Belladonna, enchanter's nightshade, apples of Sodom (Atropa belladonna)
Jimson's weed (Datura spp.)
Mandrake (Mandagora officinarum)
SOLANACEAE, Nightshade Family
There are many interesting alkaloids in the Solanaceae, the nightshade family, which have played important roles in history and medicine. Because some European species were infamous poisons and drugs, there was a general reluctance to use some species of Solanaceae that were imported from the New World, e.g., the tomato (Lycopersicon) and white potato and eggplant (Solanum).
Belladonna (Atropa belladonna) was thought to be an herb tended by the Devil himself, except on Walpurgis Night, when the Devil retired to prepare a witches' sabbath. On that night, the plant metamorphosed into an enchanting lady, lovely but deadly to behold. This plant contains potent alkaloids, which can produce hallucinations, so wine for Bacchanalian orgies was spiked with belladonna, which yielded frenzy and hysteria. There were, of course, many evil uses. However, on a romantic note, Italian and Spanish ladies put belladonna in their eyes to cause them to dilate, which made the ladies look beautiful and seductive ("beautiful lady" = bella donna). This occurs because belladonna contains atropine, which is the alkaloid still widely used by eye specialists to dilate the pupils.
Jimson's weed was so named after residents of Jamestown mistook the plant for an edible potherb and had hallucinations from it. This plant is a major cause of many accidental poisonings and some deaths (following coma). Datura is a genus that occurs widely in the Old and New World, and it has been used widely as a medicine and a mind-altering agent. For example, the plant is mentioned in Sanskrit. A concoction of ground seeds with water once was a popular hypnotic agent for thieves and criminals; it was also used in India as knock-out drops, to take advantage of clients, and as an aphrodisiac to lure virgins into prostitution. In the eastern United States, Datura was used in an Indian rite to take a boy into manhood-a boy was fed concoctions and kept in a state of madness for 20 days before being gradually weaned from the toxins. Some American cults used the seeds to quiet unruly children, and also in South America nursing mothers smeared datura decoctions on the nipple as an infanticide. Along the same lines, in Colombia wives and slaves of a deceased master were given datura and buried alive with the deceased.
Each species of Datura has its own characteristic types and amounts of alkaloids, but especially scopolamine, daturine, and stramonine are important. The principal hallucinogen is meteloidine, but this is only really abundant in one species. Scopolamine is a very powerful drug that has been used as an anesthetic in childbirth and as a truth serum. For example, in the film The Guns of Navarone, the British major is given scopolamine by the Germans to "spill his guts" on the secret mission. Michael Landon was turned into a teenage werewolf by injections of scopolamine!
Mandrake gets its vernacular name from the vague resemblance of its root to the torso and limbs of a man or a woman. This was translated into the myth that the plant was to be used for human diseases or as a sleeping drug. Great care had to be taken in extracting this plant from the ground, because there was "a death-dealing shriek" if it was pulled up. The solution was to tie a string to a partially unearthed plant and the other end to the neck of a dog, which would do the dirty work while collectors stuffed their ears with wool to prevent hearing the lethal shriek.
Mandrake was used by Rachel (Genesis) to cure her sterility (or was it an aphrodisiac?). The root was ground to make knock-out drops in olden times, and it was a common ingredient in witches brew and love potions, as well as a popular painkiller in the Middle Ages. Some workers have suggested that mandrake was in the vinegar given to Christ on the cross, which produced the death-like trance while he was being crucified; this was a widely used practice in Palestine during those times.
The active ingredients in mandrake are the alkaloids hyoscyamine, scopolamine (mentioned above), and mandragorine.