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Ceiminal tendencies

Name: Datura Metel (Datura meteloides aurea)

Otherwise known as: Dhat, Night Trumpet, Tatorea

Habitat: A tree/shrub member of the family Solanaceae, growing up to 8m in waste areas in the subcontinent and the Philippines. The tree has soft green stems with long, spear-shaped leaves and produces night-scented, pendant, pale yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers that can attain 20cm in length. All parts of the plant are highly poisonous.

What does it do: There are 15 members of the genus Datura and they are all dangerous because they contain in different measures the alkaloids hyoscine, hyoscyamine, atropine and scopolamine. Metel like the annual D. stramonium was highly regarded by the Arab physicians of Avicenna and the Indian Ayurvedic practitioners as a treatment for epilepsy, mania and other nervous conditions, however, the ancient chronicles reveal that the treatments were very uncertain and dangerous. If the dosage, which in Asia was extracted from the bark of the root, was exceeded, the result was likely to result in insanity and death.

The first evidence of the use of Datura extracts in modern medicine is to be found in the researches of Baron Storch, the German 18th century physician and chemist who first isolated hyoscine and recommended it in the treatment of hydrophobia, which didn’t effect a cure, but calmed the patient to the point of inactivity. In India the Ayurvedic practitioners used extracts from the leaves to combat rheumatism, whooping cough, asthma, fistulas, haemorrhoids and any painful inflammatory condition. But in parallel to the plant’s medicinal use there is a long history of  criminal activity: the followers of the thugee sect of Kali, known as Dhatureeas, used extract from Metel to overcome, rob and kill their victims by poisoning the food and drink offered to travellers. In Rajpoot, mothers would smear their breast with Metel juice to destroy unwanted female babies.

In Turkey, there was a practice of smoking the leaves as a substitute for opium with sometime fatal results. This practice gave rise to back-packing American students experimenting with the leaf, because it induced extreme hallucinations which again led to some fatalities.

Metel is a highly ornamental plant and some of the best examples can be seen growing in planters on the battlements of many of the grand chateaux of the Loire. The plant was introduced into Cyprus by the Ottomans and may be found in some of the older houses in Nicosia; it is easily cultivated from soft stem cuttings.

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