STRAMONIUM, in medicine, a drug obtained from the leaves and seeds of the Datura stramonium. Both contain an alkaloid known as daturine. From the seeds is made extractum stramonii. The tinctura stramonii is made from the leaves. The physiological action of stramonium resembles that of belladonna, except that stramonium relaxes to a greater extent the unstriped muscle of the bronchial tubes; for this reason it is used in asthma to relieve the bronchial spasm. Cigarettes made of stramonium leaves may be smoked or the tincture may be taken internally. Frequently the leaves powdered together with equal quantities of the powdered leaves of the Cannabis Indica and lobelia mixed with potassium nitrate are burned in an open dish. The preparation gives off dense fumes which afford great relief to the asthmatic paroxysm. Numerous patent " cures " for asthma contain these ingredients in vaiying proportions. Daturine is used as daturinae sulphas. In acute mania it acts like hyoscyamine in producing sleep. In large doses stramonium is a narcotic poison producing the well-marked stages of exaltation of function, diminution of functional activity, and later loss of function, sinking into coma and paralysis.
STRANG, WILLIAM (1850–), English painter and engraver, was born at Dumbarton, N.B., on the 13th of February
1859, the son of Peter Strang, builder. He was educated at
the Dumbarton Academy, and worked for fifteen months in the
counting-house of a firm of shipbuilders. He went to London
in 1875 when he was sixteen, and studied his art under Alphonse
Legros at the Slade School for six years. Strang became
assistant master in the etching class, and himself followed this
art with great success. He was one of the original members
of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, and exhibited at their
first exhibition in 1881. Some of his early plates were published
in the Portfolio and other art magazines. He worked in many
manners, etching, dry point, mezzotint, sand-ground mezzotint,
and burin engraving, and invented a draw-burin of his own.
Lithography and wood-cutting were also used by him to reproduce his abundant imaginings. He cut a large wood-
engraving of a man ploughing, that has been published by the
Art for Schools Association. A privately produced catalogue
of his engraved work contains more than three hundred items.
Amongst his earlier works " Tinkers," " St Jerome," " A
Woman washing her Feet," an " Old Book-stall with a man
lighting his pipe from a flare," and " The head of a Peasant
Woman," on a sand-ground mezzotint, may be remembered.
Later plates such as " Hunger," " The Bachelor's End " and
" The Salvation Army " cannot be forgotten. Some of his
best etchings have been in series; one of the earliest, illustrating William Nicholson's ballad of " Aken Drum," is remarkable for delicate and clear workmanship in the shadow tones, showing great skill and power over his materials, and for strong
drawing. Another good series was the " Pilgrim's Progress,"
revealing austere sympathy with Bunyan's teaching. Coleridge's
" Ancient Mariner " and Strang's own " Allegory of Death "
and the " Plowman's Wife," have served him with suitable
imaginative subjects. Some of Rudyard Kipling's stories
have been illustrated by him, too, and Strang's portrait of
Kipling has been one of his most successful portrait plates.
Other good etched portraits are of Mr Ernest Sichel, fine as a
Vandyck and of Mr J. B. Clark, with whom Strang collaborated in illustrating Baron Munchausen and Sinbad the Sailor
and Ali Baba, published in 1895 and 1896. Thomas Hardy,
Henry Newbolt and many other distinguished men also sat
to him. Proofs from these plates have been much valued;
in fact, Strang's portrait etchings have inaugurated a new form
of reproductive portraiture. A portrait which is a work of art
and can be reproduced a number of times without losing any of
its art qualities is one ideal way of recording appearances, as
such prints can be treasured by many owners. Strang produced a number of good paintings, portraits, nude figures in
landscapes, and groups of peasant families, which have been
exhibited in the Royal Academy, the International Society, and
several German exhibitions. He painted a decorative series of scenes from the story of Adam and Eve for the library of
Mr Hodson of Wolverhampton; they were exhibited at the
Whitechapel exhibition in 1910. Some of his drawings from the
nude model in silver point and red and black chalk are very
beautiful as well as powerful and true. He also painted a number
of landscapes, mostly of a small size. In later years he developed a style of drawing in red and black chalk, with the
whites and high lights rubbed out, on paper stained with water
colour. This method gives qualities of delicate modelling and
refined form and gradations akin to the drawings of Holbein.
He drew portraits in this manner of many members of the
Order of Merit for the royal library at Windsor Castle. In
1902 Strang retired from the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers,
as a protest against the inclusion in its exhibitions of etched
or engraved reproductions of pictures. His work was subsequently seen principally in the exhibitions of the Society of
Twelve, of the International Society, to which body he was
elected in 1905, and of the Royal Academy. Strang was elected
an associate engraver of the Royal Academy when that degree
was wisely revived in 1906. (C. H.*)
STRANGE, SIR ROBERT (1721-1792), Scottish line engraver,
descended from the Scottish family of Strange, or Strang, of
Balcasky, Fife, was born in the mainland of Orkney, on the
14th of July 1 721. In his youth he spent some time in an
attorney's office; but, having manifested a taste for drawing, he
was apprenticed, in 1735, to Richard Cooper, an engraver in
Edinburgh. After leaving Cooper in 1741 he started on his own
account as an engraver, and had attained a fair position when,
in 1745, he joined the Jacobite army as a member of the corps
of life-guards. He engraved a half-length of the Young Pre-
tender, and also etched plates for a bank-note designed for the
payment of the troops. He was present at the battle of Cul-
loden, and after the defeat remained in hiding in the Highlands,
but ultimately returned to Edinburgh, where, in 1747, he married
Isabella, only daughter of William Lumisden, son of a bishop
of Edinburgh. In the following year he proceeded to Rouen,
and there studied drawing under J. B. Descamps, carrying off
the first prize in the Academy of Design. In 1749 he removed
to Paris, and placed himself under the celebrated Le Bas. It
was from this master that he learned the use of the dry point,
an instrument which he greatly improved and employed with
excellent effect in his own engravings. In 1750 Strange returned
to England. Presently he settled in London along with his
wife and daughter, and superintended the illustrations of Dr
William Hunter's great work on the Gravid Uterus, published in
1774. The plates were engraved from red chalk drawings by
Van Rymsdyk, now preserved in the Hunterian Museum, Glas-
gow, and two of them were executed with great skill by Strange's
own hand. By his plates of the " Magdalen " and " Cleopatra,"
engraved after Guido in 1753, he at once established his pro-
fessional reputation. He was invited in 1759 to engrave the
portraits of the prince of Wales and Lord Bute, by Allen Ramsay,
but declined, on the ground of the insufficient remuneration
offered and of the pressure of more congenial work after the
productions of the Italian masters. His refusal was attributed
to his Jacobite proclivities, and it led to an acrimonious corre-
spondence with Ramsay, and to the loss, for the time, of royal
patronage. In 1760 Strange started on a long-meditated tour
in Italy. He studied in Florence, Naples, Parma, Bologna,
and Rome, executing innumerable drawings, of which many —
the " Day " of Correggio, the " Danae " and the " Venus and
Adonis " of Titian, the " St Cecilia " of Raphael, and the Bar-
berini " Magdalen " of Guido, &c— were afterwards reproduced
by his burin. On the Continent he was received with great
distinction, and he was elected a member of the academies
of Rome, Florence, Parma and Paris. He left Italy in 1764,
and, having engraved in the French capital the " Justice "
and the " Meekness " of Raphael, from the Vatican, he carried
them with him to London in the following year. The rest
of his life was spent mainly in these two cities, in the diligent
prosecution of his art. In 1766 he was elected a member
of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and in 1775, piqued by
