The Plant Kingdom and Hallucinogens by Richard Evans Schultes

A wonderfully written book by the Father of Ethnobotany

The plant kingdom and hallucinogens (part I)

"These substances have formed a bond of union between men of opposite hemispheres, the uncivilized and the civilized; they have forced passages which, once open, proved of use for other purposes; they have produced in ancient races characteristics which have endured to the present day, evidencing the marvellous degree of intercourse that existed between different peoples just as certainly and exactly as a chemist can judge the relations of two substances by the reactions."

Lewin

I

The use of hallucinogenic substances goes far back into human pre-history. There have been suggestions that even the idea of the deity might have arisen as a result of their weird and unearthly effects on the human body and mind. Narcotic and other drugs have been reported by many writers in many cultures, since the very invention of writing. A truly interdisciplinary scientific interest in narcotics, however, has developed only during the past century.

In 1855, Ernst Freiherr von Bibra published the first book of its kind, Die narkotischen Genussmittel und der Mensch, in which he considered some 17 plant narcotics and stimulants and urged chemists to study assiduously a field so promising for research and so fraught with enigmas.

A review of the scientific literature of the last half of the past century indicates that von Bibra's suggestions were followed, and an interdisciplinary interest in narcotics began to take hold and grow. It proved to be the spark that eventually engendered today's extraordinarily extensive and complex literature in many fields on narcotic substances.

Half a century later, in 1911, another outstanding book-in reality, a much expanded and modernized successor of von Bibra's work-appeared in C. Hartwich's Die menschlichen Genussmittel. This volume considered at great length and with interdisciplinary emphasis about 30 vegetal narcotics and stimulants and mentioned many others in passing. Hartwich pointed out that von Bibra's pioneer work was out of date, that research on the botanical aspects and chemical constituents of these curiously active plants had, in 1855, scarcely begun but that, by 1911, such studies were either progressing well or had already been completed.

Ernst von Bibra (1808-1878). Courtesy National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland (Negative No. 58-221).

Then, 13 years later, a book of most extraordinary breadth of outlook appeared, written by the famous German toxicologist Louis Lewin: Phantastika - die betäubenden und erregenden Genussmittel. It was soon translated into several languages. The earliest English edition, Phantastica: narcotic and stimulating drugs - their use and abuse, appeared in 1931 and was soon unavailable; a second edition was published in 1964 in response to the growing need for the work in view of the wide-spread interest in narcotics that has developed in the last quarter century. A novel kind of book, basic to what we now call psychopharmacology, it presented the total picture of some 28 plants employed for their stimulating or intoxicating properties the world around, emphasizing their importance to research in botany, ethnobotany, chemistry, pharmacology, medicine, psychology, psychiatry as well as to ethnology, history and sociology. A very humble man, Lewin wrote that "the contents of this book will provide a starting point from which original research in the above-mentioned departments of science may be pursued". And the book has done exactly that - and admirably so. We may truly say that it was Lewin's Phantastika that sparked to-day's intensive and extensive interdisciplinary interest in narcotics, especially in those that we have come to refer to as the hallucinogens.

Carl Hartwich (1851-1917) From Berichte der Deutschen Pharmazeutischen Gesellschaft 27 (1917) facing p. 205. Louis Lewin (1850-1929). Picture taken in the 1880's. From B. Holmstedt in Ethnopharmacologic search for psychoactive drugs (Ed. D. Efron) Public Health Serv. Publ. No. 1645 (1967) 16. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C.

In the years between the books by Hartwich and Lewin, an American economic botanist, William E. Safford, in a series of articles, began to focus the attention of the scientific world on the unusual wealth of narcotic plants employed in primitive societies in the Americas. He called attention to the numerous enigmas in the identification of some of the narcotics of ancient American cultures and, although several of his own attempts at identifying them were later shown to be erroneous, he should justly be credited with pioneering research into the rich field of New World narcotic plants.

II

In the course of his nearly one million years of existence, man must have experimented with most of the plants in his environment. We have no exact idea of how many species of plants there are in the world's flora. There may be as many as 800,000. Estimates for the angiosperms alone - the most conspicuous element in terrestrial vegetation - vary from the usually cited 200,000 to about half a million.

A comparison of the number of species that mankind has found valuable in nutrition with those which he values as hallucinogens may be interesting. Of the vast assemblage of angiosperms, only about 3,000 are known to have been consumed directly as human food. The number that actually feed the human race, however, is relatively very limited, for only about 150 angiosperm species are important enough as foods to enter the world's commerce. Of these, only 12 or 13 stand, in effect, between the world's population and starvation, and these dozen or so plants are all cultivated species.

William Edwin Safford (1859-1926). Courtesy Hung Botanical Library, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The number of plants providing the human race with narcotic agents is exceedingly small, even though there may be many hundreds of species with psychoactive organic constituents. Between 4,000 and 5,000 species are known to be alkaloidal, and constituents other than alkaloids may also be responsible for narcotic and similar effects. One would, consequently, expect that at least several hundred species might be involved. Yet only some 60 species - including cryptogams and phanerogams - are employed in primitive and advanced cultures as intoxicants. And of these 60 only about 20 may be considered to be of major importance. Furthermore, and perhaps significantly, only a very few-the coca, the opium poppy, cannabis and tobacco-are numbered amongst the world's commercially important plants; except for cannabis, they are cultigens unknown in the wild state, and have obviously long been associated with man and his agricultural practices.

While we do not know that there are species of plants possessing narcotic properties which have apparently never been employed as intoxicants, it is true that there have been few cultures - even in the most restricted and limited flora - that have not discovered or used at least one plant for its psychotropic activity. Lewin has appraised this interesting observation as follows: "The passionate desire which ... leads man to flee from the monotony of everyday life ... has made him instinctively discover strange substances. He has done so, even where nature has been most niggardly in producing them and where the products seem very far from possessing the properties which would enable him to satisfy this desire."

It may likewise be significant that, whether because of cultural differences or floristic peculiarities or for some other reason as yet unappreciated, the New World cultures are much richer in narcotic plants and apparently in their roles than the Old. The longer I consider the problem, the more I am convinced as a botanist that there may exist in the world's flora an appreciable number of such plants not yet uncovered by the experimenting native and still to be found by the enquiring phytochemist. It is only through the interdisciplinary approach that such discoveries can be made. In fact, the unprecedented strides achieved in the study of hallucinogens in the past 30 or 40 years owe their spectacular success to interdisciplinary studies and consequent integration of data gleaned from many seemingly unrelated fields of investigation: anthropology, botany, ethnobotany, chemistry, history, linguistics, medicine, pharmacognosy, pharmacology and psychology.

III

In our penetration into the study of known hallucinogens and in our search for new ones, we have much to do and little time in which to do it. Civilization is closing in on many, if not on most, parts of the world still sacred to the less advanced cultures. It has long been pressing in, but its pace is now greatly accelerated, with the consequent lessening of man's dependence upon his immediate environment. Our prime academic and practical interest must, therefore, continually ask: "How can we salvage some of the plant knowledge and lore of primitive cultures before it shall have been forever entombed with the culture that gave it birth?"

The twentieth century will surely be remembered as the period of growth in use, misuse, and abuse in sophisticated circles of hallucinogenic substances. As Hoffer and Osmond have written: "The use of hallucinogens has been described as one of the major advances of this century. There is little doubt that they have had a massive impact upon psychiatry, and may produce marked changes in our society. The violent reaction for and against the hallucinogens suggests that even if these compounds are not universally understood and approved of, they will neither be forgotten nor neglected."

The fast pace of research into hallucinogens and their roles in dying or disappearing primitive cultures, the success of studies of the plants and their active constituents, and the increasing confusion generated by casual or frivolous interests in hallucinogens in certain segments of our modern industrialized and urbanized society - all these considerations might justify an ethnobotanical summary of these strange plants, a summary based on the premise that, even though only an interdisciplinary consideration can adequately cope with such a fast moving field, the starting point must be the identification and aboriginal significance of the plants involved.

My own research since 1936 has been directed towards this botanical and ethnobotanical goal and has taken me into remote areas of the New World. I have studied narcotic plants amongst the North American Indians, made several expeditions into the Mazatec, Chinantec, and Zapotec Indian country in northeastern Oaxaca, Mexico, and lived almost without interruption from 1941 through 1953 in the northwest Amazon in Brazil, Colombia, and Peru and in the northern Andes. Since 1953, I have returned to the Andes and Amazon on many expeditions, usually with students, to pursue studies on toxic and narcotic plants. My research has convinced me that there is still much to be done, that there exist an appreciable number of hallucinogenic plants still unknown to science in the flora of tropical America, that we can no longer afford the erroneous luxury of ignoring reports of aboriginal uses of plants merely because they fall beyond the normal limits of our credence.

IV

The action of these plants capable of inducing visual and other hallucinations is usually so complex that a clearcut definition and classification of them has not yet been found. Lewin grouped psychoactive plants in five categories: Excitantia; Inebriantia; Hypnotica; Euphorica; Phantastica. None has stirred deeper interest than the Phantastica: plants that "bring about evident cerebral excitation in the form of hallucinations, illusions and visions ... followed by unconsciousness or other symptoms of altered cerebral functioning".

As in every fast developing field of study, a burgeoning nomenclature has grown up around these hallucinating agents. They have variously been called phantasticants, psychotica, psychoticants, psychogens, psychotomimetics, psychodysleptics, eidetics, hallucinogens, schizogens and, most recently, psychedelics, a term neither biologically accurate nor etymologically correct and one which, through vernacular misuse, has acquired secondary and even tertiary meanings in certain sections of modern society. To be sure, none of these terms is wholly and always satisfactory. Even Lewin, when he coined the term phantastica, was not wholly satisfied with it, stating that it "does not cover all that I should wish it to convey". Rather than wallow in sterile semantics, I prefer to use the easily understood and now widely accepted word hallucinogen.

Differing from the other psychotropic drugs, which act normally only to calm or to stimulate, the hallucinogens act on the central nervous system to bring about a dream-like state marked, as Hofmann points out, by extreme alteration in the "sphere of experience, in the perception of reality, changes even of space and time and in consciousness of self. They invariably induce a series of visual hallucinations, often in kaleidoscopic movement, and usually in rather indescribably brilliant and rich colours, frequently accompanied by auditory and other hallucinations and a variety of synesthesias.

Although, for general purposes, probably no simpler nor more serviceable term than Lewin's phantastica is available, it has not been widely accepted, especially amongst English-speaking specialists. I prefer, if we do not use Lewin's terminology, the likewise simple hallucinogen or rather the specific psychotomimetic. Both may be rather exactly delimited by Hofmann's definition of psychotomimetic as a "... substance which produces changes in thought, perception and mood, occurring alone or in conjunction with each other, without causing major disturbances of the autonomic nervous system; i.e., clouding of consciousness or other serious disability. High doses generally elicit hallucinations. Disorientation, memory disturbance, hyper-excitation or stupour and even narcosis occur only when excess dosages are administered and are, therefore, not characteristic." Nearly all of these hallucinogenic substances are derived from the Plant Kingdom or else are chemically related to naturally occurring compounds.

V

Many of these effects are so unearthly, so unreal, that most, if not all, of the hallucinogenic plants early acquired in primitive societies an exalted place, often becoming sacred and the object of direct worship. In almost all primitive cultures, sickness and death are believed to be due to interference from supernatural spheres. For this reason, the psychic effects of drugs are often far more important in primitive medical practices than the purely physical ones. Consequently, hallucinogens above all other plants are found closely connected with magic and witchcraft in the treatment of disease and death and in related religious observances.

Main hallucinating constituents of psychotomimetic plants

We now know that the "divinity" resident in these special plants is chemical in nature, but the ethnobotanist investigating the use of narcotics in primitive cultures must never lose sight of the native interpretation of his "magic" or "sacred" plants. To ignore or to neglect his views-or brusquely to deprecate them -may doom to failure the most meticulously planned scientific enquiry. In this connexion, one must recall the wisdom and foresight of John Harshberger, who first employed the term ethnobotany, when he wrote more than seventy years ago: "It is of importance, therefore, to seek out these primitive races and ascertain the plants which they have found available in their economic life, in order that perchance the valuable properties they have utilized in their wild life may fill some vacant niche in our own."

VI

Hallucinogenic plants may be treated botanically, chemically or geographically. None of these treatments is wholly satisfactory. The third-geographical-is perhaps the least meaningful. Chemically, hallucinogenic plants may be separated into two groups: (1) those with active organic constituents containing nitrogen, most of which are alkaloids or related compounds; (2) those with active organic constituents devoid of nitrogen. Farnsworth has recently presented a summary of hallucinogenic plants based on this chemical grouping. Such a classification lacks adequacy when the active chemical constituent is not known or when there is some uncertainty as to which of several constituents may be responsible for all or a major part of the hallucinogenic effects.

I prefer, and in this paper will follow, the first of these three treatments in which hallucinogenic plants are grouped by the botanical families to which they belong. This treatment has one distinct interdisciplinary advantage-the chemotaxonomic: usually, although not always, genera of hallucinogenic plants in one family may have the same or closely related compounds as their active constituents. Furthermore, if a plant hallucinogen has been identified, it is always possible to assign it to its place in botanical classification: family, order, genus, species.

Hallucinogens occur widely separated in the Plant Kingdom, concentrated especially in two unrelated areas of the vegetal world. While most are spermatophytes, some of the biologically, chemically and sociologically most fascinating are found amongst the cryptogams, especially the fungi. We know of no bacteria, algae, lichens, bryophytes, ferns or gymnosperms that have been employed by man as hallucinogenic narcotics, although there is every possibility that psychotomimetic or medically valuable psychoactive principles may yet be discovered in some of these divisions of the Plant Kingdom. The presence-even abundance-of toxic species in some of these groups clearly indicates this possibility, which was recognized by the English botanist John Lindley one hundred and thirty years ago when, almost prophetically, he wrote: "With respect to poisons, it is to be remembered that the energy which renders them dangerous if taken in excess may also cause them to be ... most valuable remedial agents ... No one will be bold enough to assert that the physician already possesses the most powerful agents produced by the vegetable kingdom; for every year is bringing some new plant into notice for its energy ... In tropical countries, where a fervid sun, a humid air and a teeming soil give extraordinary energy to vegetable life, the natives of these regions often recognise the existence of potent herbs unknown to the European practitioner. No doubt such virtues are often as fabulous and imaginary as those indigenous plants long since rejected by the sagacity of European practice. But we are not altogether to despise the experience of nations less advanced in knowledge than ourselves, or to suppose, because they may ascribe imaginary virtues to some of their official substances... that therefore the remedial properties of their plants are not worth a serious investigation; or that their medical knowledge is beneath our notice because they are unacquainted with the terms of modern science".

VII Mushrooms and puffballs

Hundreds, if not thousands, of species of the Basidiomycetes or mushrooms and their relatives are toxic -and are feared and avoided by most of humankind because of the supposed prevalence of poisonous characteristics in the group. The presence of toxic constituents in so many mushrooms led to the early discovery, in both the Old and the New World, of hallucinogenic properties in certain species. It has been only recently, however, that phytochemists have succeeded in ascertaining what the toxic principles of the hallucinogenic mushrooms are. Furthermore, in the case of one of the hallucinogenic species longest known and identified, the elucidation of the whole chemical story has just begun.

The use of hallucinogenic mushrooms is so ancient and so much an integral part of several far distant and unrelated cultures in both hemispheres that it has been postulated, with plausible arguments, that the very concept of deity may have arisen from their effects and that their present disjunct ritualistic use in primitive religio-magic systems is relict.

"From earliest times, writes Wasson, they have been worshipped by certain primitive peoples scattered from Mexico to Borneo and Siberia, and we think formerly in Europe, too. The visions ... are staggering in their subjective impact. They are no shadowy, uncertain sights .... you are spellbound by awe, by feelings of wonder and reverence, by an overflowing sense of empathy, of caritas towards those who are sharing the mushrooms and the experience with you. The primitive peoples who worship these mushrooms consider that they open the gates to another plane of existence, to the past and future, to Heaven and God, who then answers truly all grave questions put to him. If we are right in one conjecture that the secret of these mushrooms was discovered by early men, perhaps very early as he was emerging from his bestial past, think for a moment what their miraculous properties must have meant to him! Our hallucinogenic mushrooms opened to him conceptions and emotions theretofore beyond his reach ... yes, perhaps the very idea of a Superior Being. They may have served as a mighty detonation for early man's soul and mind and imagination. It is surprising, we think, that students of early cultures have paid so little attention to the subjective impact on them of hallucinatory agents like these."

