve death." Valerius Maximus observes, "This custom came from Greece, particularly from the Island of Ceos, where I saw an example of it in a woman of great quality who, having lived very happy ninety years, obtained leave to die this way, lest, by living longer, she should happen to see a change of her good fortune." Theophrastus states, "Thrasyas, a great physician, invented a composition which would cause death without any pain, and it was prepared with the juice of hemlock and poppy together, and did the business in a small dose." When vice and dissipation were at their height in Rome, suicide was most common, and it was often met with among the Greeks, after they had been contaminated by Roman manners and customs. When the Greeks and Romans recognised the impossibility of suppressing suicide, they decided to establish tribunals, whose duty it should be to hear the applications of those persons who wished to die. If the applicant succeeded in showing what the tribunal considered good cause for quitting life his prayer was granted, and he destroyed himself under the authority of the court. In some instances the court not only sanctioned the suicide, but supplied the means of self-destruction in the shape of a decoction of aconite and hemlock. If any one applied for permission to end his life and was refused, and in defiance of the decision committed suicide, his act was illegal. The Romans in such cases confiscated the property of the deceased; the Greeks held his memory as dishonoured, and treated his body with indignity.