Mandrake

Mandrake (Mandragora ofiicinarum), a handsome but poisonous plant belonging to the Solanacea? and nearly related to the deadly nightshade. It is a native of the Mediterranean region, and has ovate radical leaves, bluish-purple bell-shaped flowers, one on a stalk, and a fleshy, orange, berry-like fruit. It is truly emetic, purgative, and narcotic, and was anciently used as an anaesthetic, as is alluded to in Shakespeare. From still earlier times the fancied resemblance of the fleshy and often forked root to the human body gave rise, under the doctrine of signatures (q.v.), to a mass of superstition. It was a potent love-philtre and of service in pregnancy, the dudaim of Genesis (chapter xxx.) being undoubtedly this plant. It was potent in all kinds of witchcraft, curing demoniacs, according to Josephus, and even among the Germans being credited with prophetic powers, so that, as might be supposed, the mere possession of the root was lucky. When pulled up, however, it shrieked, and the hearer was liable to madness and the gatherer to death, so that a dog was tied to the plant and the ears were stopped. At the present day the roots of the white bryony (Bryonia dioica) are sold by quacks as mandrakes.