Amanita muscaria

Probably the oldest and once most widespread in use of the hallucinogenic mushrooms is Amanita muscaria. It grows throughout the north-temperate parts of both hemispheres. It has long been recognized as a toxic plant, and the specific epithet given to it by Linnaeus refers to the old European custom of employing the caps of the mushroom to poison flies.

In recent times, the use of the fly agaric as an inebriant has been known in only two centres: extreme western Siberia, amongst Finno-Ugrian peoples,- the Ostyaks and Voguls; and extreme northeastern Siberia, amongst the Chukchis, Koryaks and Kamchadals. The Ostyaks and Voguls are linguistically nearest akin to the Hungarians, but there is no recollection amongst modern Hungarians of the employment of the mushroom. Nor do any of the Finnic peoples today utilize it as an intoxicant, although tradition does establish the use of the fly agaric by witch-doctors of the Inari Lapps in Europe. The Yukagirs, peoples surviving in tiny communities and speaking an isolated language in northeastern Siberia, remember that their forbears made use of the mushroom. There seems to be every probability that the fly agaric might once have been employed all the way across Siberia and into Europe and that the now spotty distribution of its use has resulted from the splitting apart of the early inhabitants of this vast region-the paleo-Siberian tribes-by successive waves of invasion by peoples of a somewhat superior culture from the steppes to the south who did not adopt the practices of the tribesmen whom they conquered and displaced. The arguments that seem to support this theory are intricate and are found mainly in studies in comparative linguistics of the devious relationships and meanings in mushroom terminology.

The " fly agaric ", used as an hallucinogenic agent in Siberia. (Drawn from Heim: Champignons toxiques et hallucinogènes ).

It has even recently been suggested that the ancient giant berserkers of Norway induced their occasional fits of savage madness by ingesting Amanita muscaria.

Only since the middle of the 18th Century have reports concerning the utilization of fly agaric amongst Siberian tribesmen come to the attention of Europeans, and these earliest reports are characterized by an appreciable diversity of opinion concerning the use of the mushroom, although all agree on its ritualistic importance and, in general, on its biological effects. Europe first learned of this curious Siberian inebriant in 1730, when a Swedish army officer, von Strahlenberg, published a book on his twelve years as a Russian prisoner in Siberia, noting its use amongst the Koryaks. A Polish prisoner in Siberia had earlier, in 1658, observed the consumption of Amanita muscaria, but his report was not published until 1874. Krasheninnikov appears to have been the first Russian to record this custom when, in his description of Kamchatka, published in 1755, he noted it amongst the Koryaks. More than a score of anthropologists, linguists, geographers and travellers have since mentioned-often very superficially-the fly agaric as an intoxicant in Siberia. Too little of a definitive and extensive nature, however, is known about this custom which seems to be rapidly on the wane, if not now already extinct.

Most, if not all, of the Siberian users of fly agaric had no other intoxicant before the Russians introduced alcohol. The employment of Amanita muscaria, to all appearances, was more common amongst the Koryaks than amongst the Chukchis and Kamchadals, probably because, since they inhabited the most heavily forested areas of Kamchathka, the mushroom grew more abundantly in their area. It is thought, furthermore, that the Koryaks supplied much of the mushrooms consumed by their neighbours.

Amanita muscaria was usually not taken fresh, at least by the Koryaks, but dried, either in the sun or over a light fire. The explorer, von Langsdorff, wrote that "they are collected in the hottest seasons and hung up by a string in the air to dry; some dry of themselves on the ground and are said to be far more narcotic than those artificially preserved. Small deepcoloured specimens, thickly covered with warts, are also said to be more powerful than those of a larger size and paler colour."

Apparently only men ate fly agaric amongst all of these tribesmen, excepting in rare cases when a woman held the position of shaman. The method of using the mushroom varied significantly amongst the sundry tribes. The Koryak women moistened and softened the agarics in the mouth, then rolled them by hand into small sausage shapes and gave them to the men to swallow. The hot, burning taste often induced vomiting, so they were usually swallowed whole. An average dose was three mushrooms-often one large one and two smaller specimens-but up to ten or twelve were frequently ingested, when a strong and persistent effect were specifically desired. These tribesmen often chewed the plant and held it in the mouth for a long time before swallowing. Other means of using the agaric, however, involved adding it to soups, sauces, cold or warm reindeer milk or steeping it in juice of the bog wortle berry, Vaccinium uliginosum, or the willow-herb, Epilobium angustifolium. The mushroom was even, in more recent times, added to alcoholic liquors to enhance their intoxicating properties. The Kamchadals apparently fermented the Amanita-Vaccinium mixture and were reputed to "scarcely give it time to clarify, ere they invite their friends to partake of it."

There is much diversity of opinion concerning the length of the intoxication thus induced, but it would seem perhaps that the effects of three or four dried or smoked mushrooms might last from four hours to a full day. Undoubtedly, the condition of the mushrooms when gathered, their treatment after collection and the way in which they are ingested all would influence significantly the length and strength of the intoxication.

In many regions where the fly agaric was consumed, it was a very expensive article of trade-so expensive that frequently a tribesman traded a reindeer for one or two mushrooms. At certain times and in some areas, the mushrooms were naturally rare and hard to find. During the long Siberian winters, the more affluent tribesmen were able to store up supplies of the dried mushrooms in large quantities for winter consumption. The poorer individuals, none the less anxious to use the agaric, were often frustrated by the cost and limited supply of the plants.

Whether as a result of this scarcity or not, these people discovered that the urine of an intoxicated person was capable, when drunk, of inducing a similar intoxication in another individual. The effects from the urine are said to be only slightly less inebriating than of the dose of the mushroom itself. An early account of this curious practice states of the Koryaks that "when they make a feast, they pour water on some of these mushrooms and boil them. They then drink the liquor, which intoxicates them; the poorer sort, who cannot afford to lay in a store of these mushrooms, post themselves on these occasions round the huts of the rich and watch the opportunity of the guests coming down to make water and then hold a wooden bowl to receive the urine, which they drink off greedily, as having still some virtue of the mushroom in it; and by this way they also get drunk."

Not only is the urine of another person drunk but an individual may utilize his own urine, frequently still warm, thus prolonging the action of the original mushrooms or renewing their effect several times. A drunken Koryak may even carry his own urine with him on a reindeer trek to continue his intoxication as long as possible.

The Siberian tribesmen did not always drink urine because of economy or poverty. The Yukaghir witchdoctors imbibe agaric urine before consuming the actual mushrooms in shamanistic rituals.

These tribesmen attribute spiritual forces to the fly agaric, one reason for presuming for this mushroom a very great age in the culture development of these peoples. Of the Chukchi ideas of spirits connected with Amanita muscaria, Bogoras has written the following: "The intoxicating mushrooms...are a separate tribe... They are very strong and when growing up they lift upon their soft heads the heavy trunks of trees and split them in two. A mushroom of this species grows through the heart of a stone and breaks it into minute fragments. Mushrooms appear to intoxicate men in strange forms somewhat related to their real shapes.

One, for example, will be a man with one hand and one foot; another will have a shapeless body. These are not spirits, but the mushrooms themselves. The number of them seen depends on the number of mushrooms consumed. If a man has eaten one mushroom, he will see one mushroom-man; if he has eaten two or three, he will see a corresponding number of mushroommen. They will grasp him under his arms and lead him through the entire world, showing him some real things and deluding him with many unreal apparitions. The paths they follow are very intricate. They delight in visiting the places where the dead live." The spirits of the mushroom often play practical jokes on a person under their influence, but they also guide him to other realms or guard him from harm in this world.

The Koryak tale of the discovery of fly agaric relates that "Big-Raven had caught a whale and could not send it to its home in the sea. He was unable to lift the grass bag containing travelling-provisions for the whale. Big-Raven applied to Existence (Vahiyñin) to help him. The deity said to him: 'Go to a level place near the sea; there thou wilt find soft white stalks with spotted hats. These are the spirits Wapaq. Eat some ... and they will help thee.' Big-Raven went. Then the Supreme Being spat upon the earth, and out of his saliva the agaric appeared. Big-Raven found the fungus, ate of it and began to feel gay.... The Fly-agaric said to him: ' How is it that thou...canst not lift the bag' ? ' That is right,' said Big-Raven, 'I am a strong man. I shall go and lift the travelling-bag.'He went, lifted the bag at once and sent the whale home. Then the Agaric showed him how the whale was going out to sea and how he would return to his comrades. Then Big-Raven said: 'Let the Agaric remain on earth and let my children see what it will show them.'"

As with all drugs, the physical and mental condition of the individual greatly influences the intoxicating effects of Amanita muscaria. The intoxication sets in usually about an hour after ingestion of the mushrooms. Twitching, trembling and slight convulsive motions of the limbs are soon evident. The feet begin to feel numb. A euphoria characterized by good humour and happiness, together with lightness on the feet and often a desire to dance, precede the visual hallucinations. The subject speaks with persons not present but seen in visions, and tells them extravagant stories of his wealth and prowess. Macroscopia is common. The eyes are glassy and he stares oblivious of his surroundings. Religious overtones-such as an urge to confess sins-frequently occur. Occasionally, the partaker becomes violent, dashing madly about until, exhausted, he drops into a deep sleep.

Since 1869, a century ago, when muscarine was isolated, most workers have assumed that the toxicity and hallucinogenic properties of Amanita muscaria could be attributed to this compound. Later studies, however, have demonstrated that muscarine is a very minor constituent of the mushroom which could not alone be responsible for such potent effects. Furthermore, sundry other compounds were detected in the same species: acetylcholinc, choline, ibotenic acid, muscimole, agarine, muscazone, muscaridine and bufotenine; and even atropine, scopolamine and hyoscyamine were reported, probably erroneously, from chromatographic studies. There is evidence, too, that the report of bufotenine in Amanita muscaria is in error because of confused identification of the botanical material with another species, A. citrina or A. porphyrina, in which bufotenine is undoubtedly present in the carpophores. The recent investigations carried out by Eugster and Waser indicate that the central nervous activity of Amanita muscaria is due primarily to muscimole, an unsaturated hydroxamic acid which is formed by decarboxylation and loss of water from ibotenic acid, the zwitterion of α-amino-α[3 - hydroxy - isoazoylyl- (5)]- acetic acid monohydrate. Muscazone, also an amino acid, is a pharmacologically less active principle in Amanita muscaria. Inasmuch as ibotenic acid appears to be a precursor of muscazone as well as of muscimole, it is probable that the often reported variation in intoxication potential of the fly agaric may be due to fluctuations in the ratio between ibotenic acid and muscazone. There is evidence that still other as yet uncharacterized principles may take part in the toxicity of this species of fungus.

The " soma" of the Aryans

Recent studies by Wasson suggest that Amanita muscaria may have played a vital religio-magic role in India, far to the south of its modern area of use in Siberia, and in very remote times.

About 3,500 years ago, Aryan peoples swept from the north into the Indus Valley of India, bringing with them the cult of a plant called soma. Undoubtedly the greatest enigma in the field of plant hallucinogens has revolved about the identity of this soma. The Aryans deified the plant as an holy inebriant and worshipped it, extracting its juice and drinking it in religious rites. They composed more than 1,000 hymns to soma, and these have come down to us intact in the Rig Veda.

What was soma? No one knows at the present time. For more than 2,000 years, its identity has been clouded in mystery. For some unexplained reason, the Aryans abandoned the original plant soon after their arrival in the new homeland and they forgot it. Other plants took its place as substitutes - plants chosen for reasons other than the psychic effects which, in the case of the substitutes, seem to have been non-existent.

Western civilization discovered the enigma of soma about a century and a half ago, when it began to learn about the cultural wealth that India had to offer to the world. Since then more than 100 species have been suggested as the source of the original soma, but none of the suggestions has won acceptance. Amongst these, the principal contenders were sundry species of Ephedra, Periploca and Sarcostemma: the first a genus of gymnosperm; the last two asclepiadaceous genera; but all similar in being vinelike, fleshy, leafless or almost leafless desert plants. Some botanists have felt that soma might have been cannabis, others that it was wholly mythical and never was derived from a plant.

For some years now, Wasson has studied the historical, literary and ethnobotanical records concerning soma. His avenues of approach, all deeply scholarly, have been ingeniously devious and complex. "When I first approached the problem in 1963," he wrote, "I could hardly believe what I found ... a clear-cut botanical question - a psychotropic plant that calls for identification. The clews should be in the Vedic hymns ... True, the poems contain no botanical description ... for those remote singers were not modern botanists ... They were writing for contemporaries ... and their imagery and terms often elude our understanding .... But the hymns are all shot through with soma, and about 120 of them are entirely devoted to the plantgod. Was it possible that so much could have been written about a plant, over centuries ... and its identity not revealed ? It was no secret for the poet-priests. How extraordinary it would have been if all of them... had withheld from their verses the revealing descriptive terms, the tell-tale metaphors, that the trained reader to-day needs to spot the plant! But this did not happen. All that has happened is that no ethnobotanist with an interest in psychotropic plants has applied himself to an examination of the texts."

To this age-old enigma, Wasson has suggested a solution: that the true soma was a mushroom, the fly agaric, Amanita muscaria. This identification appears to be the first that satisfies all of the many intricately interlocking pieces of indirect evidence - including a reference to urine-drinking - gleaned from the Vedic hymns, and none seems to contradict it. If correct, it represents a meaningful contribution to ethnobotany in view of the extraordinary religious and social role of soma as emphasized in one of the earlier texts of the Indo-European world.

The mushrooms of Mexico

Conocybe, Panaeolus, Psilocybe, Stropharia spp.

One of the several important native religious cults that the Spanish conquerors found in Mexico was one in which intoxicating mushrooms were consumed much as a sacrament. These mushrooms were so revered that the Aztecs called them teonanacatl or "flesh of the gods".

Most of the early chroniclers were clerics, and they put special emphasis on the needs for stamping out loath some pagan customs like the worship of poisonous fungi. Peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus, and ololiuqui, the vision-inducing morning-glories - both employed in sacred rituals - also felt the wrath of these priests. Criticism of the mushrooms was particularly vehement, however, perhaps because, as mycophobes, their religious fanaticism could easily be directed in disgust towards a despised form of plant life which, through the vision-giving properties, held the awe of the Indian by permitting him to commune directly and very colourfully with the spirit world. To the Indian mind, nothing that Christianity had offered was comparable. These mushrooms most certainly represented a great obstacle to the spread of the new religion.

Furthermore, the mushroom cult appears to have deep roots in centuries of native tradition. Certain frescoes from central Mexico, dating back to 300 A.D., have designs which seem to put mushroom worship back that far. Even more remarkable are the archaeological artifacts now called "mushroom stones" excavated in great numbers from highland Mayan sites in Guatemala, going back to 1000 B.C. Consisting of an upright stem with a man-like figure crowned with an umbrella-shaped top, these stone carvings have long baffled archaeologists who supposed them to be phallic symbols but which are now quite widely held to represent a kind of icon connected with mushroom worship.

Sahagún, a Spanish friar, was one of the first Europeans to refer to teonanacatl. Writing between 1529 and 1590, he referred several times to mushrooms "... which are harmful and intoxicate like wine" so that those who partake of them "... see visions, feel a faintness of heart and are provoked to lust". In one reference, he detailed the effects, saying that the natives ate them with honey and "... when they begin to be excited by them start dancing, singing, weeping. Some do not want to eat but sit down ... and see themselves dying in a vision; others see themselves being eaten by a wild beast, others imagine that they are capturing prisoners of war, that they arc rich, that they possess many slaves, that they had committed adultery and were to have their heads crushed for the offense ... and when the drunken state has passed, they talk over amongst themselves the visions which they have seen". In addition to these reports, several editions of Sahagún's writings give crude illustrations of the mushrooms.

An old illustration of nanacatl (a), the intoxicating mushroom of the Aztecs. After Paso y Troncoso's edition of Sahagun's "Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España" (Florentine Codex), published in 1819.

