_K. Henry._ The united vessel of their blood, Mingled with venom of suggestion-- As, force perforce, the age will pour it in-- Shall never leak, though it do work as strong As Aconitum or rash gunpowder. _2nd King Henry IV_, act iv, sc. 4 (44). There is another place in which it is probable that Shakespeare alludes to the Aconite; he does not name it, but he compares the effects of the poison to gunpowder, as in the passage above. _Romeo._ Let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins, That the life-weary taker may fall dead And that the trunk may be discharged of breath As violently as hasty powder fired Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb. _Romeo and Juliet_, act v, sc. 1 (59). The plant here named as being as powerful in its action as gunpowder is the Aconitum Napellus (the Wolf's bane or Monk's-hood). It is a member of a large family, all of which are more or less poisonous, and the common Monk's-hood as much so as any. Two species are found in America, but, for the most part, the family is confined to the northern portion of the Eastern Hemisphere, ranging from the Himalaya through Europe to Great Britain. It is now found wild in a few parts of England, but it is certainly not indigenous; it was, however, very early introduced into England, being found in all the English vocabularies of plants from the tenth century downwards, and frequently mentioned in the early English medical recipes. Its names are all interesting. In the Anglo-Saxon Vocabularies it is called _thung_, which, however, seems to have been a general name for any very poisonous plant;[10:1] it was then called Aconite, as the English form of its Greek and Latin name, but this name is now seldom used, being, by a curious perversion, solely given to the pretty little early-flowering Winter Aconite (_Eranthis hyemalis_), which is not a true Aconite, though closely allied; it then got the name of Wolf's-bane, as the direct translation of the Greek _lycoctonum_, a name which it had from the idea that arrows tipped with the juice, or baits anointed with it, would kill wolves and other vermin; and, lastly, it got the expressive names of Monk's-hood[10:2] and the Helmet-flower, from the curious shape of the upper sepal overtopping the rest of the flower.