Chamico
DESCRIPTION
Annual grass erect, glabra, from 05.0 to 1.00 m high, with dichotomous branches.  Leaves petiolate, alternate or subopposed sinuate serrated, broadly ovate, 6-14 cm long by up to 11 cm wide.  Solitary flowers on the bifurcations of the stems, of whitish corolla, 5-6 cm long.  Fruit ovoid capsule 3-5 cm long, 4 leaflet, covered with thick spines, pluriseminate.  Reniform, rough, blackish seeds.  In Doña Dolores it blooms at the end of the spring and it bears fruit and it is found forming machones.  The photos were taken the last week of December 2011.
CULTURE
The chamico is considered a weed of summer crops and its production is discouraged;  In any case, the basic needs, which are valid for D. stramonium and other species of the genus useful as medicinal and ornamental, are the following:
The reproduction is by seeds, which can be sown in spring, in separate lines about 0.70 m., When the seedlings reach around 0.10 m they are thinned leaving a distance of 0.40 - 0.50 between them.
The harvest is done when full flowering is reached (80% of the plants are in bloom);  the leaves of the base that are the most developed and the best looking are harvested, cutting them the petiole and taking them to dry in a ventilated place and in the shade (one way is by stringing them in a wire so that they all have aeration), more or  less as is the case in tobacco drying.  The remaining leaves are collected when the fruits begin to ripen and are given the same treatment.  The capsules are harvested when they are ripe.
Drying should be careful and slow, as mentioned, similar to tobacco, that is: without allowing the leaves to become brittle.  Once the drying is complete, they are stacked with each other and compressed so that they darken and become less fragile.  The ripe fruits are put in the sun and at the time of opening they are threshed;  The seeds must have black color.
USES AND PROPERTIES "The leaves and seeds (herba et semen Daturae s. Stramonii) are officinal; they contain a very poisonous narcotic alkaloid, daturine, which is identical to atropine in its elemental composition and produces the same physiological effects as this.  Certain preparations made with them are used as a powerful remedy for neuralgia, epilepsy, asthma, spasmodic conditions, rheumatism and even for dementia.As a home remedy, only the leaves can be used externally as an aid in poultices and ointments.  Dried leaves are also administered to cure asthma, convulsant cough, etc., by means of vapors and fumigation. The ground seed, as the farmers say, can be used instead of synapisms. "  (sic).
Among the group of toxic alkaloid-type drugs used by the American Indian, the Solanaceae of the Daturas family stand out for the violence of their action.  With them cooked, macerated and known compounds with the names were prepared;  from Huar Huar, Huanto or Guantuc, Maicoma, Natema, Bobachera, Chamico, depending on the region or times.
The various types of daturas or related were used by the Indians for anesthetic, toxic and criminal purposes or as narcotic illusiogens, in dream drinks, mainly in order to place themselves in a "trance" of acquiring metagnomic properties.  In the latter sense they are still used in various tribes of northwestern South America and in several remote regions of Mexico.
As an anesthetic they were employed by the Andean, Peruvian and especially Araucanian Indians.  Among the latter, the anesthesia performed before their operations (reduction of dislocations or fixation of fractures) was performed with the ingestion of flowers of Miaya or Chamico flowers (Datura ferox), which has as active principle scopolamine, accompanied by minimum proportions  of hiosciosmine and atropine, or with the seeds thereof, whose main substance is hiosciamine (according to Professor Dominguez) with small amounts of scopolamine and atropine.  Rosales said in his writings that the narcotic action of such a drug was so obvious that "criminals, if they drink the seeds cooked with wine, feel no pain, no matter how tight the strings."
Among the Araucanians of the South and among the inhabitants of Chiloé, it has been used by sorcerers, for toxic purposes, the flowers and fruits of a shrub called Latue (Latua poisonous Ph.), Described by Philippi and mentioned by Murillo and Gusinde.  In Chiloé it is known as "tree of sorcerers" and its effects are analogous to that of the other Solanaceae.  The lexicographer Luis Cordero indicated in Peru with the name of Huar-Huar a beverage prepared with the Floripondio, whose component was a Datura.
The Chamico was used for toxic purposes by the Indians of Peru, entering the compositions that according to the Spanish chroniclers, give "to kill, stun and freak out."  Father Cobo described how the Spaniards learned these properties of the Chamico from the Indians, in the following terms: "Taking their cooking numbs the senses. They use his Indians to get drunk, and if a lot is taken it makes sense of a person,  so that with his eyes open, he does not see or know, it is quite common to do great evils with this drink, and there has not been much time that happened in this kingdom, that on the way an acquaintance of mine with another companion, this one to steal gave him  to drink Chamico, so the patient went out of trial and was so furious, that naked, in a shirt, he was going to throw himself into a river. They grabbed him like a madman and arrested him, and he was in this way without returning in two days. "
It is still said in popular language in Peru, speaking of a person subject to the will of a woman, who "has been given Chamico."  Valdizan has been involved in several works, of the constant concern of the popular element in the face of certain psychiatric states, since the vulgar often believes that the subject is "achamed" as a result of a passionate revenge.
In the days of the Spanish Colony the daturas were used by the indigenous populace of the cities.  We have found an interesting record of the fact in a Memory written in 1785, by Dr. Francisco Javier Eugenio de Santa Gruz y Espejo, entitled Reflections on the hygiene of Quito.
In it, speaking of "the preparation of spirits", he says: "There are certain houses, (those that by moderation I do not name and that the public and the Government know them well), where spirits are made, which to make them very strong  , they are infused with many acres, caustic and soporific materials.There are also in other stores, which they vulgarly call "Chicherías", where they also make, instead of the simple cornflake, certain musts that only lead them to the nose, shake their heads.
These carry in their preparation, among many simple and very hot, two narcotic herbs called Huantuc and Chamico, which have the virtue of going crazy and disturbing the head.  Look like the fabulous plant said Nepenthe, whose juice - said the ancients - drunk with wine, excited the joy. "
Since ancient times the daturas have been used especially by the tribes near the Amazon, at its western end, for metagnomic purposes.  They use particularly the Datura arborea, known in Spanish under the name of Floripondio, in drinks whose most widespread name is that of Huanto.
Juan de Velazco (1689) says in this regard: "Huanto is very similar to Floripondio, a red flower, with a bad smell and a very different virtue, because it is formidable narcotic, of which the Indians used to pretend visions."  La Condamine says that in July 1743, when he arrived at the town of the Omaguas, he could observe that they used two plants with enervating purposes: the Floripondio and the Curupá, and he says: "These towns get drunk with them, lasting twenty-four drunken  hours, and while they are under their effects they have very strange visions. "
Alfred Simson, in 1886, mentions the use of Huanto, associated with other illusiogens, saying: "Like the Záparo, the Pioje, they also drink the Ayahuasca with the