There are a number of other references to the sacred fungi in these early writings. One, for example, recorded that inebriating mushrooms were part of the coronation feast of Montezuma in 1502. Friar Motolinia, who died in 1569, mentioned the psychotropic mushrooms in his work on pagan rites and idolatries. Francisco Hernández, personal physician to the King of Spain, who studied the medicinal lore of Mexican Indians for a number of years in the field, wrote of three kinds of mushrooms used as intoxicants and worshipped. Of some, called teyhuintli, he explained that they "cause not death but madness that on occasion is lasting, of which the symptom is a kind of uncontrolled laughter... these are deep yellow, acrid and of a not displeasing freshness. There are others again which, without inducing laughter, bring before the eyes all sorts of things, such as wars and the likeness of demons. Yet others there are not less desired by princes for their festivals and banquets, and these fetch a high price. With nightlong vigils are they sought, awesome and terrifying. This kind is tawny and somewhat acrid".

Notwithstanding the great age of this cult and the sundry forceful Spanish reports of it, our knowledge of the sacred fungi of Mexico, their identification, use and chemistry is all very recent. The earliest attempt at identifying teonanacatl botanically was apparently that of the American ethnobotanist Safford, who, in 1915, asserted that the "sacred mushroom" was, in reality, only the peyote cactus. The Spanish chroniclers had been in error or misled by the natives. The dried, brown, discoidal head or "button" of the cactus Lophophora Williamsii, he wrote, resembled "a dried mushroom so remarkably that, at first glance, it will even deceive a mycologist". Safford fell into this serious blunder first by his oft-stated belief that the Mexican Indians were deficient in botanical knowledge and secondly by the similarity of the described effects of peyote and teonanacatl. His outstanding reputation as an ethnobotanist stamped his conclusions with authority and they were quite generally accepted. Furthermore, although botanists knew of toxic mushrooms in the Mexican flora, anthropologists had not, in four centuries, found any cult or magical practice utilizing intoxicating mushrooms.

Blas P. Reko, a physician whose botanical collections in Mexico are widely appreciated, raised a lone voice in protest, and, although he did not produce specimens, wrote as early as 1919 and 1923 that teonanacatl in reality was a dung-fungus and was still employed in religious rites in Oaxaca. The first actual specimens of such mushrooms were gathered in 1936 by an engineer and amateur anthropologist, Robert Weitlaner, who found them used in ceremonial divination in northeastern Oaxaca. They were sent to Harvard University where, because of their poor preservation, l was able to assign them only to the genus Panaeolus. During the course of ethnobotanical work amongst the Mazatec Indians of Oaxaca which I pursued in the company of Reko, we collected a few specimens of mushrooms which these Indians employed ceremonially. One of the mushrooms was Panaeolus sphinctrinus. The other was Stropharia cubensis. In the time available, I was unable to witness a ceremony, and so few mushrooms were gathered, because of the unusually dry season, that it was not possible for me to ingest them experimentally: all were needed as voucher herbarium specimens. In 1939, I published a paper on the use of Panaeolus sphinctrinus (= P. campanulatus var. sphinctrinus), suggesting that this mushroom was the teonanacatl of the ancient Aztecs. Although I indicated that more than one species of fungus was used in Oaxaca, I failed to identify Stropharia cubensis, which was discovered in the herbarium archives by later investigations and published.

Perhaps it was providential that my botanical activities in 1941 took me to the Amazon and that I never returned to Mexico to follow up many unfinished ethnobotanical problems. In 1953, R. Gordon Wasson and his wife, outstandingly competent amateur ethnomycologists, having read my papers, decided to visit Oaxaca to pursue this fascinating phase of their life-long study of mushrooms. Sensing the need for interdisciplinary and intensive study of all aspects of the use of sacred mushrooms, they enlisted the collaboration of various specialists - anthropologists, linguists, chemists, mycologists and others. The research that has resulted from a number of their successive trips to northern Mexico has been integrated into an intricately integrated whole and will long hold a high place as an outstanding model of what well planned and carefully executed ethnobotanical investigation can accomplish.

Amongst the collaborators whom the Wassons took into the field are the mycologist Roger Heim and the phytochemist Albert Hofmann, both of whom have been vitally instrumental in advancing our understanding of the role of mushrooms in aboriginal Mexican religious life.

Wasson and his associates, especially Heim, have discovered a number of different species of mushrooms valued as sacred, psychotomimetic agents in Mexico, and more recently, Guzman and Singer have added a few additional species to the total. The result is now that at least twenty-four species in four genera are known to be used currently amongst tribes in Mexico.

Several mushrooms reported as hallucinogenic agents in Mexico. (Drawn from Heim: Champignons toxiques et hallucinogènes).

Undoubtedly there were many tribes in ancient Mexico who employed teonanacatl, but we know with certainty only of the Chichimilcas, who spoke Nahuatl. To-day we know that the sacred mushrooms are consumed by Mazatecs, Chinantecs, Chatinos, Zapotecs, Mixtecs and Mijes - all of Oaxaca; and by the Nahoas of Mexico; and possibly by the Tarascanas of Michoacan; and the Otomis of Puebla.

A relatively large number of mushrooms are employed as divinatory and ceremonial agents in modern Mexico, and probably as many were known to the ancient inhabitants of the Aztec empire. The species involved includes, amongst others: Psilocybe mexicana, P. caerulescens var. mazatecorum; P. caerulescens var. nigripes; P. yungensis; P. mixaeensis; P. Hoogshagenii; P. aztecorum; P. muriercula; Stropharia cubensis; Conocybe siligineoides; Panaeolus sphinctrinus.

It appears that Psilocybe mexicana may be the most important of the psychotropic Mexican mushrooms. This species - a small, tawny inhabitant of wet pastures, is apparently most highly prized by the users: P. aztecorum is known as "children of the waters" by the Aztecs.

Psilocybe zapotecorum of marshy ground, is called "crown of thorns mushroom" by the Zapotecs; P. caerulescens var. nigripes has a native name which means "mushroom of superior reason". Stropharia cubensis is one of the strongest hallucinogenic species.

There are a number of species with psychotropic properties that are presumably not used ritually - possibly because of extreme toxicity - and some authors have listed species confused with truly active mushrooms or which are biodynamically active but which the natives seem not to employ. Several investigators, for example, insist that the Indians do not take Panaeolus sphinctrinus. It must be remembered, however, that this and related species are highly hallucinogenic - one representative being employed for inebriation as far north as Maine in the United States - and that the simple reason why so many species of mushrooms are used in Mexico as narcotics is that different witch doctors may use different mushrooms for different purposes and that, in various seasons and in accord with seasonal variation, any given mushroom may not be abundantly available. Since Weitlaner, Reko and Schultes found Panaeolus employed, and it is known to be psychotomimetic, while other investigators, often after one visit to the field, deny that this genus is utilized, one must be extraordinarily conservative in evaluating data. There is all indication that probably many more species and genera of mushrooms are used hallucinogenically amongst the aborigines of Mexico. Here there is great need for even more field work in ethnobotany and for more critical phytochemical studies.

Aside from the all-important hallucinogenic effects of mushrooms employed ritualistically in Mexico, the most outstanding symptoms are: muscular relaxation, flaccidity and mydriasis early in the intoxication, followed by a period of emotional disturbances such as extreme hilarity and difficulty in concentration. It is at this point that the visual and auditory hallucinations

appear, eventually to be followed by lassitude and mental and physical depression, with serious alteration of time and space perception. One peculiarity of the narcosis which promises to be of interest in experimental psychiatry is the isolation of the subject from the world around him - that is, without a loss of consciousness, he is rendered completely indifferent to his environment, which becomes unreal to him as his dreamlike state becomes real.

Crystals of psilocybine and psilocine, found in a number of species of Psilocybe employed in Mexico as sacred hallucinating mushrooms. Courtesy A. Hofmann, Sandoz Ltd., Basle, Switzerland.

Heim and his colleagues succeeded in growing cultures of Psilocybe mexicana and other species. This opened the way for chemical studies of these fungi by Hofmann and his group. They isolated white crystals soluble in water and methanol but almost insoluble in usual organic solvents, which they called psilocybine. They found that this substance had an unusual chemical structure, later found to represent an acidic phosphoric acid ester of 4-hydroxydimethyltryptamine. This compound is allied to other naturally occurring compounds such as bufotenine and serotonine. Psilocybine, an indole derivative with a phosphylated side chain, is the first known naturally-occurring compound of this kind. The discovery of such a substance has implications of great import, for example, for the study of biogenesis of the ergot alkaloids and for other aspects of chemical investigation of the psychotropic indole alkaloids such as harmine and reserpine.

Some species of Psilocybe - especially P. mexicana - contain another indolic compound in minute amounts which, while closely allied to psilocybine, is apparently not stable. It has been called psilocine.

The psychotomimetic effects following the ingestion of 32 dried specimens of Psilocybe mexicana, as described by Hofmann, are significant: "As I was perfectly well aware that my knowledge of the Mexican origin of the mushroom would lead me to imagine only Mexican scenery, I tried deliberately to look on my environment as I knew it normally. But all voluntary efforts to look at things in their customary forms and colours proved ineffective. Whether my eyes were closed or open, I saw only Mexican motifs and colours. When the doctor supervising the experiment bent over me to check my blood pressure, he was transformed into an Aztec priest, and I would not have been astonished if he had drawn an obsidian knife. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, it amused me to see how the Germanic face of my colleague had acquired a purely Indian expression. At the peak of the intoxication, about 1½ hours after ingestion of the mushrooms, the rush of interior pictures, mostly abstract motifs rapidly changing in shape and colour, reached such an alarming degree that I feared that I would be torn into this whirlpool of form and colour and would dissolve. After about six hours, the dream came to an end. Subjectively, I had no idea how long this condition had lasted. I felt my return to everyday reality to be a happy return from a strange, fan- tastic but quite really experienced world into an old and familiar home".

Certainly none of us could have been ready to accept some of the fantastic reports of the early writers on the unearthly effects produced by the sacred mushrooms. Now we know that they are true. "The history of the solution of the teonanacatl mystery, according to Hofmann, is a very good example of how modern scientific research, in its effort to obtain novel compounds which are valuable in medicine, can revert to ancient knowledge of the miraculous powers hidden in the Plant Kingdom."

The Yurimaguas Indians of the westernmost Amazon basin in Peru were reported by Jesuit missionaries in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries to be drinking a strongly intoxicating beverage prepared from a "tree fungus". Psilocybe yungensis has been suggested as the identification of this "tree fungus". Field work in this region has, up to the present, not disclosed any practice of this kind, but it represents a culture trait little likely to disappear spontaneously without leaving a trace at least, and the region is still inhabited by many tribes in relatively primitive conditions of culture. The report states that "...the Yurimaguas mix mushrooms that grow on fallen trees with a kind of reddish film that is found usually attached to rotting trunks. This film is very hot to the taste. No person who drinks this brew fails to fall under its effects after three draughts of it, since it is so strong or, more correctly, so toxic." If the fungus be truly Psilocybe, what, then, might this "reddish film" be ?

Lycoperdon marginatum, L. mixtecorum

Amongst the Mixtecs of southern Oaxaca in Mexico, the use of several puffballs as hallucinogens has recently been reported. This fascinating new development in the study of narcotics has resulted from the interdisciplinary research of Heim, Wasson and Raviez amongst an interesting people living in the mountainous regions at an altitude of about 6,600 feet.

One of the species, Lycoperdon marginatum, is characterized in the dry state by a strong odour of excrement. The Mixtecs of the town of San Miguel, south of Tlaxiaco, all recognize the narcotic use of this puffball, but it does not appear to occupy the place as a divinatory agent that the mushrooms hold amongst the Mazatecs. This species of Lycoperdon is known in the Mixtec language as gi' i sawa or hongo de medio, "mushroom of second quality ".

The other and more active species - Lycoperdon mixtecorum - has the Mixtec name gi' i wa or hongo de primera, "mushroom of first quality". The ingestion of one or two specimens is said to induce a state of half-sleep one-half hour after ingestion. One hears voices and echoes, and the voices respond to questions posed to them. The effects of the puffballs are quite different from those of the hallucinogenic mushrooms, and they may not induce visions, even though there seems to be no doubt that definite auditory hallucinations accompany the intoxication.

There is apparently no phytochemical foundation on which to base an evaluation of the intoxication of these two species of Lycoperdon. No psychoactive organic constituent has as yet been isolated from the puffballs.

[Parts II and III of this article will appear in the two succeeding numbers of the Bulletin, i.e. Vol. XXI, No. 4 and Vol. XXII, No. 1, to be published in October 1969 and January 1970, respectively.]

The plant kingdom and hallucinogens (part II)

Amaryllis family

(Amaryllidaceae)

Pancraetium trianthum

Amongst the Kung tribe of Bushmen in Dobe, Botswana, this bulbous perennial, known locally as kwashi, is said to have psychoactive properties. When the bulb is rubbed on an incision made on the head of a tribesman, visual hallucinations are said to be induced. Nothing more is known of this curious custom.

Pancraetium, a genus of some 15 species in the warmer parts mainly of tropical Asia and Africa, possesses powerfully toxic principles, including alkaloids. A number of species find use amongst primitive peoples as emetics. Pancraetium maritimum and other species are cardiac poisons, and P. zeylanicum has been reported to cause death through paralysis of the central nervous system. In India, Pancraetium triflorum may sometimes appear in markets as an adulterant of the medicinal Urginea. In Shari-Chad, West Tropical Africa, Pancraetium trianthum, reputedly very toxic, is commonly planted at shrines.

Ginger family

(Zingiberaceae)

Kaempferia Galanga

Vague information has indicated that possibly a member of the Ginger family, Kaempferia Galanga, may be employed by natives in several parts of New Guinea as an hallucinogen.

The rhizome of Kaempferia Galanga is the source of a condiment known as galanga, highly valued in tropical Asia. The rhizome, mixed with oils, is employed in the Philippines as a cicatrizant and applied to boils and furuncles to bring them to a head. Other species are likewise prized as condiments and medicinally as agents effectively hastening the healing of wounds and burns.

Almost nothing is known about the psychotomimetic use of this plant, and no investigation of a possible narcotic chemical constituent has apparently been made.

Mulberry family

(Moraceae)

Cannabis sativa

Undoubtedly one of the oldest known and certainly to-day the most widely spread hallucinogenic plant is Cannabis sativa. Despite its great age as one of man's principal narcotics and its use by millions in many cultures the world around, Cannabis is characterized more by what we do not know about it than what we know. Our lack of knowledge about Cannabis and its use as an intoxicant not only provides an obstacle to an understanding of moral, legal, sociological and economic phases of its importance to the cultures where its utilization has become established but even many scientific aspects - botanical, chemical, pharmacological, medical and public health - are fraught with uncertainties and contradictions.

Even in what should be the basic study of this plant - the botanical field - we find disagreement as to its classification. Many taxonomists place the monotypic genus Cannabis in the family Moraceae, while others set it aside, together with the hops plant, in a distinct family: Cannabaceae.

One of the most ancient of man's cultigens , Cannabis sativa has been a triple purpose plant: a source of hemp fibre, of a seed oil and of a narcotic. This rank, weedy annual that commonly grows to a height of 15 feet is native probably to Central Asia but has escaped from cultivation in many parts of the world and grows spontaneously. Flourishing especially in disturbed, nitrogen-rich wastelands near human habitation, it occurs widely in temperate and hot drier areas of both hemispheres and seems to be unhappy only in the coldest zones and the hottest humid tropics.

Hemp was reported in a Chinese document 8,500 years ago, and the Assyrians used the plant in the ninth century B.C. in the form of an incense. The Sanskrit Zend-Avesta first menti0ned its intoxicating resin in 600 B.C. Herodotus wrote that the Scythians burned its seeds to produce a narcotic smoke. In Thebes, it was made into a drink with opium-like properties. Galen reported general use of hemp in cakes which, if eaten to excess, had narcotic properties. In thirteenth century Asia Minor, the hashishins were political murderers who, excited to their nefarious work by taking large doses of hashish, would carry out murder for pay; from this Arabic term comes the word assassin.

Although the narcotic use of Cannabis harks back thousands of years in India, the Near East, parts of Africa and other areas of the Old World, its spread to nearly all inhabited parts of the globe has allowed its employment as an inebriant recently to increase in sophisticated societies, especially in urban areas, and to lead to major problems and dilemmas to European and American authorities. Studies in depth of its utilization in less developed societies should shed much light on some of the problems resulting from its use and abuse in more advanced communities.

