324 PHARMACOPEIAL DRUGS 



Virginia, in their search for "pot herbs," used it with 

 fatal results, thus advertising it so as to create and 

 establish for it the common name, still in use, "Jimson 

 weed," (Jamestown weed). De Candolle (186) decided 

 that stramonium was indigenous to the Old World, 

 probably bordering the Caspian Sea, but that it was 

 not found in India nor yet in Europe at the time of the 

 classical period. Dymock does not mention the plant 

 as a native of India. 



Stramonium has been valued as 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. In this manner it was employed in 

 Kentucky in the writer's boyhood days, (1855-60), "we 

 boys" pounding the green "Jimson" leaves to a pulp 

 and applying them as a panacea to bee stings, bruises 

 and venomous bites. The dried leaf of stramonium has 

 long been smoked for the relief of asthma. The domes- 

 tic use of stramonium in these directions led the early 

 American physician to its employment, both internally 

 and externally. (See Hyoscyamus). At the present 

 time, 1921, this long despised weed (stramonium) sup- 

 plies Atr opine for the American market, the firm of 

 Eli Lilly & Company, Indianapolis, using enormous 

 amounts of the green plant for that purpose. The al- 

 kaloidal content of stramonium (now known) corrob- 

 orates the validity of the empirical uses of stramonium, 

 as announced at an early date. It has been the subject 

 of considerable research, that of Dr. Alfred R. L. 

 Dohme (1893-4) being designed to differentiate the 

 yields from different parts of the plant at different 

 seasons, a feature of his conclusions (Proc. Amer. 



