628 SOLAN ACES. 
pitch is used to stop hollow teeth which are painful, and also as 
a pessary in painful affections of the uterus. The juice or a 
strong infusion of the seeds is dropped into the eye to relieve 
pain. Lastly, the seeds made into a paste with mare’s milk 
and tied up in a piece of wild bull’s skin if worn by women, is 
said to prevent conception. Ainslieand other Huropean writers 
upon Indian Materia Medica notice the use of Hyoscyamus 
seeds in India. 
The officinal Henbane of the ancients is generally considered 
to have been H. albus, Linn., and in the Mufaridat-i-Nasari 
the seeds are described as Bazr-el-banj-abiad, ‘‘seeds of white 
henbane.” Pliny mentions four kinds of the plant, the first 
with a black seed, flowers bordering on purple, and a prickly 
stem, growing in Galatia (H. reticulatus) ; the second, or common 
kind (H. niger) ; the third having seeds like Izo, 4. e. “reddish” 
(H. aureus, Linn.) ; and the fourth with white seeds, which is 
preferred by medical men (7. albus). All of them have, he says, 
the effect of producing vertigo and insanity. The Henbane 
seeds brought from Khorasén are those of H. reticulatus. This 
plant has also been sent to us from Quetta, where it grows 
abundantly. H. niger is cultivated at the Saharanpur Botanic 
Gardens, where the extract is also manufactured for use in the 
State Sanitary Establishments. The physiological effects of 
Hyoscyamus are the same as those of Belladonna, which have 
already been described. In certain conditions of the system 
the action of the drug, and especially of hyoscyamine, appears 
_ to be considerably modified, as will be seen from the following 
cases quoted by Stillé and Maisch. “Dr. H. A. Hutchinson, of 
Pittsburg, took } grain of Merck’s hyoscyamine (Phila. Med. 
Times, xiii. 139.) Besides the dryness of the mouth and throat, 
there was intense congestion of the head and face and violent 
c throbbing of the heart and carotids, numbness over the whole 
y and muscular incodrdination, and an inability to walk 
without watching the steps. There was no mental excitement 
or sensory illusion, but an over-powering tendency to sleep, 
; which came on and lasied for 11 hours. Various means 
were used by friends who were ignorant of the.cause of the — 
