An introduction to the study of materia medica : being a short account of the more important crude drugs of vegetable and animal origin designed for students of pharmacy and medicine / by Henry G. Greenish.

  • Greenish, Henry G. (Henry George), 1855-1933.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An introduction to the study of materia medica : being a short account of the more important crude drugs of vegetable and animal origin designed for students of pharmacy and medicine / by Henry G. Greenish. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    181/560 (page 153)
    STRAMONIUM STRAMONIUM SEEDS (Thornapple Seeds, Semiua Stramonii) Source &c.—Tlie leaves of tlie tlioiimpple, Datura Htra- munittm, Linn. (N.O. Solanacea-), have already been described (1). 80), and the attention of the student has been directed to the white flower and spiny fi-uit. The latter attains, wlien rii)e, about the size of a walnut, and dehisces septifragally, the lour walls separating from apex to base. The fruit is two-celled in its upper part, but, from the presence of spurious dissepiments, four-celled near the base. It contains a large number of seeds, which are collected when ripe. Description.—Stramonium seeds are of a dull dark brown or, more connnonly, nearly black colour, flattened and dis- tinctly reniform in outline, averaging about ^ inch in length. The hilum is distinct, in the form of a light spot on the concave (or sometimes flattened) edge. The seed-coat is marked with distinct, but not sharp, reticulate de- pressions, and under a lens the whole surface of the seed, both depressions and ridges, is seen to be minutely pitted. Tf , 1 J • T, I'l 1 , <• Fig- 71.—Thornapple seed. If the seed is split parallel to one of Longitudinal section. the flattened sides, the crook-shaped em- showing curved embryo. 1 -I J- IT 1111- Magnified. (Moeller.) l)ryo may be distinguished embedded m an oily endosperm ; in transverse section the embryo appears roimded, and will, owing to its curved shape, be cut at two, or possibly three, different points. The odour of the seeds is scarcely perceptible until they are crashed, then it becomes rather disagreeable; they have a bitterish oily taste. The student should observe (a) The size, reniform outline, and dark colour, (b) The reticulated and j^itted surface, (c) The curved emhnjo embedded in an oihj endosperm. Constituents.—In Ik>'.V.\, two years after the discovery of atropine, Geiger and Hesse extracted an alkaloid from stramonium seeds, to which they gave the name of daturine. I'lauta proved this alkaloid to be atropine, and Schmidt