NEPENTHES/nɪˈpɛnθiːz/
A drug or potion bringing welcome forgetfulness.
This comes from Homer’s Odyssey, in which it was the name of the drug that Paris gave to Helen after he had abducted her to make her forget her old home. It derives from the classical Greek ne–, “not”, plus penthos, “grief”.
Expert plantspeople probably know it best as the botanical name for a genus of tropical carnivorous pitcher plants. As the pitcher plants contain liquid in which the captured insects drown, the botanical name would seem appropriate, though in this case the forgetting is terminal.
Some writers have suggested Homer’s potion was opium. Nicholas Culpeper, the famous herbalist, had this recipe for making a nepenthes draught: “Take of tincture of Opium made first with distilled Vinegar, then with spirit of Wine, Saffron extracted in spirit of Wine, of each an ounce, salt of Pearl and Coral, of each half an ounce, tincture of species Diambræ seven drams, Ambergris one dram: bring them into the form of Pills by the gentle heat of a bath”. That should be enough to make anybody forget anything.
The word — commonly found as nepenthe, lacking its final letter — is otherwise solely poetic or literary. One of its better-known appearances is in Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven: “Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore! / Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore’.” And here’s a slightly more recent example, from The Yellow Claw by Sax Rohmer: “I do not employ opium as an aid to my social activities; I regard it as nepenthe from them and as a key to a brighter realm”.
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