NEPENTHE, a name derived from two Greek words meaning absence of grief, and applied to a narcotic drug employed by the Egyptians. Homer relates that Helen of Troy acquired from them the art of compounding the potion. Diodorus Siculus states that the women of Thebes were acquainted with the secret method of preparing it. Poe refers to it as producing forgetfulness : "Wretch!" I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore: Quaff, 0 quaff thin kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!" —THE RAvEs.
William Smith, author of Greek and Roman Antiquities, says of nepenthe, " Among the ancients, au Egyptian drug, which had an exhilarating effect, and which was supposed to obliterate all sorrow from the memory of those who partook of it—thought by many to have been opium." NEI'ENTIaS, the o:ily known genus of a natural order of exogenous plants called consisting of herbaceous or half-shrubby plants with dicecious flowers, natives of swampy ground in India and China, chiefly remarkable for their leaves.
Each leaf consists of a dilated foliaceous petiole, prolonged beyond its foliaceous part, as if it were the prolongation of the midrib of a leaf, and terminating in a pitcher (ascidium), from which the name PITCIIER PLANT has been very generally given to the species of this order. The pitcher is terminated by a lid, which is regarded as the true blade of the leaf. The fluid found in these pitchers is a secretion of the plant itself. Insects often enter the pitcher, and are apparently there dissolved and absorbed; so that the nepenthes would rank amongst the plants called "insectivorous" by Mr. Darwin. Pitcher plants (N. distil/atom() are not uncommon hi our hot-houses.