PHARMACOPCEIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
STRAMONIUM 
Datura stramonium is now found throughout most parts of the 
temperate civilized world. It was found in America, where the set- 
tlers near Jamestown, Virginia, used it as a pot herb, the resulting 
deaths so advertising it as to create the common name, still in use, 
Jamestown or Jimson weed. De Candolle (186) decided that stra- 
monium was indigenous to the Old World, probably bordering the Cas- 
pian Sea, but not of India nor yet of Europe at the time of the clas- 
sical period. The herb has been a pain-relieving favorite in domestic 
American medicine, in the form of a poultice or ointment made from 
the pulp of the bruised green leaves, to ease the pains of bites and 
stings of insects. The dried leaf is also smoked, for the relief of 
asthma. The domestic use of stramonium in these directions led the 
early American physician to its employment both internally and ex- 
ternally. (See Hyoscyamus.) 
STROPHANTHUS 
The genus Strophanthus, which produces this drug, is chiefly 
African, belonging to the apocynacez and the tribe echitidez of this 
order, distinguished from the other tribes of the order chiefly from 
having the anthers united after the manner of the asclepiadacex. In- 
dex Kewensis mentions seventeen species, Bentham and Hooker 
eighteen species, Pax (495) twenty-five species, and the genus is being 
rapidly augmented as the flora of Africa becomes better known. Plants 
of the genus have usually woody stems, emitting a milky juice when 
wounded, and are generally twining vines. The seed of commerce is 
probably collected from various species indiscriminately, which have 
been classified and differentiated by Pax (495), Planchon (512), Hart- 
wich (304), Holmes (322), Blondel (80), and others. Space will 
permit us to mention only the two species which are acknowledged to 
be the principal source of the drug. 
Strophanthus hispidus, D. C., was one of four species described 
by De Candolle as early as 1802, and is the species to which the drug 
was first ascribed. Its habitat is Senegambia and Guinea and other 
parts of Western Africa. The stem is a twining, milky shrub, with 
opposite hirsute leaves. (Hence the name hispidus, Latin for bristly, 
hairy.) The seed, which bears a slender style terminating in a plumose 
pappus consisting of long hairs,* is the part used in medicine. 
As stated before, the genus strophanthus was established by De 
Candolle as far back as the year 1802. It was not until the early 
sixties, however, that the drug came to the general notice of Euro- 
peans as being one of the arrow poisons used among the African native 
tribes, there being two kinds of arrow poisons derived from this 
source. A poison was prepared on the west coast of Africa (Sene- 
gambia, Guinea, and Gaboon) called ince or onaye, which is derived 
* Hartwich calls special attention to the fact that the hairs of strophanthus seed are 
very sensitive to moisture, spreading horizontally in dry air, and becoming erect in moist 
atmosphere. He Suggests that the pappus would thus make an hygrometer sufficiently 
Sensitive for practical purposes. 
