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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
(Nicotiana), tlie potato (Solatium), and several other impor- 
tant vegetables. It owes its pain- allaying’ properties to a prin- 
ciple called Atropine, a crystalline alkaloid, first discovered in 
Atropa belladonna. Though seldom or ever used at present, 
the root of the mandrake was frequently employed, with opium 
and other narcotic drugs, in ages gone by. Theodoric, a pupil 
of Hugo, who lived in Italy diming the latter half of the 
thirteenth century, gives us, in his work on surgery, the fol- 
lowing curious recipe, which shows that he was perfectly aware 
that surgical operations could be performed without causing 
any pain to the patient, by employing certain drugs. His 
indication runs as follows : — “ The making of a flavour for 
performing surgical operations, according to Dominus Hugo : 
— Take of opium, of juice of unripe mulberry, of hyoscyamus, 
of the juice of the hemlock [Gicuta], of the juice of the 
leaves of unripe hemlock, of the juice of the wood-ivy, 
of the juice of the forest mulberry, of the seeds of the 
lettuce, of the seeds of the dock that hath a large apple 
[Datura], each an ounce; mix all these in a large brazen 
vessel, and then place in it a new sponge ; let the whole boil 
as long as the sun lasts in dog-days, until the sponge consumes 
it all. As oft as it is required place this sponge in hot water 
for an hour, and let it be applied to the nostrils of him who is 
to be operated upon, until he has fallen asleep, when the 
operation may be performed.” 
Here we have opium, the narcotic juice of Papaver somni- 
fermn, Hyoscyamus nigcr, Gicuta virosa, and Datura stramo- 
nium, together with the less active lettuce, some of the most 
powerful narcotic vegetables known to us at the present day. 
In 1579, Bulleyn, an English writer, described a means of 
putting patients to sleep, in order to practise the operation of 
lithotomy. He employed the mandrake. And in 1608, Bap- 
tista Porta, in his work on “ Natural Magic,” gives various 
receipts for medicines producing insensibility to pain. Among 
them is one for a “sleeping apple” ( Pomum somniferum), com- 
posed of mandrake, opium, &c., the flavour of which is pre- 
scribed to be inhaled by the nose. In the same work it is 
stated, that certain soporific plants will yield a “quintessence” 
which will overwhelm one with profound sleep. This is not 
surprising, when we know that the Magisterium opii, an extract 
of poppy or sort of impure morphia, figured in the Pharma- 
copoeia as early as the seventeenth century. 
Of late years, the mandrake has almost completely given 
way to the deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) , a plant 
which is well known to have greater power in annulling sensi- 
bility than any plant now in use, unless it be the aconite 
(Aconitum napellus). 
