Stramonium

Datura stramonium is now found throughout most parts of the temperate civilized world. It was found in America, where the settlers near Jamestown, Virginia, used it as a pot herb, the resulting deaths so advertising it as to create the common name, still in use, Jamestown or Jimson weed. De Candolle (186) decided that stramonium was indigenous to the Old World, probably bordering the Caspian Sea, but not of India nor yet of Europe at the time of the classical period. The herb has been a pain-relieving favorite in domestic American medicine, in the form of a poultice or ointment made from the pulp of the bruised green leaves, to ease the pains of bites and stings of insects. The dried leaf is also smoked, for the relief of asthma. The domestic use of stramonium in these directions led the early American physician to its employment both internally and externally. (See Hyoscyamus.)

The History of the Vegetable Drugs of the U.S.P., 1911, was written by John Uri Lloyd.