Hellebore

Quick meaning: Hellebore is a noun meaning Any of the common garden flowering plants of the genus Helleborus, in family Ranunculaceae, having supposed medicinal properties.

Meaning

Any of the common garden flowering plants of the genus Helleborus, in family Ranunculaceae, having supposed medicinal properties.

More Meanings

1. A toxic extract of certain false hellebores (Veratrum album or Veratrum viride), formerly used as a pesticide.

Example Sentences

Deadly nightshade, henbane, hellebore and mandrakes were of evil reputation[.]

Aretæus recommends moderate venæsection to be repeated, if the patient is plethoric, purging with black hellebore, and in some cases emetics; nourishing diet.

Hellebore is a classic insecticide that has not found much favor in today's pest-control recommendations, though it was certainly effective for its time. In some organic pest-control books information on hellebore can still be found, but by and large its use went out of favor in the 1920s and 1930s.

1998, Plinio Prioreschi, A History of Medicine, Volume III: Roman Medicine, page 122, Then the physician would use the king of remedies, the powerful one, hellebore: […] We suspect that after a sufficient number of administrations of hellebore the patient, if he had not done so before, would declare himself cured.

Word Forms

• hellebores

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include helleborine, elleber, helianthemum, heliotrope, lungwort, heliconia.

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