Nightshade

Nightshade has a long history of use as a medicine, cosmetic, and poison. Known originally under various folk names (such as "deadly nightshade" in English), the plant was baptized Atropa belladonna by Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) when he devised his classification system. Linnaeus chose the genus name Atropa because of the poisonous properties of these plants. Atropos (lit. "unturning one"), one of the Three Fates in Greek mythology, is said to have cut a person's thread of life after her sisters had spun and measured it. Linnaeus chose the species name belladonna ("beautiful woman" in Italian) in reference to the cosmetic use of the plant during the Renaissance, when women used the juice of the berries in eyedrops intended to dilate the pupils and make the eyes appear more seductive.

Extracts of plants in the deadly nightshade family have been in use since at least the 4th century BC, when Mandragora (mandrake) was recommended by Theophrastus for the treatment of wounds, gout, and sleeplessness, and as a love potion. In the first century BC, Cleopatra used Atropine-rich extracts from the Egyptian henbane plant (another nightshade) for the above-mentioned purpose of dilating the pupils of her eyes.

The use of deadly nightshades as a poison was known in ancient Rome, as attested by the rumour that the Roman empress Livia Drusilla used the juice of Atropa belladonna berries to murder her husband, the emperor Augustus.

In the first century AD, Dioscorides recognized wine of mandrake as an anaesthetic for the treatment of pain or sleeplessness, to be given prior to surgery or cautery. The use of nightshade preparations for anaesthesia, often in combination with opium, persisted throughout the Roman and Islamic Empires and continued in Europe until superseded in the 19th century by modern anaesthetics.