{"id":2098,"date":"2013-06-03T16:52:01","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T20:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=2098"},"modified":"2013-10-22T10:58:51","modified_gmt":"2013-10-22T14:58:51","slug":"mandrakes-or-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2013\/06\/03\/mandrakes-or-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Mandrakes or men?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to popular legend when the root of a mandrake is dug up it screams and kills all who hear it.\u00a0 Mandrake is the common name for members of the genus Mandragora, it is entirely poisonous and contains various hallucinogenic alkaloids including atropine, scopolamine, apoatropine, and hyoscyamine.\u00a0 One of the interesting things about mandrake plant is the root bifurcation or division of the root into two parts, which look very similar to human feet.\u00a0 This resemblance to humans has been explored in the Bible, literature, magic, and even witchcraft.\u00a0 Literature has seemed particularly interested in this link between man and mandrake.\u00a0 Shakespeare references the connection in Romeo and Juliet when he writes “Shrieks like mandrakes’ torn out of the earth<\/em>” (IV, iii) and even the Hogwarts greenhouse from Harry Potter has mandrakes that look like humans when pulled from the soil and whose cry is fatal.<\/p>\n

Figures de la mandragore plante d\u00e9moniaque<\/em> is a French volume published around 1936 and seems to cover the history, medical uses, legends, and other information about the mandrake plant.\u00a0 It includes these fascinating reprints of engravings of the mandrake in various human-looking forms.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To learn more about the mandrake plant look at Figures de la mandragore plante d\u00e9moniaque. Paris : Chiron, [1936]. GR790.M3 B68 1936x<\/a> located at the Botany Libraries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager, Gretchen Wade, and Judith Warnement of the Botany Libraries for contributing this post.<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. According to popular legend when the root of a mandrake is dug up it screams and kills all who hear it.\u00a0 Mandrake is the common name for members of the genus Mandragora, it is entirely poisonous and contains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4490,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[72744],"tags":[72684,4254,1825,3265,72678,72679,72659,72681,72627,1872],"class_list":["post-2098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harvard-botany-libraries","tag-hallucinogenic","tag-harry-potter","tag-literature","tag-magic","tag-mandrakes","tag-myth","tag-plants","tag-poisionous","tag-santo-domingo-collection","tag-shakespeare"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-xQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4490"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2098"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3103,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2098\/revisions\/3103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}