Scopolamine or hyoscine is an alkaloid obtained from plants of the Solanaceae or potato family, most notably belladonna. Its effects on the body are very similar to those of its first cousin, atropine, but scopolamine has far more pronounced effects on the brain that have served as the basis for its many uses over the years.
During World War II, it was of obvious military importance to find drugs useful for the prevention of motion sickness, in order to maintain the combat-readiness of troops traveling by sea or air. In controlled studies of drugs, scopolamine was found to be most effective in averting the dizziness, nausea, and vomiting associated with violent trips of short (four- to six-hour) duration. Today, a scopolamine-containing patch (Transderm-Scop) is available. When placed behind one ear, it provides anti-motion sickness protection for 72 hours. As is the case with other anti-motion sickness drugs, scopolamine is most effective when used to prevent and not to relieve an unpleasant mid-trip event.
For the first six decades of the twentieth century, scopolamine was administered in combination with morphine to produce “twilight sleep” for obstetrical anesthesia. This drug combination produces marked drowsiness without the loss of consciousness and without pain or unpleasant recollection of the traumas of childbirth. It fell into disfavor because these drugs often greatly depressed the newborn’s nervous system and erased the mother’s experience of childbirth.
Other bygone medical uses of scopolamine that capitalized upon its anticholinergic effects on the brain included the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and as an ingredient in nonprescription sleep-aid products. Scholarly analysis provides evidence that extracts of belladonna were among the major ingredients in witches’ flying ointments that were generously applied to the body. High doses of scopolamine can produce hallucinations, which may have produced sensations that simulated flying and those associated with attending and participating at a Sabbat or Black Mass.
SEE ALSO Witches’ Flying Ointments (1456), Belladonna (1542), Atropine (1831).
During adaptation to weightlessness, some one-half of space travelers experience “space sickness,” a condition related to motion sickness. Scopolamine has been used for decades to effectively prevent motion sickness and is commonly used as a transdermal patch placed behind the ear.