Important: Safety Warning
This page gives doses of a plant that is acutely poisonous. Foxglove, aconite, deadly nightshade, henbane, thorn-apple and meadow saffron have all killed at quantities close to those prescribed here, and for several of them the fatal dose is a fraction of a teaspoonful. There is no safe domestic preparation of these plants, no reliable way to judge the strength of one you have gathered, and no antidote you could apply at home. Do not gather, prepare, taste or swallow any part of the plant described on this page.
In addition, this page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Thorn Apple
Description. It has a large divided and fibrous root; the stem is thick, firm, upright, branched, and two or three feet high; the leaves are large, broad, sharp-pointed, supported on short firm leaf-stalks, a little indented at the edges, of a firmish texture, and a darkish green colour. The flowers are produced at the divisions of the stem and branches; they are large and white; the seeds are numerous and kidney-shaped.
Place. It is a native of the southern parts of America, but flourishes very well in our gardens.
Time. It flowers in August.
Government and virtues. Jupiter governs this plant. The juice pressed out of the fresh plant, and inspissated to an extract, has been given in doses from half a grain to the amount of a drachm in twenty-four hours, in epileptic disorders, convulsions, and madness, and proved to be a medicine of singular efficacy in those deplorable maladies, several persons being cured by it whose disorders were both violent and of long standing. An ointment made of the leaves is cooling and repelling.