However, don’t overdose, or else you may find yourself behaving erratically and bound in psychotic delirium. The lady casts a spell of madness so deadly, humans are rendered powerless, many of them ending in comatose states. Ancient people have whispered and scrawled about her in mysterious herb books and apothecary encyclopedias with nicknames like “The Death Cherry,” “Sorcerer’s berries,” “Murderer’s berries,” “The Devil’s berry,” “The beautiful death,” “naughty man’s cherries,” “devil’s herb,” and “dwayberry,” as per the Slate magazine.
In the woodlands and lush rainforests of Eurasia, the trees are slung with luscious little berries that are known to cause death and hysteria. Hailed as the “Queen of poisons,” Belladonna has these dark, inky, bell-shaped flowers whose berries are the size of a blueberry, each laced with vicious poison. Don’t touch the leaves either. Measuring around 15 centimetres, its long leaves are just as poisonous, enough to kill an adult in a single rub of flesh. Even honeybees and bumblebees that arrive to sip their amorous nectar end up tainting their honeypots with venom.
A magnificent chemistry enables Belladonna to do what many doctors are incapable of doing. The tropane alkaloids stitched inside its pulp can repel insects that try to eat it. In humans, these alkaloids can help offer relief from muscle aches, back pains, digestive issues, and extremely dry mouth. In the Mediterranean, people use it to make cosmetics and medicines. Take Cleopatra, for instance. She sought help from Belladonna’s purple berries to make her eyes look bigger and beautiful. Long-term exposure, however, can cause vision problems.
Writing in a Greek treatise on plants, the “Father of botany,” a.k.a. Theophrastus, recommended it as a remedy for sleeplessness and also as an ingredient for a love potion, according to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. In 1803, Edinburgh’s Andrew Duncan described it as a cure for conditions like epilepsy, mania, or melancholy. Another chemical, called “scopolamine,” in Belladonna is highly effective at reducing body secretions such as stomach acid, thereby helping with motion sickness. Healthline says that it is sometimes also used as a nutritional supplement for colds, fevers, and inflammation. The Indian system of Ayurveda often uses these berries, crushed into powder, for treating muscle pains, excessive sweating, bloating, insomnia, and respiratory distress, per Planet Ayurveda.
However, since Belladonna has not been tested as a herbal supplement by the FDA, it should not be consumed without the advice of a doctor. Take a cue from the doctors of medieval times. When they fed their patients these purple berries, the patients went bonkers and started behaving erratically. So, even though many eye doctors today use this berry to dilate their patients’ pupils, others are afraid of bringing this into the treatment, or else they may end up getting labelled as sorcerers.
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