The poisonous properties of certain fungi were also known. Nicander calls the venomous mushrooms the “evil fermentation of the earth,” and prescribes the identical antidotes which we would perhaps give at the present time--viz., vinegar and alkaline carbonates. 3. =Mineral Poisons.=--Arsenic has been already alluded to. The ancients used it as a caustic and depilatory. Copper was known as sulphate and oxide; mercury only as cinnabar: lead oxides were used, and milk and olive-oil prescribed as an antidote for their poisonous properties. The _poison-lehre_ for many ages was considered as something forbidden. Galen, in his treatise “On Antidotes,” remarks that the only authors who dared to treat of poisons were Orpheus, Theologus, Morus, Mendesius the younger, Heliodorus of Athens, Aratus, and a few others; but none of these treatises have come down to us. From the close similarity of the amount of information in the treatises of Nicander, Dioscorides, Pliny, Galen, and Paulus Ægineta, it is probable that all were derived from a common source. § 4. If we turn our attention to early Asiatic history, a very cursory glance at the sacred writings of the East will prove how soon the art of poisoning, especially in India, was used for the purpose of suicide, revenge, or robbery. The ancient practice of the Hindoo widow--self-immolation on the burning pile of her husband--is ascribed to the necessity which the Brahmins were under of putting a stop to the crime of domestic poisoning. Every little conjugal quarrel was liable to be settled by this form of secret assassination, but such a law, as might be expected, checked the practice. Poison was not used to remove human beings alone, for there has been from time immemorial in India much cattle-poisoning. In the Institutes of Menu, it is ordained that when cattle die the herdsman shall carry to his master their ears, their hides, their tails, the skin below their navels, their tendons, and the liquor oozing from their foreheads. Without doubt these regulations were directed against cattle-poisoners.