BOTANY AS APPLIED TO VETERINARY SCIENCE. 269 
or less poisonous, but the parts chiefly employed in medicine 
are the leaves and root. The former should be collected 
about the time of flowering and carefully dried ; they have 
short foot-stalks, lateral, generally two together, of unequal 
size, broadly ovate-acute, entire, smooth, and soft, four or five 
inches in length, often with hairs on the under surface, of a 
dull-green colour, very little odour, and a slight bitter taste.’^ 
The above characters will enable them to be distinguished 
from the leaves of Solanum dulcamara and Solanum nigrum^ 
with which they are not unfrequently mixed, and sometimes 
entirely substituted. The root, which should be collected in 
the autumn, or early in the spring, is generally about a foot in 
length, from one to two inches thick, branching and fleshy, 
internally white, but when cut and dried, of a gray colour, 
without odour, having a slightly bitter taste. When ana¬ 
lysed, all parts of the plant are found to owe their activity to 
a nitrogenous substance, named atropia, which possesses 
the following characters :—Crystallizes in silky, transparent 
prisms, odourless, soluble in alcohol and ether, very slightly 
so in water, at 212 ° Fahr. it is converted into vapour. 
According to Liebig, its composition is C 3 J H 23 NOg, its 
atomic weight being 289 -^^ 
As a medicine, belladonna is generally used by the vete¬ 
rinary surgeon in the form of an extract prepared from the 
leaves, being their inspissated juice. Professor Morton says 
—‘Mts action is that of a narcotic and sedative, relieving pain 
and lessening both the force of the pulse and the number of 
its beats; hence its use is indicated in all those diseases 
where an undue action of the vascular and nervous systems 
is present, as tetanus, carditis, and pneumonic affections 
generallyIt is sometimes employed with advantage to 
relieve pain by its topical application in the form of the 
extract spread on linen, and its effect, when applied exter¬ 
nally to the eye, is to cause powerful dilatation of the pupil. 
Given in large doses, it produces a laxative effect on the 
bowels, especially in cattle. The dose of the extract is from 
5 j to 5 iij for horses and cattle. 
As a poison, it acts much more energetically upon man 
and carnivorous animals than it does upon herbivorous 
animals. Upon man the effects are of a violent description, 
and many fatal cases are recorded of death being produced 
by this plant in several instances, from the fruit having been 
partaken of in mistake for the black cherry, which it much 
resembles. It first causes considerable excitement, the pupil 
of the eye becoming much dilated, dryness of the mouth and 
throat, numbness of the face, giddiness and delirium, accom- 
