Science Snippet: Jan. 15, 2016

Do dilated (wide open) pupils make a woman more attractive? Roman women, and later Italian and Spanish women of the Renaissance period, believed that dilated pupils made them more attractive, so they placed in their eyes a tiny drop of an extract made from nightshade plants, Atropa belladonna. (The word, belladonna, is Italian for “beautiful lady.”) The drop caused the women’s pupils to dilate, supposedly making them more sultry and desirable to men. Unfortunately, the belladonna plant is deadly poisonous, so a woman who used a little too much extract may have had a fantastic romantic experience but died in the process. Nightshade plants, from roots to stems, are incredibly toxic, and over the years they have been called “the devil’s herb,” “death cherries,” and “devil’s berries.” Today carefully controlled amounts of chemicals from nightshade plants are found in sleeping pills, asthma drugs, and muscle relaxants. By the way, deadly nightshade is related to the tomato and eggplant. (botgard.ucla.edu…atropa, Aug. 8, 2015; motherearthliving.com/natural-health/deadly-nightshade, Aug. 8, 2015)