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STRAMONIUM/strəˈməʊnɪəm/ A mixture of alkaloids used as a narcotic drug. A modern Latin word of uncertain origin (perhaps originally from the Tartar turman, “horse medicine”) identifying a mixture of alkaloids such as atropine and hyoscyamine. It was extracted from the leaves and flowering tops of the thornapple, a narcotic plant better known in the US as jimsonweed because it poisoned colonists at the early settlement of Jamestown in Virginia (“jimson” being a corruption of “Jamestown”). The drug was in the British Pharmacopaeia for centuries as a drug with narcotic and hypnotic effects and had an honourable place there in the treatment of asthma right up to the end of the Second World War; it is still used in homeopathic medicine. It has also been used by various peoples as an hallucinogen. |
Page created 7 Mar. 1998
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