Methods of using Cannabis vary widely. In the New World, marihuana or, in Brazil, maconha - the dried, crushed flowering tops are leaves - are smoked, usually mixed with tobacco, in cigarettes. In parts of primitive Africa, Cannabis fulfills an important role in religion and magic. In southern Africa, it is called dagga, a term sometimes also applied with a qualifying adjective to sundry species of the labiate genus Leonotis, several species the leaves of which are perhaps feebly narcotic when smoked. In Morocco, where the use of Cannabis is common, the vernacular name is kif. Hashish, the resin from pistillate flowers, is eaten by millions, especially in Moslem areas of North Africa and the Near East.

It is apparently in India where Cannabis assumes an extraordinary religious significance in certain cults and where, as a result, man has selected "races" characterized by high concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol. The ancient Indian Atharva-Veda called the drug a "liberator of sin" and "heavenly guide" and the plant is still held sacred in many temples.

Indians commonly employ narcotically three Cannabis preparations. Bhang, the weakest, consists of the dried plant gathered green, powdered and made into a drink with water or milk, or with sugar and spices, into candies called majun; opium and Datura are said sometimes to be added. Ganjah, usually smoked with tobacco but sometimes eaten or drunk as an infusion, consists of dried pistillate tops with exuded resin carefully gathered from cultivated or escaped "races" notably rich in tetrahydrocannabinol. Charas, pure resin removed from leaves and stems also from especially cultivated, strongly narcotic "races", is normally smoked but it may be eaten mixed with spices. Cannabis supplies the drug of the poor in India, where, in addition to its religious use, it is highly valued in folk medicine and as an aphrodisiac; and, hedonistically, as an euphoric narcotic, especially in activities requiring endurance or physical effort.

Although the marked increase in smoking marihuana in the United States poses a variety of problems, much of the drug illicitly used at the present time in the country is weak in the narcotic principles, since it consists not of pure resin but of crushed leaves, twigs and tops of plants notably low in tetrahydrocannabinol. These plants grow spontaneously, spread mainly from hemp formerly cultivated in plantations for fibre production, at one time a major agricultural industry in North America. Marihuana smuggled into the country from Mexico or other tropical areas represents usually a stronger and potentially more troublesome narcotic.

Over the millenia, man has selected, subconsciously at first, consciously in more recent times, "races" or "strains" of this cultigen with desirable characteristics for the purposes at hand: some for longer, stronger fibre; some for higher oil content; some for greater narcotic potency. Selection for increased narcotic activity has been especially notable in certain regions - in India, for example - where the inebriating properties had religious or magical significance or were otherwise valued. Furthermore, it is thought that often the concentration of the intoxicating principle in any given "race" of Cannabis sativa will decrease as the plant is grown in more northern, cooler latitudes.

Botanists now widely agree that Cannabisis a monotypic genus, a genus with one polymorphic species: C. sativa; that there cannot be recognized any true botanical varieties of this species; and that this one species has diversified into a number of ecotypes and cultivated races. Modern taxonomists, consequently, are in agreement with Linnaeus who, in 1753, recognized only one species.

Nevertheless, a number of binomials have been legitimately published as deserving nomenclatorial recognition. These are such binomials as Cannabis chinensis; C. erratica; C. foetens; C. indica; C. Lupulus; C. macrosperma; C. americana; C. generalis; C. gigantea; C. ruderalis; C. x interstita. As early as 1869, De Candolle recognized several true botanical varieties of Cannabis sativa and offered very detailed taxonomic descriptions of them: α Kif; β vulgaris; γ pedemontana; σ chinensis. Although none of these names is accepted by most modern taxonomists, confusion of nomenclature still reigns in non-botanical literature.

In agricultural, horticultural, chemical and pharmacological publications, it is not uncommon to find in use Latin binomials that have no validity, since they were never validly published. The binomial Cannabis indica is, however, frequently employed as though it represented a species-concept distinct from C. sativa and most often to indicate a race native to India and usually high in intoxicating principles. Even more frequently, pharmacological writings use the name Cannabis sativa var. indica in the belief that there exists a definitive " varietas " of Indian origin that may be distinguished taxonomically by having a higher content of the narcotic constituents: a physiological race or chemovar which, it is often asserted, cannot long be maintained in an inappropriate environment or climate. Some specialists have gone even beyond this to distinguish nomenclatorially other varieties. Botanists cannot accept true varieties within Cannabis sativa simply because they cannot define them; and even agricultural and horticultural specialists who often recognize them as true species or varieties admit that they are not stable.

It must be recognized that this problem has arisen because of a confusion of concepts: the true botanical " varietas " is genetically distinct; the polymorphism rampant in Cannabis sativa is undoubtedly non-genetic and gives rise to variations that are better called "races ", " ecotypes ", " cultivars ", " chemovars " or other appropriate terms.

This plasticity of Cannabis has long been recognized. Charles Darwin was impressed with this aggressive weed. He wrote that hemp plants long cultivated can "generally endure with undiminished fertility various and great changes" and be "... so much affected that the proportions and the nature of their chemical ingredients are modified"

Since hemp is a triple-purpose plant long cultivated by man, intensive selection for one characteristic - longer fibre, more seed oil, higher cannabinol content-often leads to an over-shadowing or even disappearance of another characteristic. Races of unusually high yield of seed oil or of superior fibre have been developed which are either inferior in narcotic principles or wholly devoid of them - yet these races may grow in the same region, sometimes even in adjacent fields. On the contrary, highly narcotic races are reported in which the quality of fibre is decidedly inferior, so much so that these strains are commercially worthless - yet, they may grow in the same region, too. In all of these cases, nevertheless, the plants themselves are not taxonomically distinguishable by any stable morphological characters. And, furthermore, the same plants, transported to and cultivated in other climates and environments, yield progeny with alterations in fibre, oil and cannabinol constituency. Much of a basic nature, especially in ecological studies, remains for botanists to unravel.

The dioecious nature of Cannabis sativa - with separate " male " and " female " plants - constitutes an important consideration since it is believed that, under normal conditions, the narcotics principles occur only in the brownish resin found in the pistillate - not in the staminate - individuals. This resin is concentrated in the inflorescences and leaves, especially those near the flowering tops, and appears to be most abundant in the recently fertilized ovary and unripened fruit. There is, however, still much disagreement in these aspects of the morphology of the plant because of the botanical observations on material from wide areas of the world and on a large selection of "races"

Many organic compounds have been isolated from Cannabis resin, some of which appear to possess narcotic properties, others devoid of euphoric activity. Amongst the constituents are cannabinol, cannabidiol, cannabidiolic acid, tetrahydrocannabinol-carboxylic acid, cannabigerol, cannabichromene and stereoisomers collectively called tetrahydrocannabinol. While most of them are actively euphoric, it has only recently been demonstrated that the main psychotomimetic effects are attributable to Δ ¹ -tetrahydrocannabinol. Very little is known as yet about the biodynamic effects on man of pure tetrahydrocannabinol, and, although the literature is rich in the activity of crude Cannabis extracts or products, controlled studies with the active isolates are basic to any progress in understanding the real physiological significance from a moral or health viewpoint of this ancient and widespread intoxicant. Because of the great variation in chemical composition of crude Cannabis preparations normally employed as narcotics, any correlation of biological activity, if possible at all, would be, for all practical purposes, meaningless.

Only a lengthy consideration of hemp can do it justice. Inasmuch as Cannabis represents one of the hallucinogens most widely recognized - even though very imperfectly understood - in modern times, I have resolved to present this obviously brief and superficial discussion and to concentrate on many of the more poorly known or even unknown psychotomimetics utilized in distant and isolated regions by peoples seldom in the attention of the mainstream of society.

Olmedioperebea sclerophylla

The Moraceae also provide one of the most poorly understood hallucinogens: Olmedioperebea sclerophylla, a jungle tree, the fruits of which reputedly were the source of an intoxicating snuff employed formerly by Indians of the Pariana region of the central part of the Amazon Valley. It is now known only by its Portuguese name rape dos indios, "Indian snuff". No chemical study of this plant nor of the snuff have been published, and direct observations of the preparation and use of the snuff have been impossible to date.

Carpet weed family

(Aizoaceae)

Mesembryanthemum spp.

More than 225 years ago, it was reported that the Hottentots employed a vision-inducing narcotic plant called kanna or channa. They chewed the root and kept the masticated material in the mouth for some time. " Their animal spirits were awakened, their eyes sparkled and their faces manifested laughter and gaiety. Thousands of delightsome ideas appeared, and a pleasant jollity which enabled them to be amused by simple jests. By taking the substance to excess, they lost consciousness and fell into a terrible delirium. "

This interesting narcotic plant has never been definitively identified. The vernacular name kanna now is applied in South Africa to species of Mesembryanthemum: M. expansum and M. tortuosum, the roots, leaves and trunk of which are chewed and smoked in the hinterlands. These two species have yielded an alkaloid, mesembrine, which has sedative, cocaine-like effects, producing torpour in man. More than two dozen other species of Mesembryanthemum are known to be alkaloidal.

Unfortunately, no direct evidence connects the Hottentot kanna with Mesembryanthemum, and Lewin, doubting that these aizoaceous plants could produce the effects described, suggests that the narcotic in question must have been Cannabis sativa, to which the Hottentots were very habituated. He likewise hinted that other South African intoxicating plants, such as the anacardiaceous Sclerocarya Caffra and S. Schweinfurthii, should be considered.

Nutmeg family

(Myristicaceae)

Myristica fragrans

One of the most widely known and most easily available plant hallucinogens is the well known spice, nutmeg. The handsome tropical tree, Myristica fragrans, native to the East Indian archipelago, is the source of two spices - nutmeg and mace - respectively from the seed and aril of the beautiful fleshy drupe that resembles an apricot.

There is a persistent rumour that the hallucinogenic effects of nutmeg are employed by natives in parts of southeast Asia, but little supporting evidence has been found. It is eaten as a narcotic to-day in India by those who add it to the betel chew, and it may also be employed in India, mixed with tobacco, as a snuff. In the ancient Indian Ayurveda, nutmeg is called mada shaunda, meaning "narcotic fruit". There are vague reports that nutmeg is snuffed as an intoxicant in the hinterlands of Indonesia, and that in Egypt it is sometimes taken as a substitute for hashish. Whether or not nutmeg is employed in Asiatic and other areas by natives, there is no doubt that it has pronounced psychotomimetic effects and that it is employed as an hallucinogenic narcotic in Europe and the United States in sophisticated circles, by students, by prisoners and by alcoholics and marijuana users deprived of their preferred drugs.

Use of myristicaceouse sunffs

When taken orally, nutmeg, in doses of one teaspoonful or more, may induce hallucinations and other definitely psychotomimetic syndromes in from two to five hours. The intoxication is extremely variable but often is characterized by distortion of time and space perception and a feeling of detachment from reality. Although it is thought that visual hallucinations are infrequent, they definitely do occur in many individuals. Some of the side and after-effects of nutmeg intoxication - headache, dryness of the mouth, dizziness, tachycardia - are distinctly unpleasant.

Toxicological interest in nutmeg is of long standing. As early as 1676, Van Leeuwenhoek noticed that a volatile constituent of nutmeg killed or repelled mites. At the turn of the present century, there was a flurry of pharmacological interest in Myristica fragrans, but it subsided until the recent rash of use of nutmeg as an intoxicant again focussed attention on the need for a thorough understanding of the constituents, effects and dangers of this potential " new " hallucinogen.

Although the toxicology of nutmeg is still not wholly elucidated, the principal active constituent in the essential oil appears to be myristicine, the psychoactive properties of which are due probably to several phenylisopropylamines. It has been found that nutmeg and synthetic myristicine are mild monoamine oxidase inhibitors. Safrole and elemicine have also been suggested as active agents in nutmeg seed, although no tests on the psychopharmacological effects of these two constituents have been conducted on which to base such a suggestion.

Virola spp.

Amongst many Indian tribes of the northwest Amazon and uppermost Orinoco, a highly intoxicating snuff is prepared from another myristicaceous source: the blood-red bark resin of several species of jungle trees of the genus Virola: V. calophylla, V. calophylloidea, V. theiodora and possibly other species. The snuff is variously known as yakee, paricá, epena and nyakwana, according to the tribe employing the drug.

Virola-snuff was first described in detail and identified as to species in 1954 from ethnobotanical field studies in Amazonian Colombia. The present author found the Indians in the Rio Apaporis basin preparing a brownish, narcotic snuff, known amongst the Puinaves as yakee, from Virola calophylla and V. calophylloidea. It was taken exclusively by witch-doctors in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, for prophecy and divination and for other purposes of magic.

Virola calophylloidea Markgraf

These natives strip the bark from jungle trees early in the morning and scrape off the soft inner bark, with its resinous exudation. These are kneaded in water which, strained, is boiled down to a thick syrup. When the syrup has sun-dried, it is pulverized, sifted and mixed with ashes of the bark of a wild species of Theobroma. The resulting snuff is powerful, causing an intoxication sometimes apparently leading to death.

The German anthropologist, Koch-Grünberg, referred in 1909 to a snuff prepared from a tree-bark amongst the Yekwana Indians of the headwaters of the Rio Orinoco: "Of an especial magical importance are cures, during which the witch-doctor inhales hakúdufha. This is a magical snuff used exclusively by witch-doctors and prepared from the bark of a certain tree which, pounded up, is boiled in a small earthenware pot, until all the water has evaporated, and a sediment remains at the bottom of the pot. This sediment is toasted in the pot over a slight fire and is then finely powdered with the blade of a knife. Then the sorcerer blows a little of the powder through a reed...into the air. Next, he snuff, s, whilst, with the same reed, he absorbs the powder into each nostril successively. The hakudúfha obviously has a strongly stimulating effect, for immediately the witch-doctor begins singing and yelling wildly, all the while pitching the upper part of his body backwards and forwards."

Virola theiodora: flowering branch; Manaós, Brazil; photograph; R. E. Schultes

The first definite association of a snuff with Virola was made in 1938 by the Brazilian botanist Ducke, who wrote that the "Indians of the upper Rio Negro use the dried leaves of this species [ Virola theiodora] and of V. cuspidata in making a snuff powder that they call paricá ". In 1939, he wrote in a footnote to a discussion of Piptadenia peregrina, that " Martius and other writers attribute to this species the source of the narcotic paricá employed by certain Amazonian Indians. Notwithstanding, according to information which I obtained from the natives themselves in two localities in the upper Rio Negro, the paricá-powder comes from the leaves of species of Virola... " Although it is now certain that the leaves are not employed in the snuff-making, this represents apparently the first, and - until 1954 - the only identification of this snuff with the genus Virola.

Gradually, it became evident that perhaps the most intensive use of Virola snuffs might centre amongst the several related Indian groups known collectively as the Waikás inhabiting the very headwaters of the

Orinoco in Venezuela and the Brazilian territory north of the Río Negro and who refer to the snuff as epená and nyakwana.

Unlike other Indians, the Waikás employ Virola snuff both hedonistically and ceremonially, and its use is not restricted to the witch-doctors but is the prerogative of all male members of the tribe. The snuff is taken in excessive amounts and appears to be stronger than that prepared by the natives in Colombia.

Amongst the Waikás, Virola theiodora is the species employed. Holmstedt and the present author found several variations in method of preparation of epená or nyakwana. Some scrape the soft inner layer of the bark, dry the shavings by gentle roasting over a fire. These are then stored until needed for preparation of a batch of snuff, when they are crushed and pulverized, triturated in a mortar and pestle of a Bertholettia excelsa fruit. The powder is then sifted to a very fine, homogeneous chocolate-brown highly pungent dust. Next, a powder of the dried leaves of an aromatic weedy plant, Justicia pectoralis var. stenophylla is prepared and added in equal amount to the brown dust of Virola. A third ingredient is the ash of the bark of the beautiful leguminous tree Elizabetha princeps, called amá or amasita by the Waikás. The hard, grey outer bark is chopped into small pieces and set in a glowing fire, then removed and allowed slowly to reduce to ashes. When the ashes are added in equal amounts to the Virola-Justicia powder, the resulting snuff, ready for use, is rather greyish and extremely fine.

