This article explores the early modern understanding of the gut-mind relationship through a study of the beliefs and practices surrounding the hellebore plant in seventeenth-century England. Hellebore has been strongly associated with mental illness for most of recorded European history, and it is only during the past two centuries that it has lost this association. Taking a phenomenological approach, I demonstrate that the study of this specific plant, its representations, and its practices is significant not just to plant folklorists and medical historians but also to wider histories of culture, religion, emotion, and the body. The use of hellebore as a treatment for disorders of the mind reveals a fully embodied view of emotion in which the gut played a key role in shaping subjective experience. It also reflects a potently negative understanding of emotion as excremental matter, as something inherently impure, dangerous, and evil, warranting a violent remedy that was as punitive as it was therapeutic. By analyzing medical sources—herbals, pharmacopoeias, practitioners’ casebooks, and domestic receipt books—alongside devotional literature and religious polemic, I show that hellebore's symbolic importance was inseparable from its practical use as a treatment for mental illness, which depended upon an understanding of emotion and religious identity that accorded vital significance to the relationship between belly and brain.

本文通过对 17 世纪英格兰黑黎草植物的信仰和实践的研究，探讨了现代早期对肠道-心灵关系的理解。在欧洲历史记载的大部分时间里，藜芦一直与精神疾病密切相关，只是在过去的两个世纪里，它才失去了这种联系。采用现象学方法，我证明了对这种特定植物、其表现形式和实践的研究不仅对植物民俗学家和医学历史学家具有重要意义，而且对更广泛的文化、宗教、情感和身体历史也具有重要意义。使用藜芦作为治疗精神障碍的方法揭示了一种完全体现的情绪观，其中肠道在塑造主观体验方面发挥了关键作用。它还反映了一种对情绪作为排泄物的负面理解，作为一种天生不纯、危险和邪恶的东西，需要一种既具有治疗性又具有惩罚性的暴力疗法。通过分析医学资源——草药、药典、从业者的案例手册和国内收据书——以及灵修文献和宗教论战，我表明，藜芦的象征意义与其作为治疗精神疾病的实际应用密不可分，这取决于对情感和宗教认同对腹部和大脑之间的关系具有至关重要的意义。