DATURAS OF THE OLD WORLD AND NEW: AN 

 ACCOUNT OF THEIR NARCOTIC PROPERTIES 

 AND THEIR USE IN ORACULAR AND INITIA- 

 TORY CEREMONIES. 



By William E. S afford. 



[With 13 plates.] 



During the recent war, when the United States was cut off from the 

 sources of supply of many important drugs, it was found that an 

 excellent substitute for atropine, a product of the European Atropa 

 belladonna, could be obtained from our common Jamestown weed 

 and other closely allied plants belonging to the same genus, Datura, 1 



A critical study of this genus has revealed great confusion in 

 botanical literature as to the specific identity and origin of some of 

 the most common species. Certain authors have confused a well- 

 known plant, endemic in Mexico and northern South America, with 

 the Asiatic Datura metel, a species based by Linnaeus on the jouz- 

 matkel, or metel-nut of the Arabs and the dhatura, or dutra, of the 

 Hindoos. Other authors attribute the origin of the purely American 

 Datura stramonium to the Old World and separate its purple variety 

 from its typical white-flowered form as a distinct species; still others 

 segregate the tree daturas of South America as a separate genus. 



This paper is part of a thesis submitted by the writer for the 

 degree of Doctor of Philosophy at George Washington University. 

 The remaining part, entitled Synopsis of the Genus Datura, was 

 published in the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, 

 vol. 11, pp. 173-189, April 19, 1921. Its object is to clear up the 

 existing confusion and to call attention to the remarkable properties 

 of the various species of this genus, and also to give an account of 

 their use, both in the Old World and the New, as intoxicants and 

 ceremonial plants used for oracular divination. 



1 These plants owe their virtues to certain alkaloids, principally hyoscyamine and 

 scopalamine, contained chiefly in the petioles, midribs, and secondai'y nerves of the leaves ; 

 also in the pistils of the flowers and the germs of the mature seeds. See E. Schmidt, 

 " TJeber die Alkaloide einiger mydriatischwirkender Solanaceen," in Arch. d. Pharm., 

 243 ; 303. 1905. 



537 



