Napellus

A plant with narcotic properties, with which J. B. Van Helmont (1577-1644) experimented. He stated that, having on one occasion roughly prepared the root, he tasted it with his tongue, and in a very short time found that his center of thought and intellect was situated in the pit of his stomach. An unusual clarity and distinctness of thought rendered the experience a pleasant one, and he sought on future occasions to repeat it by the same means, but without success. After about two hours he felt a slight dizziness and thereupon thought in the normal fashion with his brain. But throughout the strange experience he claimed that he was conscious that his soul still remained in the brain as a governing power.

The plant with which Van Helmont experimented was Aconitum napellus, or monkshood, a species of poisonous aconite.

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