Belladonna

Common names: Belladonna, deadly nightshade, dwale, devil's herb, love apple, sorcerer's cherry, murderer's berry, dwaleberry, witch's berry, devil's cherry, black cherry, divale, great morel, dwayberry, naughty man's cherries. Once classified as Solanum lethale and Belledonna folia.

Belladonna is a biennial or annual plant with large simple leaves and bell-shaped flowers. The flower tube is five-pointed, dull purple or red-purple, and surrounded by five green sepals. The fruit is a single green berry that becomes purple to black with maturity. Belladonna is occasionally grown in gardens in North America but rarely becomes naturalized. It does not normally persist without cultivation.

Other members of the nightshade family are sometimes erroneously called belladonna.

All parts of the true belladonna are poisonous and narcotic. The leaves and root contain alkaloids; one, atropine, is used to dilate the pupils of the eyes, to facilitate eye examinations and as an antispasmodic in the treatment of asthma. In earlier times in Italy, extracts of belladonna were used by women for the cosmetic value of this dilating effect; such use explains the origin of the common name (Italian, "beautiful woman").

Scientific classification: Belladonna belongs to the family Solanaceae. It is classified as Atropa belladonna.

"Belladonna," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001 http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

History of usage

From the many references of the use of solanaceous herbs in medieval texts, it can be surmised that these hallucinogens were used extensively and recreationaly. It has also been posited that the original witch hunts were precipitated by the increased use of these herbs by the peasantry and the erosion of the churches control over the populace. Belledonna os one of the important hexing herbs of old.

The word nightshade is derived from the Medieval practice of some Italian women using cosmetic eye drops made from this plant to dilate their pupils, and give the eyes a bright, glistening appearance. Large pupils were thought at the time to be a sign of feminine beauty, hence the name bella donna or beautiful woman.

The juice of the berries was also used to stain the skin a dark purplish color.

Belladonna was also an important ingredient in Witches brew during the Middle ages, often being equated with aggressive female sexuality. A flying ointment salve was made from this plant along with others, and rubbed on the bodies of women to experience erotic sensations and hallucinations. In this state the witches would fly to the Sabbat and engage in orgies with demons. It is believed that the legend of witches riding brooms arose from the time when women would rub the flying ointments on their genitals or in their vaginas with a broom handle and then masturbate. It was thought that the ingestion of these ointments would allow transvection (witches flight) to far off places. Experiments have shown that the subjective sensation of flight was a common theme with subjects under the influence of solanaceous compounds, not unlike what was reportedly experienced by witches.

Legend has it that Belledonna is an herb cared for by the Devil himself, and that every night but one he spends leisurely tending his prized plants. Only yearly on Walpurgis night will he leave his herbs to prepare for the witches' sabbath

• A 1324 investigation into witchcraft stated "in rifleing the closet of the ladie, they found a pipe of oyntment, wherewith she greased the staffe, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin, when and in what manner she listed".
• A 15th century account reads: " But the vulgar believe and the witches confess, that on certain days and nights they anoint a staff and ride on it to the appointed place or anoint themselves under the arms or in other hairy places and sometimes carry charms under the hair".
• In 1585, Thomas Lupton was recorded to say: " Dwale makes one to sleep while he is cut or burnt by cauterizing". It is possible the plant was used as an effective, but dangerous anesthetic.
• In 1589 it was recorded that after taking Belladonna "a man would seem sometimes to be changed into a fish; and flinging out his arms, would swim on the ground; sometimes he would seem to skip up and down and then dive down again."
• In 1597, Gerard stated that the leaves moistened in vinegar and laid apon the head would induce sleep.

It was reported that after the flying ointment was prepared, the witch would " ...rub all parts of the body exceedingly, till they look red, and are very hot, so that the pores may be opened, and the flesh soluble and loose. They add either fat or oil so that the force of the ointment may pierce inwardly, and so be more effectual." ( Reginald Scot 1584 ) Inunction ( allowing a drug to be absorbed through the skin ) would allow a lower and more constant level of the alkaloids to be present in the bloodstream.

This plant also has a long history of being used as a poison, being called dwale. That name is either a derivative of the French word deuil, for grief or sorrow, or from the Scandanavian word dool, for sleep or delay.

• During the time of Duncan I of Scotland's rule ( around A.D. 1035 ), an entire army of invading Danes led by King Sven of Norway were poisoned and defeated by Belledonna. There are conflicting legends as to whether the Danes were poisoned by eating meal that had been adulterated with Belladonna, or by drinking a liquor that contained its infusion.
• In earlier times still, the troops of Marcus Antonius were to have been poisoned by belladonna during the Parathion wars.
• A veneficae (a specialist in botanical drugs) often employed belladonna as an ingredient in poisons giving their black art the name of veneficium.

Belladonna was also used during the middle ages by torturers to gain confessions from stubborn victims. This psychochemical torture would confuse and weaken their victims, making them unsure of what was fantasy or reality, what they had done or had merely imagined. Many false confessions were elicited in this manner.

The ancient Greeks knew of the intoxicating effects of this plant, and it was believed to have been added to the wine of Bacchanals to give it a legendary potency. The maenods of the orgies of Dionysus would ingest Belladonna and would either throw themselves into the arms of male worshipers or tear them apart and eat them.

Roman priests were known to have drank an infusion of Belladonna before making supplications to Bellona, their Goddess of War, for a victory in battle.

The Vaults of Erowid

Anticholinergenic Deleriants.

(Psychedelic-Drugs-Reconsidered)

These drugs are not usually regarded as psychedelic , although they have a great deal in common historically, culturally, and pharmacologically with other drugs taken for their mind-altering powers. They are called anticholinergic because they block the action f acetylcholine , a nerve transmitter substance that controlls the contraction of skeletal muscles and also plays an important role in the chemistry of the brain. They are called deleriants because their effects at high doses include incoherent speach, disorientation, delusions, an halucinations , often followed by depression and amnesia for the period of intoxication.

The classical anticholinergic delirients are the belladonna alkaloids: These tropane derivatives, the most powerfull and important of which is scopolamine, are found in differing concentrations in various plants of the Nightshade Family or Solanaceae, among them deadly nightshade (Atropa belladona), mandrake (Mandragora officinarum), black henbane (Hyoscyamus niger), jimsonwed (Datura stramonium, and over twenty other species of henbane and datura.

Of all psychoactive drugs , only alcohol has been in use for so long over such a large part of the world. For thousands of years on all inhabited continents the belladonna alkaloids have been a tool of shamans and sorcerers, who take advantage of the sensations they evok to leave their bodies, soar through the air, or change into an animal in their imagination.

They also produce toxic organic symptoms like headache, dry throat, loss of motor control, blurred vision , and greatly increased heart rate and and body temperature; death from paralysis and respiratory may occur.

The belladonna alkaloids are so terrifying and incapacitating - the physical effects often so unpleasant, and the loss of contact with ordinary reality so complete - that they are used only with great caution and rarely for pleasure. For the same reasons, ironically, they are not regarded as a drug abuse problem and can be bought in small doses on perscription or in over-the-counter sedatives and pills for asthma, colds, and motion sickness.

The Vaults of Erowid: documenting the complex relationship between humans and psychoactivs