Thorn-apple first drives a person crazy, and then kills him. It is a widespread plant all over Azerbaijan, and I have even come across it in several places in Baku.
Thorn-apple is a poisonous plant. It is rich in alkaloids and is used as a medicine in very small doses. But this plant can be taken on a special purpose, not arbitrarily. In the treatment of asthma, drying the leaves of thorn-apple and smoking it like a regular cigarette prevents suffocation. It has a very strong analgesic effect due to the large amount of alkaloids in the leaves. The infusion of the leaves should not be drunk; it can only be used externally.
Its fruit is slightly larger than a walnut and thorny on the surface. It explodes and its black seeds become visible inside. Those who eat these seeds go crazy at first and do various strange things. For example, they see a light, begin to run after the light they see; they run non-stop, and sometimes yelling. When asked why, they say that the light rose in the sky and so on. These are called hallucinations in medicine. After that, acute poisoning occurs, and if no action is taken, a person can lose his life. Mostly children eat these seeds by accident.
In the Middle Ages, women used to drop the infusion of thorn-apple into their eyes to look more beautiful. The infusion dropped into the eyes enlarges the eyeballs and make women look even more beautiful. Therefore, at that time, this plant was given such names ‘the eyes of beautiful ladies’ or ‘khanimotu’, which means ‘lady’s herb’ in Turkic languages. In the past, this plant was used as a means of preventing insomnia.