DHATURA

If food be mixed with the fruit of the thorn apple, it intoxicates.

~ Ancient Indian Text (fifth century A.D.)

The Indian thorn apple, or datura as it is known locally, seems the most indigenous or Indian shrubs, growing wild over the foothills or the Himalayas in rank soil and wasteland. Yet, it probably arrived in India from Greece—where its leaves were thought to have been used for prophecy by the priests or the Delphic Oracle—the seeds buried in the earth that was carried as ballast on trading ships. Another theory suggests the seeds were scattered by the traveling gypsy caravans which moved between India and the plant’s native habitat on the borders of the Caspian Sea. However, when the thorn apple first made its appearance, ancient Indians were familiar with its fruit, and early Ayurvedic physicians were well aware or the toxic properties or the seeds.

The entire plant has properties similar to those of belladonna, only stronger, and. medicines made from thorn apple were administered by Ayurvedic doctors with extreme caution, as an overdose could cause fatal poisoning.

Indeed, by the time the British arrived in India the poisonous seeds of the thorn apple were the drug of choice for homicidal and suicidal Indians, and the annual medical records of territories administered by the British Empire teem

with cases of the criminal use of datura poisoning in murders. Even today, a common reason for death in the areas where this plant grows wild, is among children eating the half-ripe seeds.

The flowers, with their large white corollas, have narcotic and sedative properties, which make them popular intoxicants, but which are administered by Ayurvedic physicians in drugs for patients suffering from cerebral or mental disorders, as well as to allay spasmodic bronchial asthma, coughing fits in whooping cough, and spasms of the bladder.

The datura’s narcotic properties are even more evident in the leaves, which are either powdered or rolled and smoked, for the alleviation of asthma.

Interestingly, for the treatment of hydrophobia (rabies) Ayurvedic medicine prescribes a tincture of datura seeds taken internally. Modern laboratory tests have identified the element which produces datura’s sedative effect as stramonium, and recent articles in western medical journals have urged further studies on stramonium’s effectiveness as a remedy for hydrophobia, on the grounds that no other drug deserves a more thorough and careful trial for treating this dreadful disease, spread by rabid animals, for which medicine still has no cure.

Excerpted from The Garden of Life by Naveen Patnaik.

Illustration: Photograph of the Datura shrub.