# White hellebore (Veratrum album)

**Elleboro bianco**

**Known today as.** *Veratrum album*, false hellebore, of the family Melanthiaceae, unrelated to black hellebore (Ranunculaceae).

Kind: Plant  
Poisoning: Aconitine poisoning (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/aconitine)  
Toxic: yes

> **Caution.** 

## What did Canale use it for?

“So much used by Exorcists,” as a vomit; Canale warns that its violence can kill and prescribes careful infusion; its root in the oil for the bewitched (chs. 2, 5, 9).

## What does modern science say?

Its alkaloids cause vomiting, slow the heart, and drop the blood pressure; deaths from it are still recorded. Canale’s alarm is fully justified.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **protoveratrine A**: 
- **veratridine**: 
- **jervine**: 

**Mechanism.** The veratrum alkaloids hold open sodium channels and trigger the reflex that drops the heart rate and blood pressure.

**Dose.** One to two grams of the root; the plant is mistaken for gentian in the Alps each year.

**Standing.** Veratrum alkaloids were used for high blood pressure until the 1950s; none now.

## What lore surrounds it?

Folkard tells how Melampus learned the purge from goats that had fed on hellebore and cured the mad daughters of Prœtus, after which “Black Hellebore was used to purify houses, and to hallow dwellings, and the ancients entertained the belief that by strewing or perfuming their apartments with this plant, they drove away evil spirits.” The root was dug with rites: “the devotee first drawing a circle round the plant with a sword, and then, turning to the east, offering a prayer to Apollo and Æsculapius,” while an eagle overhead “was considered so ominous as to predict the certain death of the persons who took up the plant.” Hellebore “was thought to cure such as seemed to be possessed with the Devil, and therefore was by some called Fuga Dæmonum,” and the Anticyra of the proverb Naviga ad Anticyram grew it in abundance.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Antiquity.** The “white” hellebore of the Greeks, an emetic rather than a purge, shared the Anticyra trade with the black; the two plants are unrelated.

## Sources

- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Hellebore.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Nelson, L. S., et al. (2007). *Handbook of Poisonous and Injurious Plants*.

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*White hellebore.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/white-hellebore

Historical description, not medical advice.