Waiká Indian grinding the solidified resin of Virola theiodora to prepare nyakwana snuff; Rio Tototobí, Brazil; photograph: R. E. Schultes

Waiká Indians picking stems front leaf material of Justicia pectorails var . stenophylla preparatory to drying and pulverizing them for use with Virola resin in making nyakwana snuff; Rio Tototobí, Brazil; photograph: R. E. Schultes

Waiká Indians snuffing nyakwana (from Virola resin); Rio Tototobí, Brazil: photograph: R. E. Schultes

Other Waiká Indians, who make snuff only occasionally for ceremonial purposes, follow a different procedure. The bark is stripped from Virola theiodora. A fire is built in the forest at the foot of the Virola trees, and the bark is gently heated to cause a copious " bleeding " of the red resin which is gathered in an earthenware pot. The resin is boiled down to a thick consistency which, upon cooling, crystallizes into a beautiful amber-red resin. This is then carefully ground up and reduced to an extremely fine powder. This powder alone - without any admixture - is nyakwana snuff. Occasionally, powdered Justicia leaves may be added " to make the snuff smell better ", but Holmstedt and I ascertained, from self-intoxication, that the Virola resin alone is highly intoxicating.

A still unsolved aspect of the Waiká use of Virola resin is its employment direct and without any preparation or admixture as an arrow poison.

The biodynamic activity of Virola resin was at first presumed to be due to myristicine. Recent investigations, however, have established the presence in the resin of certain Virola species of interesting tryptamines in relatively high concentrations. The Waiká snuff prepared solely from Virola resin has been shown to possess

several tryptamine and, in especially high concentrations, 5-methoxy N, N-dimethyltryptamine. Furthermore, there is preliminary evidence that Justicia pectoralis var. stenophylla may likewise contain tryptamines.

The effects of Virola intoxication vary, but amongst the Indians, they usually include initial excitability - setting in within several minutes from the first snuff- ing - numbness of the limbs, twitching of the facial muscles, inability to co-ordinate muscular activity, nausea, visual hallucinations and, finally, a deep, disturbed sleep. Macroscopia is frequent and enters into Waika beliefs about the spirits that dwell in the plant. A description of my own intoxication indicates several points of interest: "The dose was snuffed at five o'clock. Within fifteen minutes a drawing sensation was felt over the eyes, followed very shortly by a strong tingling in fingers and toes. The drawing sensation in the forehead gave way to a strong and constant headache. Within a half hour, the feet and hands were numb and sensitivity of the fingertips had disappeared: walking was possible with difficulty, as with beri-beri. I felt nauseated until eight o'clock and experienced lassitude and uneasiness. Shortly after eight, I lay down in my hammock, overcome with drowsiness, which, however, seemed to be accompanied by a muscular excitation except in the hands and feet. At about nine-thirty, I fell into a fitful sleep which continued, with frequent awakenings, until morning. The strong headache lasted until noon. A profuse sweating and what was probably a slight fever persisted throughout the night. The pupils were strongly dilated during the first few hours of the intoxication. No visual hallucinations nor colour sensations were experienced."

Pea family

(Leguminosae)

In view of the heavy concentration of alkaloids in the Leguminosae and the large size of this family - especially in tropical areas - it is not surprising that a number of species have been utilized by primitive peoples as hallucinogens. The surprising circumstance, however, lies in the apparent absence of this family amongst the hallucinogens of the Old World, where the Leguminosae is well represented and includes many toxic species. Of the members of this family known to be employed as hallucinogens, only one - Genista canariensis - is of Old World origin, and even this species is used only by a New World group of natives.

Anadenanthera peregrina

A strongly hallucinogenic snuff, prepared from beans of Anadenanthera peregrina (more widely known as Piptadenia peregrina), is employed in northern South America and was used in pre-colonial times in the West Indies.

The earliest report of what is undoubtedly this snuff, known in the West Indies as cohoba, dates from observations made in 1496 when it was first seen amongst the Taina Indians of Hispaniola.

Friar Ramón Pane, commissioned by Columbus "to collect all ceremonies and antiquities ", wrote in detail concerning this drug and its place in Indian society. His reports were first published in 1511 in Martyr's compilations about the New World. "This kohobba powder," which Martyr described as "an intoxicating herb ", "is so strong that those who take it lose consciousness; when the stupefying action begins to wane, the arms and legs become loose and the head droops ". Taking it with a cane about a foot long, they "put one end in the nose and the other in the powder and ... draw it into themselves through the nose". Its action was rapid, for "almost immediately, they believe they see the room turn upside-down and men walking with their heads downwards ". The witch-doctor took the drug with his patients and it "intoxicates them so that they do not know what they do and ... speak of many things incoherently ", believing all the time that they are in communication with spirits.

Anadenanthera peregrina

Mentioning hallucinogenic effects, he explained that, after tribal councils, the chief prays and "tells the vision that he has seen, intoxicated with the cogioba which goes up to his head... and he says that he has talked with the cemi". "Consider what a state their brains are in," he concludes," because they say the cabins seem to them to be turned upside down and that men are walking with their feet in the air."

Snuff from Anadenanthera is apparently no longer employed in the Antilles, where, of course, few aboriginal groups still exist. It was Safford who, in 1916, definitively identified the cohoba reported by the early Europeans as Anadenanthera peregrina. Up to that time, there had been much confusion in the literature, and the snuff called cohoba was commonly considered to have been tobacco. Years earlier, however, in 1898, Uhle had concluded that "the extreme strength of the powder as described by Petrus Martyr, exceeding that of tobacco, decides its different nature and its Piptadenia character". Safford later pointed out the use of Anadenanthera peregrina in preparing the narcotic yopo-snuff of the Orinoco, still much employed, and established its identity with the ancient cohoba of the West Indies.

The centre of the use of Anadenanthera-snuff is, and probably always has been, the Orinoco basin, where it is widely known as yopo. The West Indian tribes are generally thought to have been invaders from northern South America. If this be true, then the snuffing of Anadenanthera powder in the West Indies could be considered as a culture trait imported from South America. Anadenanthera peregrina occurs wild - that is, undoubtedly free from any hint of present or past cultivation - only in South America, and, as Altschul theorized, the natives of the West Indies " may have found it easier to plant the trees than to maintain communication with the mainland for their source of supply " of the snuff.

An early report of yopo amongst the Otomac Indians of the Orinoco basin is that found in Gumilla's famous El Orinoco Ilustrado, first published in 1741. "They have another most evil habit of intoxicating themselves through the nostrils, with certain malignant powders which they call yupa, which quite takes away their reason, and furious, they grasp their weapons... They prepare this powder from certain pods of the yupa...but the powder itself has the odour of strong tobacco. That which they add to it, through the ingenuity of the devil, is what causes the intoxication and fury...they put their shells [large snails] into the fire and burn them to quicklime...[which] they mix with the yupa ... and after reducing the whole to the finest powder, there results a mixture of diabolical strength, so great that in touching this powder with tip of the finger, the most confirmed devotee of snuff cannot accustom himself to it, for in simply putting his finger which touched the yupa near to his nose he bursts forth into a whirlwind of sneezes.

Snuffing tubes and paraphernalia for preparing yopo snuff ( Anadenanthera peregrina ) of the Guahibo Indians, Rio Orinoco, Colombia. Courtesy Botanical Museum of Harvard University

The Saliva Indians and other tribes...also use the yupa, but as they are gentle, benign and timid, they do not become maddened like our Otomacos who...before a battle...would throw themselves into a frenzy with yupa, wound themselves and, full of blood and rage, go forth to battle like rabid tigers."

A number of other missionary reports from the Orinoco area of Colombia and Venezuela reiterate the details offered by Gumilla. The earliest scientific report on this narcotic appears to be that of Alexander yon Humboldt who botanically identified the plant as Acacia Niopo, stating that the Maypure Indians of the Orinoco break the long pods of this tree, moisten them and allow them to ferment; after they turn black, the softened beans are kneaded into small cakes with Manihot-flour and lime from snail shells. These cakes are powdered when a supply of snuff is desired.

Like Gumilla, von Humboldt felt that the biodynamic activity of the snuff was attributable to the lime admixture: "... It is not to be believed that the niopo acacia pods are the chief cause of the stimulating effects of the snuff used by the Otomac Indians. These effects are due to the freshly calcined lime."

The earliest detailed scientific report is that given by the British botanical explorer Spruce who met with the drug amongst the Guahibo Indians of the Orinoco basin of Colombia and Venezuela.

The literature concerning the snuffing of narcotic powders has become extraordinarily confused. There is no doubt but that sundry wholly unrelated plants enter into South American snuffs. Undoubtedly the most important snuffing material was and still is tobacco, mainly from Nicotiana Tabacum, and snuffing may well be the most widespread method, especially in the wet, tropical lowlands areas, of using tobacco. In certain areas of the northwest Amazon, coca-powder ( Erythroxylon Coca) is snuffed. Recent studies have shown the importance and widespread employment of intoxicating snuffs made from Virola-bark. Yet the literature - especially the anthropological - has unwarrantably exaggerated the importance of the leguminous snuffs from Anadenanthera ( Piptadenia).

Many reports ascribe the sources of Amazon snuffs to various leguminous trees, and the British botanist Bentham's concluded that "all South American trees... referred to as the source of narcotic snuff were probably one species and were identical with Linnaeus' Mimosa peregrina". It seems that one of the most extraordinarily mistaken generalizations in ethnobotany - that all the intoxicating snuffs of the Amazon that were not obviously tobacco must have been prepared from Anadenanthera peregrina - has stemmed from Bentham's conclusion. Recent literature and maps showing the distribution of snuffs made presumably from Anadenanthera include the entire Orinoco basin and adjacent areas of southern Venezuela to the east; westward across the northern Colombian Andes, much of the Magdalena Valley; down the Andes through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia; the coastal region of Peru; scattered isolated areas in northern Argentina and the central and western Amazon Valley. One must remember that not one species - Anadenanthera peregrina - is involved but that there have been suggestions that other species of this genus have entered the South American snuff-making picture.

Tree of Anadenanthera peregrina in the campos outside of Boa Vista, Brazil; photograph: R. E. Schultes

Anadenanthera peregrina is a species that occurs naturally and cultivated in the open plains or llanos region of the Orinoco basin of Colombia and Venezuela, in savannahs and light forests in British Guiana and in Brazil in the open grasslands or campos of the Río Branco region and locally in savannah-like areas in the lower Río Madeira basin. If Anadenanthera peregrina is found elsewhere, it occurs as a rare tree or two brought in and cultivated by recently migrated Indian tribes.

As a consequence of the comparatively restricted distribution of Anadenanthera peregrina, the use of a snuff prepared from its beans obviously must be much more restricted than the literature would indicate. This I believe to be true. As examples, we might cite de la Condamine's observation in the early eighteenth century of an hallucinogenic snuff known as curupa amongst the Omaguas of Amazonian Peru and a modern statement that the Tikunas of the upper Amazon both used a snuff made from Anadenanthera peregrina: since this species is unknown from the area inhabited by the Oma- guas and Tikunas, the attributing of the snuff to A. peregrina must be seriously questioned.

Even within the local range of Anadenanthera peregrina, it is not safe to assume that all narcotic snuffs are referable to this species. A number of erroneous " identifications " of narcotic snuff amongst Indians of the uppermost Orinoco in Venezuela and northern affluents of the Río Negro in Brazil - especially amongst the Waikás - have attributed powders prepared from Virola bark to Anadenanthera peregrina. One reason for this confusion may be due to the fact that in many parts of the Amazon - especially in the Río Negro basin, the term paricá, which does often refer to leguminous trees, has been applied to narcotic snuff from Anadenanthera and Virola indiscriminately.

Until recently, there has been much uncertainty concerning the active hallucinogenic principles of Anadenanthera peregrina. At one time, it was felt that the central nervous activity of yopo-snuff was due mainly, if not wholly, to 5-hydroxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine or bufotenine. Recent analyses of carefully authenticated and identified material, however, has shown that other tryptamine derivatives are present in the seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina: N, N-dimethyltryptamine, N-monomethyltryptamine, 5-methoxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine, 5-methoxy-N-monomethyltryptamine, N, N-dimethyltryptamine-N-oxide, 5-hydroxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine-N-oxide.

Anadenanthera peregrina is a beautiful, medium-sized tree with a thick, corky bark. The crown is graceful with its dark green, acacia-like foliage.

Other Anadenanthera species

It was Safford apparently who first suggested that species of Anadenanthera other than A. peregrina may be the source of narcotic snuffs in South America. He identified the vilca or huilca of southern Peru and Bolivia and the cébil of northern Argentina with seeds of what he called Piptadenia macrocarpa, now referred to as Anadenanthera colubrina var. Cebil. Some evidence suggests that vilca may have been employed in forms other than as snuff. Although the evidence is wholly circumstantial and often rather weak at that, several species or varieties of Anadenanthera may actually be involved in the numerous isolated localities in central and southern South America where snuff was employed amongst the Indians. We know with certainty that snuffing was practiced because of the many implements - trays, tubes and other paraphernalia - that have turned up as archaeological remains or in recent collections of ethnographic artifacts.

The term vilca in modern Peru sometimes refers to Anadenanthera colubrina, although this or similar names signify a number of different plants in South America. An early report, dating from about 1571, stated that Inca witch-doctors prophesied by contacting the devil through an intoxication induced by drinking chicha and an herb called villca. Even earlier records mentioned a medicinal plant of this name, some of them emphasizing its laxative and emetic properties. The cébil snuff used in northern Argentina at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards appears " to have been Adenanthera-derived ", although " the use of this genus further south beyond its natural distribution is less likely. Yet there, further south, the Comechingon Indians took something called Sebil through the nose ..., and the Huarpe Indians chewed a substance called Cibil for endurance. "

Howsoever weak and circumstantial the evidence that vilca and cebil were prepared from Anadenanthera, there would seem to be no phytochemical reason why this might not be so. Anadenanthera colubrina has been shown by Altschul to be very closely related morphologically to A. peregrina. Furthermore, some of the same hallucinogenic tryptamines found in varying proportions in Anadenanthera peregrina have been located in material said to be referable to A. colubrina.

It is obvious that extensive research must be done on South American hallucinogenic snuffs in general and on the use of Anadenanthera in particular before anything approaching a clear understanding of the total picture can be expected.

Erythrina spp.

There exists the possibility that, in some parts of Mexico, several species of Erythrina have been used locally as hallucinogens. The seeds of some species of Erythrina resemble the mescal bean ( Sophora secundiflora) which has a long history of use as a narcotic in the American Southwest and northern Mexico. The vernacular names for the two kinds of red seeds are often the same: colorines; and the two are sometimes sold in the market places mixed together. Several species of Erythrina contain toxic indole or isoquinoline derivatives.

Genista canariensis

There is evidence that natives of the New World have found psychotropic activity in plants introduced from the Old World. It has been recently reported that Yaquí medicine men from northern Mexico employ Genista canariensis, the genista of florists, for the purpose of inducing hallucinations. This property of the plant has been experimentally substantiated. The genus Genista and the closely related Cytisus, in which G. canariensis is sometimes included, are extremely rich in alkaloids. Cytisine, an alkaloid that formed the basis for the hallucinogenic use amongst some North American Plains Indians of seeds of the leguminous Sophora secundiflora, has been isolated from leaves and beans of Genista canariensis. There is, apparently, no record of the hallucinogenic use of Genista canariensis in the Old World.

Mimosa hostilis

The Kariri, Pankarurú, Tusha and Fulnio tribes of Pernambuco and Paraiba in eastern Brazil employ the leguminous shrub Mimosa hostilis in the preparation of a "miraculous drink" known as ajuca or vinho do jurema taken in the ajuca ceremony. The roots of the plant, which grows in the dry scrubby caatinga vegetation, are the source of the intoxicant. This cult, apparently, is ancient, having formerly been practised by a number of other tribes - Guegue, Acroa, Pimenteira, Atanayé - some of which have become extinct. An early report of jurema dates from 1788. Another record, dating from 1843, asserted that, among a number of tribes, jurema was taken in order to "pass the night navigating through the depths of slumber" and, by relating it to the use of paricá ( Anadenanthera peregrina and ipadú ( Erythroxylon Coca), seems to indicate hedonistic employment of jurema.

