Page:Indian Medicinal Plants (Text Part 2).djvu/165

Rh Uses:— In Hindu medicine, the root of D. alba is boiled in milk, and this milk is administered with clarified butter and treacle in insanity. The seeds, leaves and roots are considered useful in insanity, fever, with catarrhal and cerebral complications, diarrhœa, skin diseases, lice, &c. (Dutt).

It is officinal in the Pharmacopeia of India.

Epithems of the braised leaves, or embrocations formed by macerating the bruised seeds in any bland oil, are often very effectual in allaying the pain in rheumatic swellings, nodes, boils, and tumours (Ph. Ind.).

Vern. : — Dhutura (B.).

Habitat :--W. Himalaya and Mts. of W. Deccan Peninsula.

Use : — Used like the preceding species.

Datura Metel contains scopolamine (hyoscine) as almost the only constituent of alkaloidal nature. The leaves contain 0.55, the seeds 0.50, per cent of scopalamine. — J. Ch, S. 1905 A. I. 717.

The seed contains both hyoscyamine and scopolamine. — J. Ch. I 15. 2. 1911, p. 152.

The Indian plant (seeds and leaves) contains considerably less alkaloid than the European plant (0.23-0.25 as compared with 0.50-0.55) ; in one sample scopolamine was the predominant alkaloid as in the European plant, but another sample contained more hyoxyamine than scopolamine.— [Bull. Imp. Inst. 1911].

In his " Poisonous Plants of Bombay," Lieut.-Colonel Kirtikar writes : —

"The active principle of the plant is an alkaloid once known as Daturine. The seed contains it in larger proportions than any other part of the plant weight for weight. The alkaloid was also known at one time as Daturia. Sohn says that commercial Daturine is frequently a mixture of Hyoscyamine and Atropine or the former solely. Datura stramonium, he says, also contains Stramonine which is an alkaloid like Hyoscyamine and Atropine, but it is not bitter. Hyoscyamine has a sharp and disagreeable odour; Atropine has a disagreeable metallic taste.* Erhirdt and Poehl dispute the identity of Atropine and Daturine, says Sohn. Professor Dragendorff says † that " according to the more recent researches of Ladenburg, henbane contains two


 * See p. 14, Sohn's Dictionary of the Active Principles of Plants, 1894, London.

† Plant Analysis— English Translation by Greenish, p. 60, 1884, London,