The Thorn Apple. 143 



the result of this poison. Keat records a case of a man who 

 drank a decoction of the fruit, and became melancholy, lost his 

 voice, his pulse disappeared, and the limbs became paralyzed ; 

 after which madness came on. The smell alone of this plant 

 causes inebriety, and it has been used for the most dreadful pur- 

 poses in eastern countries. Garcias tell us that thieves mix it 

 in the food of those they intend to rob ; and Acosta mentions 

 that abandoned females frequently give it to their incautious 

 gallants. In Java these unfortunate women take it themselves 

 as a stimulus, and are so expert in its administration that they 

 know how to temper it in such a way as to make its efFects last 

 for as many hours as they please. Indian princes have been 

 known to make use of it to render their rivals stupid, and then 

 to expose them to the people to show how incapable they were 

 to govern. Waller observes in his Domestic Herbal that the 

 fumes of this plant received like those of Tobacco have in no 

 instance that he has heard of been productive of any ill effects ; 

 whilst at the same time he says he had often witnessed the most 

 beneficial results from its use in this manner in asthmas and old 

 inveterate coughs. Some persons smoke the Stramonium alone, 

 others mix it with tobacco. The most common method seems 

 to be to make a mixture of one third part of the stalks, fruit, 

 leaves and seeds of it properly dried, cut and bruised, and two 

 thirds of tobacco. This plant is unquestionably a native of 

 America. Kalm says, that in many parts of our extensive coun- 

 try, it is one of the most troublesome weeds that grow about 

 the villages where the land is cultivated, and that it has been fre- 

 quently observed in the earth brought with plants from various 

 parts of our continent. The earliest English writers who have 

 mentioned the Datura, call it the Thorny Apple of Peru. It ap- 

 pears to have travelled through the East Indies and Persia to 

 Europe, as we find the seed was first brought from Constantino- 

 ple to England, and presented to Gerard ; who observes that he 

 made great use of the plant in his profession as a surgeon, not 

 only for burns and scalds, but also for virulent and malign 

 ulcers, apostemes, and such like. This author tells us that he 

 dispersed the seeds of the plant through the land. We have 

 thus a positive proof of the time of its introduction, and that its 

 place is wrong in the catalogue of British plants. It has so far 

 naturalized itself to the English soil, and some think it did so in 



