NIGHTSHADE. 9,55 



3. Solanum Nigrum. Garden Night-shade. 



Root annual, branched, whitish, bung with numerous small fibres. 

 Stalk above a foot in height, alternately branched, formed into 

 angles by a foliaceous membrane, swelled at the base of each 

 branch, rough, and of a dingy purple colour. Leaves on footstalks, 

 alternate, irregularly ovate, sinuated, or indentated, and clothed 

 with soft hairs. Flowers in a species of umbel, upon a common 

 lateral flower-stalk. Calyx divided into five small short permanent 

 segments. Corolla separated into five segments, which are oval, 

 pointed, spreading, and of a whitish colour. Filaments five, short, 

 downy, terminated by yellow oblong contiguous anthera?. Germen 

 roundish, supporting a tapering downy style, furnished with a round 

 stigma. Fruit a round tivo-celled berry, changing from a green to 

 a black colour, and containing several kidney-shaped yellowish 

 seeds. 



It is common about rubbish, dunghills, and in neglected gardens, 

 producing its flowers during all the summer months. 



The smell of this plant is faint and disagreeable ; to the taste it 

 manifests no peculiar flavour, being simply herbaceous. It appears 

 to possess the deleterious qualities of the other night shades in a 

 very considerable degree ; even the odour of the plant is said to be 

 so powerfully narcotic as to cause sleep *. 



The berries are equally poisonous with the leaves. Three chil- 

 dren, upon eating them, were suddenly seized with cardialgia and 

 delirium, accompanied with spasms, and remarkable distortions of 

 the limbs f: and to poultry they proved fatal in a short time J. 



The plant, or rather the leaves which were boiled and eaten by 

 a mother and four children, produced swellings of the face and 

 limbs, followed by inflammation and gangrene ; but the husband, 

 who likewise ate of this vegetable at the same time, found no con- 

 sequent disorder . 



Its deleterious effects appear still more certain from the experi- 

 ments of Messrs. Gataker and Bromfield ; the latter asserts that in 

 doses of one grain it had a mortal effect upon one of his patients ||. 



* Boccone. Museo di fis. p. 284. + Vide Wepfer De cicut. p. 226. 



J Haller, I.e. Rucker. Commer. Jforic. 1731, p. 372. 



|| It ought to be remarked, however, that Dioscorides and Theophrastus 

 mention it as an esculent plant ; and Guerin (De vegetat. venen. Alsatian, 1766, 



