white hellebore

American  

[hwahyt hel-uh-bawr, wahyt] / ˈʰwaɪt ˈhɛl əˌbɔr, ˈwaɪt /

noun

1. a false hellebore, Veratrum album, with clusters of white flowers, native to Europe and western Asia: now rarely used in medicine, its alkaloids were once used in a number of treatments, as for high blood pressure, but accidental poisoning is due mostly to the plant’s resemblance to an ingestible European gentian.

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Etymology

Origin of white hellebore

First recorded in 1400–50

Example Sentences

The treatment consisted of the application of belladonna and cantharides plasters, bismuth, and lime-water, camphor, and salts of white hellebore inhaled through the nose in finest powder.

From Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by Pyle, Walter L. (Walter Lytle)

Take the brain—we have a disease, and we treat it with white hellebore.

From The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 by Japp, Alexander H. (Alexander Hay)

Flowers of sulphur, two ounces; hog's lard, four ounces; white hellebore powder, half an ounce: oil of lavender, sixty drops.

From Enquire Within Upon Everything The Great Victorian Domestic Standby by Anonymous

They bought five cents' worth of white hellebore, which is a powder, and sprinkled it on the ground in a circle about the stems of the young plants.

From The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. by Shaw, Ellen Eddy

If this does not prove efficacious, dust the under side of the leaves with white hellebore in a powder gun.

From Making a Rose Garden by Saylor, Henry H. (Henry Hodgman)