The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller: The black night shade, Solanum nigrum, was employed as a medicinal plant by Theophrastos more than 300 years before the Christian era, and he and Dioskorides and other ancient physicians distinguished...

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96.06.00b

Plant names

Atropa belladonna
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Euphorbia Drummondi
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Solanum nigrum
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Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to the Australasian, 1896-06 [96.06.00b]. R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora, J.H. Voigt and Monika Wells (eds), Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, <https://vmcp.rbg.vic.gov.au/id//letters/1890-6/1896/96-06-00b-final.odt>, accessed May 15, 2026

Letter not found. The text given here is from 'The black nightshade. ', Australasian, 6 June 1896, p. 1064 (B96.06.05). It is introduced by 'As some recent discussion has taken place with regard to the poisonous qualities of this plant we have asked Baron Von Mueller for on opinion on the subject. The Baron writes:—'.

The article is illustrated by an image of the complete plant, the same plate that was used in B73.07.02 to accompany the published version of M to J. Kerr, 29 March 1873:

The black night shade, , was employed as a medicinal plant by Theophrastos more than 300 years before the Christian era, and he and Dioskorides and other ancient physicians distinguished it clearly from the deadly nightshade, . Through the middle ages it was renowned medicinally, used externally and internally, and the plant held even a place in many pharmacopoeias yet in this century. Before metallic and other mineral medicines came into use, herbs and roots were very much more employed, though many others were added by discoveries in the latest periods, and the doctors of the oldest times had also a very profound knowledge of such vegetable remedies as were within their reach. This was indicated already by a passage in the Aeneis:— Scire potestates herbarum et artem medendi .

To know the virtues of herbs and the skill of curing (Lib. XII, 395).

In a work (which I have in my library) published in 1569 by Professor Dodoens,

M owned two works by Dodoens published in 1569, bound together and now in the library at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne, but neither includes a discussion or illustration of any species of Solanum. A third work by the same author, Dodoens (1574), bound after the other two in the same volume, discusses and illustrates several species of Solanum including (pp. 351-4) S. hortense, which Woodville (1810), vol. 2, p. 197, lists as a synonym for Linnaeus' S. nigrum. Dodoens’ account includes a summary of the views of Dioscorides on the plant's medicinal uses.

physician successively to the Emperors Maximilian II. and Rudolph II., he gives an excellent woodcut of the , and refers at length to its medicinal value as a narcotic. The active principle is an alkaloid, solanin, and when in 1820 this was first discovered by the chemical professor Desfosses, he obtained it from the berries of .

Desfosses (1820).

The experiments on domestic animals by Professor Husemann, as related in his recent great work, show solanin to be highly poisonous.

Husemann, Hilger and Husemann (1882-4), vol. 2, pp. 1154-5.

But such organic compounds are not fully developed in all regions, as climate, soil, and other conditions may affect such plants. Thus a veterinarian surgeon in New South Wales declared in a public document some few years ago that he had fed pasture animals on the without ill effects, although we had here so many fatal cases from this weed among herds and flocks.

Probably Edward Stanley, who in commenting on deaths of horses, from what he believed to be anthrax, at Silverton wrote 'and the disease being attributed to a local cause the bete noir being (which my experiments hitherto have proved to be an innocent weed), misled horseowners as to its true contagious character' (report quoted in South Australian advertiser, 25 April 1887, p. 3). However, while still rejecting poisoning by E. drummondii as the cause of death of flocks of sheep at Bourke later in the year, he was unable to induce deaths by inoculating healthy hoggets with the blood of dead animals, prompting the NSW Chief Inspector of Stock to minute that it would have been better if some stomachs of the dead sheep had been taken to Sydney for chemical analysis (Evening news [Sydney], 5 September 1887, p. 7).

In the great genus solanum some species occur of which the fully-matured berries when cooked are harmless. In my select plants

The current edition was B95.08.04; the edible species mentioned include the tomato and the aubergine.

of such innocuous species of solanum ten are mentioned, inhabiting various parts of the globe. But we have ample evidence of the harmfulness of ; through ages, and also on many occasions in this colony, that it would be best by far to destroy the plant wherever it occurs. In a country so rich in orchard-fruits what use can the tiny berries be, even if it could be foretold that they were in any particular instance of a non-deleterious kind? They may many times have been eaten with impunity, and then suddenly a serious, or even fatal case may occur. Raw, the plant would, if devoured by stock in quantity, be almost sure to be hurtful. Boiled as substitute for some kitchen vegetable, the hot water may remove the poisonous principle largely; but who will run the responsibility of recommending such a spinach, or eating it? Sir James Smith—cautioned that the herb should be administered internally in minute quantities only—seems to have thought that was not a truly indigenous plant of Britain; yet Sir Joseph Hooker admits it as a native of England. Thus, it would appear that the climate of Scotland is already too cold for this species, hundreds of congeners being limited to the warm zones. In Australia no confusion between records on nightshades could have arisen between S. nigrum and . The latter hardly occurs in any garden with us, and I have never seen a strayed individual plant, it being very particular to forest soil with limestone.

See also M to Leader, June 1896 (in this edition as 96-06-00c).