In 1676, English colonists observed the sedative and hallucinogenic effects of Datura stramonium on soldiers at Jamestown, Virginia, who had ingested what was later popularized as Jamestown Weed or Jimsonweed (left). Other nicknames followed based on this nightshade’s night-blooming (“Moon Flower”), funnel-shaped flowers (“Hell’s Bells” or “Devil’s Trumpet”), each of which, once moth pollinated, are replaced by a spiny ovoid fruit (“Thornapple,” “Pricklyburr,” or “Devil’s Cucumber”). Frustrated in the mid-1880s with nitrous oxide’s brief anesthetic duration, some clinicians supplemented laughing gas anesthesia with herbal sedatives, such as D. stramonium. As enthusiasm waned for herbally supplemented nitrous oxide, physicians continued prescribing stramonium leaves (right)—a perilous anticholinergic slurry of scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine—as an anodyne and an antispasmodic, especially for asthmatic patients. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)
In 1676, English colonists observed the sedative and hallucinogenic effects of Datura stramonium on soldiers at Jamestown, Virginia, who had ingested what was later popularized as Jamestown Weed or Jimsonweed (left). Other nicknames followed based on this nightshade’s night-blooming (“Moon Flower”), funnel-shaped flowers (“Hell’s Bells” or “Devil’s Trumpet”), each of which, once moth pollinated, are replaced by a spiny ovoid fruit (“Thornapple,” “Pricklyburr,” or “Devil’s Cucumber”). Frustrated in the mid-1880s with nitrous oxide’s brief anesthetic duration, some clinicians supplemented laughing gas anesthesia with herbal sedatives, such as D. stramonium. As enthusiasm waned for herbally supplemented nitrous oxide, physicians continued prescribing stramonium leaves (right)—a perilous anticholinergic slurry of scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine—as an anodyne and an antispasmodic, especially for asthmatic patients. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology.)
George S. Bause, M.D., M.P.H., Honorary Curator and Laureate of the History of Anesthesia, Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, Schaumburg, Illinois, and Clinical Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. UJYC@aol.com.