This potent hallucinating drink merits deeper study. Amongst the Indians who still utilize it, groups of priests, warriors or strong young men and old women singers participate in the ceremony - all kneeling with heads bowed to receive their portion of the drink. The ceremony formerly was performed especially before going to war. A very recent description of the jurema cult records that "an old master of ceremonies, wielding a dance rattle decorated with a feather mosaid, would serve a bowlful of the infusion made from yurema roots to all celebrants, who would then see glorious visions of the spirit land, with flowers and birds. They might catch a glimpse of the clashing rocks that destroy souls of the dead journeying to their goal, or see the Thunderbird shooting lightning from a huge tuft on his head and producing claps of thunder by running about."

Apparently several species of Mimosa are generically referred to as jurema in northeastern Brazil. One of the several kinds of jurema prêta is the Mimosa hostilis from which the intoxicant is prepared. This species is sometimes also known as jurema branca, although this name may refer also to Mimosa verrucosa, from the bark of which a stupefacient is said to be derived. An alkaloid was isolated from the bark of the roots in 1946 and named nigerine, but recent chemical studies have established the identity of nigerine with N, N-dimethyltryptamine, the same hallucinogenic constituent isolated from the seeds of the related Anadenanthera peregrina.

Rhynchosia spp.

In Oaxaca, Mexico, a number of species of Rhynchosia, especially R. phaseoloides and R. pyramidalis, are known by the name piule, a kind of generic term signifying narcotics, sometimes applied to the hallucinogenic morning glory seeds and sacred mushrooms. These red and black beans are also known in Mexico as colorines and are equated together with hallucinogenic mushrooms on the slopes of Mt. Popocatepetl.

There is evidence that in southern Mexico Rhynchosia seeds may be employed as a divinatory narcotic. The Chinantecs and Mazatecs of Oaxaca consider them poisonous. Although there are no definite indications in the literature of their use in pre-Conquest times, they may be represented together with mushrooms, falling from the hand of the Aztec god of rain, in the Tepantitla fresco which dates from 300-400 AD.

Rhynchosia seed from Oaxaca gave positive reactions for alkaloid and glycoside tests and produce a kind of intoxication with trogs. An unidentified alkaloid has been isolated from seeds of Rhynchosia pyramidalis.

Sophora secundiflora

A shrub native to the dry limestone areas of the American Southwest and adjacent Mexico, Sophora secundiflora produces dark red seeds known as mescal beans, red beans or coral beans. In Mexico, the vernacular name is frijolito, frijolillo or colorines. These seeds, formerly the basis of a vision-seeking, cult, contain a highly toxic alkaloid, cytisine, the effects of which somewhat resemble nicotine, causing nausea, convulsions, hallucinations and occasional death from respiratory failure.

Sophora secundiflora

Sophora secundiflora is a beautiful shrub - often planted as an ornamental in Texas - with leathery, evergreen leaflets and large inflorescences of violet or violet-blue flowers and woody legumes containing usually three or four beans. The genus Sophora comprises some 25 species of the warmer and tropical parts of both hemispheres, a number of which likewise contain cytisine or a related alkaloid. No other species, however, has apparently been employed for narcotic purposes.

A report by the Spanish explorer of the Texas coast, Cabeza de Vaca, mentioned mescal beans as an article of trade amongst the Indians in 1539. The Stephen Long Expedition in 1820 reported the Arapaho and Iowa using large red beans as a medicine and narcotic. They have been found in archaeological sites, all dated before 1,000 A.D., sometimes with evidence of possible ritualistic use of the beans. They have been recorded for at least 12 cave and rock shelter archaeological sites in southwestern Texas, and material from sites in northern Mexico has been carbon-dated to between 7,5000 B.C. to 200 A.D., thus substantiating the antiquity of the use of this poisonous bean. Although "the presence of mescal beans in cave and rock shelter sites, even when included in containers holding utilitarian as well as nonutilitarian objects, does not," writes Campbell," necessarily signify the presence of a mescal bean cult... There is additional archaeological evidence which does suggest the presence of a prehistoric cult that may have involved the use of the mescal bean."

A well developed mescal bean cult was present amongst the Apache, Comanche, Delaware, Iowa, Kansa, Omaha, Oto, Osage, Pawnee, Ponca, Tonkawa and Wichita tribes. Other tribes of the central and northwestern American Plains groups valued the bean as a medicine or fetish but failed, apparently, to develop a definite cult surrounding its use. In the cult- known variously as the Wichita Dance, Deer Dance, Whistle Dance, Red Bean Dance and Red Medicine Society - the seeds were employed ritualistically or not as an oracular or divinatory medium for inducing visions in initiatory rites and as a ceremonial emetic and stimulant.

There are many parallels and similarities between certain aspects of the modern peyote cult and the Red Bean Dance, and both obviously had a southern origin because of the natural distribution of the plants involved. It appears wholly probable that the Red Bean Dance was pre-peyote in the Plains groups where its role as a sacred narcotic was lost or forgotten with the arrival of the much safer hallucinogenic cactus. Even to-day, amongst the Kiowa, Comanche, and other tribes, the leader or " roadman " of the peyote ceremony often wears, as part of his ornamental dress, a necklace of Sophora secundiflora beans.

Necklace of beans of Sophora secundiflora used by leader of Kiowa Indian peyote ceremony, Anadarko, Oklahoma. Courtesy Botanical Museum of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

An ethnobotanically and pharmacologically most interesting practice is the reported mixing in a narcotic drink of peyote and mescal beans amongst the Comanche, Oto and Tonkawa. This drink, practised probably in transitional periods between the dying out of the Red Bean Dance and the establishment of the peyote cult, must indeed have been a potent - if not a dangerous - narcotic preparation. This may possibly be responsible for the confusion in certain early literature of the terms mescal beans and peyote.

The plant kingdom and hallucinogens (part III)

Caltrop family

Zygophyllaceae

Peganum Harmala

An herb native to dry areas from the Mediterranean east to northern India, Mongolia and Manchuria, Peganum Harmala possesses undoubted hallucinogenic properties. Its seeds contain harmine, harmaline, harmalol and harman - bases known from at least eight different families. This and some of the other species in the genus are highly prized in folk medicine as vermifuges, soporifics, alteratives, aphrodisiacs, lactogogues and in the treatment of eye diseases. The fruits of Peganum Harmala are the source of a red dye and an oil. The esteem in which Peganum Harmala is held amongst peoples of the East is extraordinary. Although there are repeated but vague reports of the employment of Peganum Harmala as an hallucinogen, its actual narcotic use in inducing visions has not yet been established beyond a doubt. A critical search of the literature, especially the ancient records, and modern ethnobotanical field work are urgently needed in the study of Peganum Harmala.

Malpighia family

(Malpighiaceae)

Banisteriopsis spp.

One of the weirdest of the hallucinogens is the drink of the western Amazon known as ayahuasca, caapi or yajé. Although not nearly so popularly known as peyote or, nowadays, as the sacred mushrooms, this narcotic has nonetheless had an undue share of sensational articles that have played fancifully with unfounded claims, especially with regard to its "telepathic" powers.

Notwithstanding its extraordinarily bizarre psychotomimetic effects, this narcotic preparation was hidden from European eyes until just a little over a century ago. The earliest report of ayahuasca appears to have been that of Villavicencio in his geography of Ecuador, written in 1858. The source of the drug, he wrote, was a vine used by the Zaparos, Angateros, Mazanes and other tribes of the Rio Napo basin: "to foresee and to answer accurately in difficult cases, be it to reply opportunely to ambassadors from other tribes in a question of war; to decipher plans of the enemy through the medium of this magic drink and take proper steps for attack and defence; to ascertain, when a relative is sick, what sorcerer has put a curse; to carry out a friendly visit to other tribes; to welcome foreign travellers or, at last, to make sure of the love of their womenfolk".

Banisteriopsis Caapi

A few years earlier, in 1851, the British explorer Richard Spruce had discovered the Tukanoan tribes of the Rio Uaupés in Amazonian Brazil using a liana called caapi to induce intoxication, but his observations were not published until later. One of Spruce's greatest contributions was his precise identification of the source of caapi as a new species of the Malpighiaceae. The species was described and called Banisteria Caapi. Recent botanical studies have shown that this concept cannot be accomodated in the genus Banisteria and it has been transferred to the allied genus Banisteriopsis. The correct name now is, accordingly, Banisteriopsis Caapi.

Spruce wrote of the caapi-drinking ceremony: "I had gone with the full intention of experimenting the caapi myself, but I had scarcely dispatched one cup of the nauseous beverage, which is but half the dose, when the ruler of the feast... came up with a woman bearing a large calabash of caxiri (mandioca beer), of which I must needs take a copious draught, and as I know the mode of its preparation, it was gulped down with secret loathing. Scarcely had I accomplished this feat, when a large cigar 2 feet long and as thick as the wrist, was put lighted into my hand, and etiquette demanded that I should take a few whiffs of it - I, who had never in my life smoked a cigar or a pipe of tobacco. Above all this, I must drink a large cup of palm-wine, and it will readily be understood that the effect of such a complex dose was a strong inclination to vomit, which was only overcome by lying down in a hammock and drinking a cup of coffee... ".

Cultivated vine of Banisteriopsis Caapi Rio Piraparaná, Colombia. Photograph R. E. Schultes

Two years later, Spruce met with caapi amongst the Guahibo Indians of the upper Orinoco of Colombia and Venezuela. Here the natives "not only drink an infusion, like those of the Uaupés, but also chew the dried stem..." Again, in 1857, whilst working in the Ecuadorean Andes, he encountered the Záparo Indians using a narcotic known as ayahuasca and felt that "it was the identical species of the Uaupés, but under a different name ". Although, as Spruce noted, "of the plant itself" Villavicencio "could tell no more than that it was a liana or vine ", his "account of its properties" coincided "wonderfully with what I had previously learnt in Brazil ".

In the century that followed Spruce's remarkable work, many explorers, travellers, anthropologists and botanists - von Martius, Orton, Crevaux, KochGrünberg and others - referred to ayahuasca, caapi or yajé, usually without details and often without botanical identification beyond the statement that the drug was prepared from a forest liana. In the years that followed the early work, the area of use of Banisteriopsis Caapi was shown to extend to the Amazon of Peru and Bolivia and even to the rain-forested Pacific coastal region of Colombia and Ecuador. Several other species of the genus with the same use were likewise reported from the western Amazon. Of outstanding interest was the work in 1922 of Rusby and White in Bolivia and the publication by Morton in 1931 of notes made by the botanical collector Guillermo Klug in the Colombian Putumayo, including the discovery of Banisteriopsis inebrians as a source of the yajé drink. Similarly, the work of Varanof and Juzepczuk in the Colombian Caqueta in 1925-26 added important information to the whole problem. The most recent field work of Garcia Barriga, added to my own researches and those of my students Bristol and Pinkley, have furthered appreciably our knowledge, but there still remains much to do before a thorough understanding of the total picture of the malpighiaceous narcotics is gained. An outstandingly complete ethnobotanical summary of the use of Banisteriopsis as a narcotic has recently been published by Friedberg. Cuatrecasas's monographic study of the Malpighiaceae of Colombia now provides the firm taxonomic basis for clarification of numerous ethnobotanical problems.

Serious complications, however, arose early in attempts correctly to identify ayahuasca, caapi and yajé. In 1890, a missionary amongst the Jivaros published an article in which he consfused the narcotic tree-species of Datura with the malpighiaceous hallucinogen - a confusion that entered pharmacological and chemical literature and has persisted there.

The presumption, arising from misinterpretation of Spruce's field notes, that, while ayahuasca and caapi were derived from Banisteriopsis, yajé was prepared from the apocynaceous Prestonia amazonica (see below under P. amazonica). Although this error has been more or less discredited, the literature abounds with "identifications" of yajé - and even of ayahuasca and caapi - as Prestonia. It has confused the ethnobotanical, chemical and pharmacological study of this drug to an extraordinary degree. In 1957, the chemists Hochstein and Paradies analyzed "ayahuasca" from Peru, calling it Banisteriopsis Caapi, and, from the same region, yajé, which they attributed to Prestonia amazonica.

They stated that the natives of the Río Napo area "commonly consume a mixed extract of the B. Caapi and P. amazonica leaves in the belief that the latter suppress the more unpleasant hallucinations associated with the pure B. Caapi extracts ". The identification of "Prestonia amazonica" was made on an aqueous extract of the leaves through the use of the vernacular name yajé which, in much of the literature, is actually so identified. What makes this particular instance unusually sensitive was the report of the discovery in "Prestonia amazonica" of N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a compound unknown in the Apocynaceae. In the light of recent studies, it appears possible that the aqueous extract of leaves called yajé was, in reality, Banisteriopsis Rusbyana or Psychotria psychotriaefolia.

Still other confusions have entered the picture of the identity of the malpighiaceous narcotics of South America. Yajé has been identified as a species of Aristolochia on the basis of misidentification of a wood specimen. On what was possibly a mixture in herbarium material, Niedenzu suggested that ayahuasca in Ecuador and Peru ought to be considered the malpighiaceous Mascagnia psilophylla var. antifebrilis as well as Banisteriopsis Caapi and B. quitensis - thus introducing an additional genus, for which none of the extensive field observations offers support, into the picture.

From an evaluation of field work from all sources, it is now clear that the two main sources of ayahuasca, caapi and yajé in the Amazon basin, natém in Ecuador, pinde along the Pacific coast of Colombia, are the barks of Banisteriopsis Caapi and B. inebrians, and that in certain parts of the westernmost Amazon the leaves of a third species, B. Rusbyana, may occasionally be added to fortify the drink.

A great amount of ethnobotanical work remains to be done in identifying the plants which certain Amazonian tribes use as additives with the basic Banisteriopsis ingredient. These additives may be very localized - even to one witch-doctor - or they may be widely employed. In many instances, there is reason to believe that their use alters or strengthens the effects that the Banisteriopsis alone would cause. The Sionas of Colombia add what is probably Datura suaveolens to Banisteriopsis in making yajé, and their neighbours, the Inganos, are said to value Alternanthera Lehmannii as an admixture. I found that Makuna medicine-men of the Río Popeyaká in eastern Colombia occasionally add a few crushed leaves of the apocynaceous Malouetia Tamaquarina. Tobacco is stated sometimes to be added. A most interesting anthropological report has recently enumerated five lianas, the barks of which are employed with Banisteriopsis Caapi by the Tukanos of the Brazilian part of the Rio Uaupés; but, unfortunately, the plants are still identified only by native names; the admixture said to fortify the drink most strongly - a vine with thickened nodes and known in Tukano as kuri-kaxpi-dá - may, I believe, possibly represent Gnetum nodosum, a very abundant element of the riverside vegetation.

Appreciable differences exist in the manner of preparing the malpighiaeceous narcotics - differences from area to area and even occasionally from tribe to tribe. In Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, near the eastern Andean slopes, the drink is made by long boiling of the ingredients; farther to the east, it is made simply by soaking and squeezing the freshly rasped bark in cold water and straining the liquid.

To this day, the natives of the north-west Amazon in Brazil and Colombia use the Banisteriopsis drink for prophetic and divinatory purposes and also to fortify the bravery of male adolescents about to undergo the severely painful yurupari ceremony for initiation into manhood. The narcosis amongst these peoples, with whom I have taken caapi on many occasions, is usually pleasant, characterized by visual hallucinations in colour, which initially is very often a shade of blue or purple. In excessive doses, it is said to bring on frighteningly nightmarish visions and a feeling of extremely reckless abandon, although consciousness is not lost nor is use of the limbs unduly affected

Leaves of Banisteriopsis Caapi, Río Kananarl, Colombia. Photograph H. Garcia-Barriga

One encounters great difficulty in describing a Banisteriopsis intoxication for many reasons. First: the effects of harmine, the alkaloid apparently of prime psychoactive importance, is known to react variably from person to person. Second: the methods of preparing ayahuasca, caapi or yajé differ from area to area. Third: sundry admixtures may be employed that alter the effects of the principal ingredient of the drink.

My own experiences from participation in many Amazonian Banisteriopsis-rituals might be summarized by saying that the intoxication began with a feeling of giddiness and nervousness, soon followed by nausea, occasional vomiting and profuse perspiration. Occasionally, the vision was disturbed by flashes of light and, upon closing the eyes, a bluish haze sometimes appeared. A period of abnormal lassitude then set in during which colours increased in intensity. Sooner or later a deep sleep interrupted by dream-like sequences began. The only uncomfortable after-effect noted was intestinal upset and diarrhoea on the following day. At no time was movement of the limbs adversely affected. In fact, amongst many Amazonian Indians, dancing forms part of the caapi-ritual.

