According to myth, Hades had developed a lust for a nymph named Minthe. Hade’s wife Persephone found out and angrily transformed Minthe into a plant to be trampled on. Hades could not undo the spell, but he was able to ease it by giving Minthe a wonderfully sweet fragrance which would be released whenever her leaves were trampled on.
Pluto was not a deity to inspire love, even in the heart of his wife, when, after long waiting, he was able to steal one. Men figured him as a dark and angry god, wto flourished a staff as he drove unruly spirits to their last abodes of gloom. Pluto spent most of his time in the underworld, yet he did visit the light occasionally, and on one of his emergings he saw and loved the nymph Mintho. Now, his wife, Proserpine, watched him more closely than he knew; not that she was fond of him, but, being a woman, she could not endure to divide the affections of her lord. Hence at the first opportunity she revenged the slight he had put upon her by turning her rival into an herb, in which guise she lost some outward beauty, yet still attracted men by her freshness and fragrance.
Of the several varieties of mint, the catmint, or catnip, commends itself especially to the feline race. In an old
belief this herb will not only make cats frolicsome, amorous, and full of battle, but its root, if chewed, makes the most gentle person fierce and quarrelsome."
The mint called pennyroyal, which has value in the rural materia medica because it purifies the blood, disperses fleas, and, smeared on the face with vaseline and tar, keeps off gnats and flies, was used by witches in a malignant medicine which caused those who swallowed it to see double.
Pluto was not a deity to inspire love, even in the heart of his wife, when, after long waiting, he was able to steal one. Men figured him as a dark and angry god, wto flourished a staff as he drove unruly spirits to their last abodes of gloom. Pluto spent most of his time in the underworld, yet he did visit the light occasionally, and on one of his emergings he saw and loved the nymph Mintho. Now, his wife, Proserpine, watched him more closely than he knew; not that she was fond of him, but, being a woman, she could not endure to divide the affections of her lord. Hence at the first opportunity she revenged the slight he had put upon her by turning her rival into an herb, in which guise she lost some outward beauty, yet still attracted men by her freshness and fragrance.
Of the several varieties of mint, the catmint, or catnip, commends itself especially to the feline race. In an old
belief this herb will not only make cats frolicsome, amorous, and full of battle, but its root, if chewed, makes the most gentle person fierce and quarrelsome."
The mint called pennyroyal, which has value in the rural materia medica because it purifies the blood, disperses fleas, and, smeared on the face with vaseline and tar, keeps off gnats and flies, was used by witches in a malignant medicine which caused those who swallowed it to see double.