Chen and Chen offered a good summary of Banisteriopsis hallucinations: "The most outstanding feature of caapi seems to be its ability to produce visual hallucinations and dreams in men. The Caucasians who took this preparation apparently confirmed the Indians' claims. Thus, Villavicencio experienced an aerial voyage, in which he saw the most beautiful sights, and Spruce quoted a Brazilian friend as saying that once, when he took a full dose of caapi, he saw all the marvels that he had read about in the Arabian Nights pass rapidly before his eyes as a panorama; the final sensations and sights were horrible, as usual. Cardenas made seven observations on men, including himself, with the decoction in various doses. All the subjects appeared to have optical illusions of different degrees. No excitement was recorded in any case."

The earliest sophisticated phytochemical work on "yajé" was apparently that of the Colombian, Fischer-Cardenas, who, in 1923, isolated alkaloidal crystals which he called telepathine, a name which an earlier Colombian, Zerda-Bayon, had coined for a presumed alkaloid as early as 1905. Fischer-Cardenas, without voucher botanical material, presumed that he was analyzing a species of Atristolochia.

Further chemical and pharmacological studies were undertaken without much real progress, until Perrot and Raymond-Hamet, in 1927, first isolated an alkaloid in pure condition, conserving for it the name telepathine. A year later, Lewin investigated Banisteriopsis Caapi subsequently publishing a monograph on this "magic drug" and, what is truly remarkable, making "... a film of the action of the drug in three patients... ", undoubtedly "the first documentation of the action of monoamine-oxidase inhibitors ". Lewin isolated an alkaloid which he called banisterine. Elger and Wolfe and Rumpf contributed by identifying the alkaloid in botanically authenticated material as harmine, known for many years and from the zygophyllaceous Peganum Harmala. Shortly thereafter, in 1939, the work of Chen and Chen confirmed the presence of harmine in stem, root and leaf material of botanically authenticated Banisteriopsis Caapi. Harmaline and tetrohydroharmine have likewise been isolated from Banisteriopsis Caapi.

In 1953, botanically determined material of Banisteriopsis inebrians was analyzed with the resulting discovery of harmine in the stems, but harmaline and tetrahydroharmaline were not found.

All the alkaloids isolated from Banisteriopsis Caapi and B. inebrians have a β-carboline skeleton with varying degrees of hydrogenation in the pyridine ring.

While Banisteriopsis is normally employed as a beverage, there is evidence that in the north-westernmost Amazon it may be used as snuff as well: harmine, harmaline and tetrohydroharmine have been reported from snuff powders said to have been prepared from a vine which, according to reports, was also the source of an intoxicating drink in the Rio Negro basin of Brazil. Botanically identifiable material, unfortunately, is lacking.

A recent and unusual chemical analysis carried out on stem material of the type plant of Banisteriopsis Caapi, collected by Spruce in 1852, disclosed the presence still of harmine. This material, suffering considerable damage from rot when it was abandoned in shipment in the Amazon jungle, has been stored for more than a century at Kew. Gas chromatography - mass spectrometry showed that the alkaloid content consisted exclusively of harmine. Whether the stems originally contained harmaline and tetrohydroharmine or not cannot be stated, but it is more likely that, with time, they have been transformed into the chemically more stable aromatic β-carboline, harmine. It is truly remarkable that botanical material collected from a type plant for chemical analysis 115 years ago has finally been subjected to examination by modern analytical microtechniques.

It was Poisson who, in 1965, reported in the leaves of Banisteriopsis Rusbyana the presence, in relatively high amounts, of N,N-dimethyltryptamine, a discovery corroborated by several later investigators. This species surprisingly did not contain the β-carboline alkaloids.

As pointed out above, this plant is one of the important admixtures with Banisteriopsis Caapi and B. inebrians in preparing the narcotic drink in the westernmost Amazon. What is even more interesting is that this is the same indole derivative found in a number of hallucinogenic snuffs used in South America.

To my knowledge, leaves of Psychotria psychotriaefolia and Banisteriopsis Rusbyana are never used alone, notwithstanding their significant content of N,N-dimethyltryptamine. Since it is suspected that this hallucinogenic compound would have little if any effect taken orally, the way in which these two plants act as admixtures with harmine-containing species is still not clear. That they do alter or even intensify the intoxication is not questioned by any field observation, and, even though most of the South American narcotic preparations containing N,N-dimethyltryptamine are taken as snuffs, the natives employ at least one other - Mimosa hostilis - in liquid form as a drink.

It is obvious that there remains much field and laboratory investigation - - preferably well integrated - before we truly understand the drugs of the ayahuasca-caapi-yajé complex, notwithstanding the fact that we have had a century in which to carry out such studies. What is disconcerting, indeed, is that time may be running out for pristine investigations of this kind, as tribe after tribe becomes civilized or disappears.

Tetrapteris methystica

Several writers - notably Spruce and the German anthropologist Koch-Grünberg - mention more than one "kind" of caapi in the Vaupés basin.

Tetrapteris methystica, one source of the intoxicating caapi drink of the north-west Amazon region. Rio Tikié, Brazil. Photograph R. E. Schultes

It was my good fortune in 1948 to be able to witness the preparation of, and to take a narcotic drink amongst, the nomadic Makú Indians of an affluent of the Rio Tikie in north-westernmost Brazil. Specimens taken from a flowering vine, from the bark of which a coldwater infusion was made without the admixture of any other plants, were found to represent an undescribed species of a malpighiaceous genus closely allied to Banisteriopsis - Tetrapteris methystica.

The beverage prepared from Tetrapteris methystica was a yellowish hue, quite unlike the coffee-brown colour characteristic of all preparations of Banisteriopsis Caapi which I have seen.

A small amount of stem material for chemical study that I gathered from the wild vine from which the type material came was lost in the overturning of my canoe. Consequently, nothing is known chemically of this kind of caapi. That it is highly intoxicating, with effects very like those induced by Banisteriopsis, I can vouch from self-experimentation.

An important point in this connexion is worth considering. Tetrapteris methystica may represent the second "kind" of caapi mentioned by Spruce and KochGrünberg, and it might be that the epithet caapi-pinima (" painted caapi ") alludes not to the painted leaves but to the unusual yellowish hue of the drink prepared from it.

Cactus family

(Cactaceae)

Lophophora Williamsii

One of the important native religions that the conquering Spaniards found amongst the Mexican Indians centered around a small, grey-green, napiform, spineless cactus covered with tufts of whitish hair. This sacred plant, known in Nahuatl as peyotl, is now technically called Lophophora Williamsii. It grows in the deserts of the central and northern parts of the Mexican Plateau, concentrated apparently in the Valley of the Río Grande.

Peyote, as the cactus is known in modern Mexico, might appropriately be termed the "prototype" of the New World hallucinogens, since it was one of the earliest discovered and probably the most spectacular vision-inducing plant encountered by the first European visitors to Mexico. Firmly established at the time of the Conquest, the peyote-cult in Mexico has withstood four centuries of civil and ecclesiastical opposition and, during the past century, has spread, in greatly modified form, to many Indian groups in the United States and Canada. The extensive spread of peyote as a sacred plant is due obviously to its extraordinary psychoactive properties and the resulting belief amongst the Indians in its supernatural therapeutic powers.

The peyote cactus, Lophophora Williamsii, in flower Photograph R. E. Schultes

How far into the past the use of peyote extends no one knows. The first European to discuss peyote, the missionary Sahagún, suggested that the Chichimecas and Toltecs were acquainted with it as far back as 300 B.C., but the accuracy of this dating depends on his exactness in interpreting the native calendar. Sahagrún, who worked in Mexico in the middle of the 16th century, reported that: "There is another herb like tunas of the earth; it is called peyotl; it is white; it is found in the north country; those who eat or chew it see visions either frightful or laughable; this intoxication lasts two or three days and then ceases; it is a common food of the Chichimecas, for it sustains them and gives them courage to fight and not feel fear nor hunger nor thirst; and they say that it protects them from all danger ". The Chichimecas, he wrote, "were the first to discover and use the root called peyotl which takes the place of wine in their diet ". Another early ecclesiastical chronicler, Cardenas, reported in 1591 that the natives eat peyote, lose their senses, see visions of terrifying sights like the devil and are able to prophesy the future; he denounced the drug as "satanic trickery ".

The first full description of the cactus, under the name Peyotl zacatecensis, was that of Hernandez, physician to Philip II of Spain, in his De Historia Plantarurm Novae Hispaniae: "The root is of nearly medium size, sending forth no branches or leaves above the ground, but with a certain woolliness adhering to it on account of which it could not be aptly figured by me. Both men and women are said to be harmed by it. It appears to be of a sweetish taste and moderately hot. Ground up and applied to painful joints, it is said to give relief. Wonderful properties are attributed to this root... It causes those devouring it to be able to foresee and predict things,... or to discern who has stolen from them some utensil or anything else; and other things of like nature which the Chichimecas really believe they have found out. On which account this root scarcely issues forth, as if it did not wish to harm those who discover it and eat it."

Spanish missionary efforts to stamp out the peyotecult failed, for it survived in the hills. In the latter part of the 17th Century, a detailed description of the peyote ritual amongst the Cora Indians still referred to the cactus as a "diabolic root ". Most of the early records were made by ecclesiastical writers and opposed peyote, not on any possible physical harm that its use might engender, but because of its pagan connotations. They went so far as to incorporate in a religious manual of 1760, questions that equated the eating of peyote with cannibalism. By 1720, the use of peyote was prohibited throughout Mexico, and Indians, except those in remote areas, were obliged to practise their rites in hiding. Even Indians nominally Christianized hung little bags of the plant around the necks of children "instead of the four gospels" and bowed in reverence when passing the plant in the field. So strongly rooted was the sacredness of this cactus that native lore of Christian Indians held that a patron saint, El Santo Niño de Peyotl, appeared amongst plants on the hillsides, a belief which still survives in Mexican folklore.

The earliest record of the use of peyote in what is now territory of the United States dates from 1760 in Texas. The plant was known to American Indians during the Civil War (1860-1864). Peyote came to public attention in the United States about 1880, when the Kiowa and Comanche tribes had a peyote ceremony which, although resembling in certain respects those of peyote-worshipping tribes of northern Mexico, had been almost wholly remodelled into a typical Plains Indian vision-quest ritual. It is not known exactly how the peyote religion diffused from Mexico to the plains, but it is widely thought that a knowledge of the supposed virtues of the cactus was brought back by Plains Indians from raids into the Mescalero Indian country. Slow and gradual diffusion northwards might also have had an influence. At any rate, the cult was established amongst the Comanche and Kiowa tribes between 1880 and 1885.

Tarahumare Indian women dancing "Hikuli" in the peyote ceremony. Western Sierra Madre, Mexico. From C. Lumholtz "Unknown Mexico" 1 (1902)

Several years later, the "finished Plains peyote ceremony" had been established and was actively being disseminated by Indian missionaries from tribe to tribe. By the 1920s, there were some 13,300 adherents of this cult in more than 30 tribes, organized legally into the Native American Church, and, at the present time, an estimated quarter of a million Indians in tribes as far north as Saskatchewan, Canada, practise this religious cult which preaches brotherly love, high moral principles and abstention from alcohol.

Amongst the tribes of northern Mexico, peyote worship takes place usually in a long ceremony in which dancing forms a major part. The Huichols, Coras, Tepehuanes, Tarahumares and others ascribe divine origin to the plant. The Tarahumares believe that when Father Sun left earth to dwell in the skies, he left peyote behind to cure all man's ills and woes. "So numerous and important are its medicinal applications and so exhilarating and glorious its effects... that it is regarded as the vegetable incarnation of a deity." They hold that peyote sings and talks when it grows, and that, when gathered into bags, it sings happily all the way home. Peyote enters heavily into legends and folklore of these Indians. The legends are inseparable from the religious ceremonies and, indeed, underlie them. Were there no legends, the plant would be employed merely in a hedonistic way as a narcotic. But it has been exalted to a position of near-divinity, and it holds this place even today.

The Indians of the United States have basically a standardized peyote ceremony, although interesting variations from tribe to tribe are evident. The KiowaComanche peyote ceremony, established in the latter part of the last century, is followed with minor modifications wherever peyote is worshipped in the United States. It consists usually of an all-night meeting, in a teepee, round house or other appropriate edifice, the worshippers sitting in a circle around a peyote altar, led in prayer, chanting and meditation by a leader or "road-man ", ending in the morning with a communal meal. The Native American Church incorporates many Christian with pagan elements, one of the reasons for its rapid spread.

Peyote is almost invariably eaten in the form of the so-called mescal buttons, the brown, dried, discoidal tops or crowns of the cactus. The crown is the chlorophyllbearing portion of the plant - the-only part above ground - which is severed from the root and desiccated. In this form, it is well nigh indestructible and may be easily transported long distances. When severed from the roots, the crown rapidly loses water, shrivelling to the thin, tough wafer or "button ". Mexican Indians, especially the Huicholes, who call the plant hikuli, collect peyote for sale to Indians in many areas. They often string the newly cut crowns on rope and hang them on the backs of mules to dry on the return journey from the peyote fields. They may journey more than 200 miles from their home base in a pilgrimage taking up to 42 days, made usually in early November. Peyote seekers must prepare themselves ritualistically before the trip, must wear special clothing and must follow strict taboos.

Since mescal buttons may be kept for long periods of time without losing their efficacy, most Mexican Indians to-day buy supplies from the Huicholes and keep them for use whenever needed. This indestructibility and durability of the dried crowns has, of course, made it possible for the peyote cult to spread so far north of the native area of the cactus. American and Canadian Indians, of course, rarely if ever now gather their own supply, preferring to purchase them from commercial dealers in areas near the native range of Lophophora Williamsii. The mescal buttons may then be sent by express of by post to the users. In Mexico and the United States, they are, most commonly, simply taken into the mouth, softened with saliva and swallowed without mastication, Occasionally, Indians may soak the buttons in water and drink the intoxicating fluid.

"Indian Religion, Arapaho", painted by the Arapaho artist Carl Sweezy. This illustrate a typical Plains Indian peyote ceremony in the teepee and with the half-moon altar and fire. From O. B. Jackson and J. [?] American Indian Painters ", 1 (1950) t. 31 (Editions S[?]ezicki, Nice, France)

This extraordinary cactus was first described botanically by Lemaire in 1845 under the name Echinocactus Williamsii. In 1872 [?] considered that it represented a species of A[?] and made the appropriate transfer.

A few years later in 1885, Lemaire himself transferred this concept to the ? Anhalonium, and the binomial A. Williamsii persisted in the chemical and anthropological literature for many years. In 1891, Coulter included the peyote cactus in the genus Mammillaria, but three years later it was placed in Coulter's monotypic genus Lophophora as L. Williamsii.

Kiowa Indian teepee for the peyote ceremony Anadarko, Oklahoma. Photograph R. E. Schultes

Kiowa half-moon altar and remains of fire from the peyote ceremony, taken in the morning when the teepee is taken down following the all-night ritual. Anadarko, Oklahoma. Photograph R. E. Schultes

The botanical nomenclature of the peyote cactus is complex, and the binomial Lophophora Williamsii has at least 20 synonyms.

It is generally thought that the earliest chemical studies of Lophophora Williamsii were those undertaken

Kiowa Indian peyote leader or " roadman ", painted by Stephen Mopope, Kiowa artist. Property of Botanical Museum of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

by Parke, Davis & Co. on material sent in from Laredo by a Mrs. Anna B. Nickels. What is certain, however, is that Lewin acquired material of peyote during his travels in America in 1886 and submitted it to Hennings who described it as a new species of Anhalonium: A. Lewinii. Lewin ascertained in 1888 that it possessed alkaloids - the first evidence of alkaloids in the Cactaceae.

Anhalonium Lewinii was thought to differ morphologically from the concept that had been known as A. Williamsii. Thus began a confusion that has confounded phytochemical research for many years. Hennings had received dried mescal buttons which he soaked in water, described and crudely figured. It is now apparent that Hennings was describing merely an agephase of Lophophora Williamsii and that all intergraduations between the two may be found, for he used such characters as number of ribs and tubercles and differences in whiteness, length and silkiness of tufts of hair. There seemed likewise to be chemical differences, and he confessed that he could not recognize from morphological characters whether he had "Anhalonium Williamsii or A.

Lewinii" but that he could distinguish the two chemically. In years following, Anhalonium Lewinii was bandied about: as a species of Lophophora - L. Lewinii (Henn.) Thompson or L. Williamsii var. Lewinii (Henn.) Coult. - and as a species of Mammillaria and Echinocactus.

There is now general agreement that the true peyote cactus represents one species and should be referred to the monotypic genus Lophophora as L. Williamsii.

At least 21 botanical names have been employed for the peyote cactus, but the only synonyms that have attracted wide acceptance have been those stemming from the description of Anhalonium Lewinii.

The chemistry of Lophophora Williamsii is of extreme interest. Up to the present time, 15 β-phenethylamine and simple isoquinoline alkaloids have been isolated from it. The principal constituants are mescaline, N-methylmescaline, N-acetylmescaline, anhalamine, anhalonine, anhalidine, anhalinine, anhalonidine, lophophorine, O-methylanhalonedine and pellotine. Although all of these compounds are probably active biologically, mescaline alone apparently is responsible for the visual hallucinations, inducing hallucinogenic effects in doses of 0.3 to 0.5 gm. Weak antibiotic activity has likewise recently been discovered in Lophophora Williamsii.

Peyote intoxication, one of the most highly complex and variable of all hallucinogenic plants, is characterized especially by indescribably brilliant coloured visions in kaleidoscopic movement. These visual hallucinations are often accompanied by auditory, taste, olfactory and tactile hallucinations. Sensations of weightlessness, macroscopia, depersonalization, doubling of the ego, alteration or loss of time perception and other rather unearthly effects are normally experienced. The very real - and often overlooked - difference between peyote intoxication and mescaline intoxication must be constantly borne in mind. Amongst aboriginal users, it is the dried head of the cactus, with its total alkaloid content, that is ingested; mescaline injected is employed only experimentally and then produces the effects of but one of the alkaloids without the physiological interaction of the others that are present in the crude plant material. As a consequence, descriptions of the visual hallucinations found in psychological writings should not necessarily be too closely evaluated with the visual effects experienced by Indian peyotists.

Doses vary greatly amongst Indian users who may ingest anywhere from four mescal buttons (approximately 215 grains) to more than 30. Peyote intoxication may be divided into two phases: a period of contentment and hypersensitivity and one of nervous calm and muscular sluggishness, often accompanied by hypercerebrality and the coloured visions. Before visual hallucinations appear, usually three hours after ingestion of the drug, the subject sees flashes of colour across the field of vision, the depth and saturation of the colours, which always precede the visions, defying description.

There seems to be a kind of sequence frequently followed in the visions - geometric figures, to familiar scenes and faces, to unfamiliar scenes and objects, to secondary objects that vary with individual difference or which may be absent. The literature is rich in excellent and detailed descriptions of visual hallucinations from both peyote and mescaline intoxication, and they provide a wealth of data of interest for psychological and psychiatrical research. While the visual hallucinations are important in native peyote cults, peyote is revered in great part because of its appeal as a "medicine ". Its supernatural "medicinal" powers, in turn, derive from its ability, through the visions, to put man into contact with the spirit world from which, according to aboriginal belief, come illness and even death and to which medicine men turn for their diagnoses.

The magico-therapeutic powers of Lophophora Williamsii are in such wide repute in Mexico that many other plants have been confused or related by vernacular name with it. Some of these plants belong to families other than the Cactaceae - to the Compositae, Orchidaceae, Leguminosae, Crassulaceae, Solanaceae. A number of cactus species in seven genera are related in folk medicine and folklore to Lophophora Williamsii. These include Ariocarpus, Astrophytum, Aztekium, Dolichothele, Obregonia, Pelecyphora and Solisia - popularly classed as peyotes because they bear some resemblance to Lophophora or because they have similar toxic effects and may be employed with Lophophora or as a substitute for it. There is much, indeed, that needs clarification in this whole picture.

Genera allied to Lophophora

In this connexion, it is well known that Indians of northern Mexico have esteemed other cactaceous species as peyote. The explorer Lumholtz, for example, reported that the Tarahumares use other narcotic cactuses, some of which are not yet even botanically determined. "High mental qualities", he wrote, "are ascribed especially to all species of Mammillaria and Echinocactus, small cacti, for which a regular cult is instituted. The Tarahumares designate several as hikuli, though the name belongs properly only to the kind most commonly used by them. These plants live for months after they have been rooted up, and the eating of them causes a state of ecstasy. They are, therefore, considered demigods, who have to be treated with great reverence... The principal kinds thus distinguished are known to science as Lophophora Williamsii and Lophophora Williamsii var. Lewinii... The Tarahumares speak of them as the superior hikuli ( hikuli wanamé) or simply hikuli, they being the hikuli par excellence... Besides hikuli wanamé ordinarily used, the Tarahumare know and worship the following varieties: (i) Mulato ( Mammillaria micromeris[1] ).

This is believed to make the eyes large and clear to see sorcerers, to prolong life and to give speed to the runners. (ii) Rosapara. This is only a more advanced vegetative stage of the preceding species - though it looks quite different, being white and spiny... (iii) Sunami( Mammillaria fissurata[2] ). It is rare, but it is believed to be even more powerful than waname and is used in the same way as the latter; the drink produced from it is also strongly intoxicating. Robbers are powerless to steal anything where Sunami calls soldiers to its aid. (iv) Hikuli walula saeliami. This is the greatest of all, and the name means 'hikuli great authority'. It is extremely rare among the Tarahumares, and I have not seen any specimen of it, but it was described to me as growing in clusters of from eight to twelve inches in diameter, resembling waname with many young ones around it. All the other hikuli are his servants. The reason why so few of these plants are brought to the Tarahumare country is that he is very greedy, requiring oxen for food, not being satisfied with sheep, goats or anything else... All these various species are considered good, as coming from Tata Dios and well disposed toward the people. But there are some kinds of hikuli believed to come from the Devil. One of these, with long white spines, is called ocoyome.It is very rarely used, and only for evil purposes. If anyone should happen to touch it with the foot, it would cause the offending leg to break."

Even in the modern Tarahumare culture, narcotic cactuses play a role in festivals: Hikuri, Lophophora Williamsii; peyote cimarron, Ariocarpus.fissuratus; and Epithelantha micromeris. All of these species grow far from present day Tarahumare country. Another cactus - cawé( Pachycereus pecten-aboriginum) - is still found in territory inhabited by the Tarahumares and is employed as a narcotic by them.

Several of these Tarahumare narcotic cactuses contain alkaloids capable of inducing visual hallucinations.

Trichocereus Pachanoi

A large columnar cactus -- the San Pedro of northern Peru -- forms the basis of an hallucinogenic drink taken by witch doctors for diagnosis, divination and to make oneself owner of another's identity. San Pedro, once erroneously identified in the literature as Opuntia cylindrica, is now known to be referable to Trichocereus Pachanoi. This and several other species of Trichocereus have been found to contain mescaline and other alkaloids.

Loosestrife family (Lythraceae)

Heimia salicifolia

An interesting and still poorly understood Mexican narcotic is Heimia salicifolia, known by the vernacularname sinicuichi, Heimia salicifolia and the very closely allied H. myrtifolia, which may represent but a geographical variant, range in the highlands from Mexico south to Uruguay, Paraguay and northern Argentina. Although unusual uses in folk medicine are reported from widely separated parts of this range, only in Mexico, apparently, has the small shrub been valued as a narcotic. Some of the local vernacular names are suggestive of the biodynamic properties of Heimia salicifolia, such as abre-o-sol (" sun opener ") and herva de la vida (" herb of life ") in Brazil. The name sinicuichi, or derivatives of it such as sinicuilche and sinicuil, refer to other plants in Mexico, all of which are, in one way or another, intoxicating: species of Rhynchosia, Piscidia and Erythrina; the sinicuicheof the Mexican highlands, however, refers to Heimia salicifolia.

Heimia salicifolia

The leaves of sinicuichi, slightly wilted, are crushed in water and the juice is set in the sun to ferment. The resulting drink has mildly intoxicating properties, usually devoid of unpleasant after-effects, with a slight feeling of giddiness followed by a drowsy euphoria characterized by a darkening of the partaker's surroundings, a great shrinking in size of the world around, auditory hallucinations, an altered sense of time and place, forgetfulness and a removal from a state of reality. Sounds seem to come distorted from a great distance.

This plant typifies an hallucinogen of which the hallucinogenic characteristics are auditory, not visual. The natives believe that sinicuichi has sacred or supernatural qualities, since they hold that it helps them recall events which took place many years earlier as if they had happened yesterday; others assert that they are able, with sinicuichi, to remember pre-natal events.

Alkaloids were first reported in Heimia salicifolia in 1958. More recent work has isolated and characterized five alkaloids. One of these alkaloids, cryogenine, has been shown to "mimic qualitatively and semi-quantitatively the action of the total alkaloid extracts of Heimia salicifolia "

Much observation of an ethnobotanical nature must be carried out in Mexico to amplify our understanding of the possible use in native cultures of the psychotomimetic effects of Heimia salicifolia. It has apparently not elsewhere been employed as a narcotic.

Dogbane family (Apocynaceae)

One of the enigmas in the study of aboriginal narcotics is why the richest alkaloidal family of plants - the Apocynaceae - should be so sparingly represented in the list of species valued and utilized as psychotomimetics. There are undoubtedly sundry species of this family with organic constituents capable of inducing visual hallucinations, but either they have not been discovered by aboriginal peoples or they are too toxic for human consumption.

Tabernanthe Iboga

Probably the only member of this family known definitely to be utilized as an hallucinogen is iboga, the yellowish root of Tabernanthe Iboga an African narcotic of great social importance, especially in Gabon and adjacent parts of the Congo.

In the middle of the last century, French and Belgian explorers began to report that this remarkable plant was employed as a powerful stimulant and aphrodisiac, that it doubled muscular strength and endurance. A few tribes had discovered that large doses would induce unworldly visual hallucinations, doses which, however, might often produce death. These natives incorporated iboga into initiation rites in secret cults. The earliest published report, dating from 1864, stated that iboga root, when eaten, "is not toxic except in high doses in the fresh state. In small quantities, it is an aphrodisiac and a stimulant of the nervous system; warriors and hunters use it constantly to keep themselves awake during night watches... ".

The plant was described in 1889, and by the turn of the century, phytochemical studies of the roots had been initiated and the principal alkaloid, 5-methoxy indole, ibogaine, was isolated. A number of chemical and pharmacological investigations followed these preliminary studies and have established the presence in Tabernanthe Iboga of 12 alkaloids. The total alkaloid content of the root bark may reach 5 % or 6 % in dried material.

Tabernanthe Iboga, source of iboga root of eastern Africa From A. Landrin, "De l'iboga et de l'ibogaine" (1905)

The pharmacological effects of ibogaine, which has been compared with cocaine in its activity, may be divided into three phases - First, it is a cholinesterase inhibitor, as are some of the other associated alkaloids, causing in man hypotension and stimulation of digestion and appetite. Secondly, it is a strong central stimulant - like an excessive dose of caffeine - leading, in large doses, to convulsions, paralysis and arrest of respiration. Thirdly, it has definite hallucinogenic properties. These effects, deduced from experiments with dogs, have been confirmed by Sigg who personally took a dose of ibogaine and described its effects. Visual hallucinations - blue discs appearing only in the dark - were accompanied by many other syndromes common to hallucinogenic intoxication, but no undesirable after effects, exhaustion or depression were noted.

The hallucinogenic dose is several times the normal stimulant dose, meaning that the partaker must suffer intense and unpleasant central stimulation in order to experience the desired hallucinogenic effects. Observations on the native use of iboga coincide with this characteristic of the action of the drug.

Tabernanthe Iboga is used throughout its range - Gabon and parts of the Congo - and even beyond but it is cultivated only in Gabon, where its hallucinogenic properties are considered to be as important as its stimulant and presumed aphrodisiac effects.

The earliest report of the hallucinogenic effects of iboga date from 1903 when Guien described an initiate into a fetishist cult in the Congo: "Soon all his sinews stretch out in an extraordinary fashion. An epileptic madness seizes him, during which, unconscious, he mouths words, which, when heard by the initiated ones, have a prophetic meaning and prove that the fetish has entered him."

In Gabon, the hallucinogen is employed in initiation rites of secret societies, the most famous of which is the Bwiti or Bouiti, where the drug has far-reaching social effects. An initiate enters the cult, according to the natives, when he has "seen Bwiti" or "has eaten the iboga ", the only way to see Bwiti. The complicated ceremonies and tribal dances involved in eating of the iboga root and the ensuing intoxication vary from locality to locality, and iboga enters into other aspects of life of the Bwiti. Sorcerers, for example, take the drug before seeking information from the spirit world, and cult leaders eat iboga root for a whole day before asking advice from ancestors.

Sometimes other plants, occasionally as many as 10, are taken with iboga. A chemical investigation of these additives might well turn up new hallucinogenic plants. One of the most interesting is the euphorbiaceous Alchornea floribunda. Employed in the same way as iboga in another secret society in Gabon, the Byeri, this species may well be an hallucinogen as well.

There is evidence that the Bwiti Cult has been growing, not disappearing, during the past half century, and it may well offer the strongest single force against the missionary spread of Christianity in Gabon, unifying many of the once warring tribes in resistance to European innovations. It will undoubtedly continue for a long time to exert great social influence in Gabon.

Prestonia amazonica

Ethnobotanical and chemical literature abounds with reports that Prestonia ( Haemadictyon) amazonica is the source of an hallucinogenic preparation in the Amazon Valley .

. Although recent work has all but discredited this suggestion - an "identification" stemming from misinterpretation of botanical field data, careless determination of specimens and even guesswork - its widespread acceptance demands a consideration of the circumstances leading to the error.

The narcotic preparations made from South American malpighiaceous lianas of Banisteriopsis and Tetrapteris are known as ayahuasca in Peru and Bolivia, caapi in Brazil and Colombia, and yajé in Ecuador and the parts of Colombia adjacent to Ecuador. In 1921, the French anthropologist. Reinberg, wrote that this narcotic drunk in the Rio Napo area of Ecuador and Peru, was prepared from two plants: ayahuasca, a liana the diameter of a man's thumb, and yajé, a small tree about 4 1/2 feet tall with entire, ovate, petiolate leaves 20 cm. long and 7 cm. wide, regular and acuminate with a tip 2 cm. long. These leaves called yajé he identified, with reservation, as Prestonia, stating that they approached P. amazonica, or related genera. The following year, the Belgian horticulturist, Claes, said that according to De Wildeman, the yajé of the Koregwahe Indians of Colombia "might be " Prestonia amazonica. I have found no voucher herbarium specimens in Paris or Brussels to substantiate this "identification" which was based almost certainly on a suggestion made in 1852 by Spruce who, when he described the preparation of the narcotic drink from caapi, wrote that there was another kind of caapi known as caapi-pinima or "painted caapi" in the Rio Negro area of Brazil and that this might be "an apocynaceous twiner of the genus Haemadictyon, of which I saw only young shoots without any flowers ". He reported that the leaves "are of a shining green, painted with the strong blood-red veins. It is possibly the same species ... distributed by Mr. Bentham under the name of Haemadictyon amazonicum ".

The carefully qualified suggestion of Spruce was taken up and, through repetitions in the literature, lost the qualifying caution, until today the literature - anthropological, botanical, and chemical - has been plagued with its misleading influence. No specimens referable to Prestonia, in which Haemadictyon is now accommodated, have ever been collected as admixtures with Banisteriopsis. Furthermore, Prestonia amazonica is apparently a very strict endemic, known only from one collection along the lower Amazon in Brazil, some 2,000 miles from the Ecuadorian Amazon where it is presumed to be the source of a narcotic.

There is every reason to believe that the leaves "identified" as Prestonia amazonica belonged, in reality to Banisteriopsis Rusbyana, which, as detailed above, constitute a common admixture of the narcotic drink in the westernmost Amazon of Colombia and Ecuador. Superficially, the leaves of the two species do resemble each other, especially in shape and texture; but the presence or absence of white latex should have alerted the earlier investigators who suggested an apocynaceous source of the leaves.

Unfortunately, this erroneous identification has gained acceptance in chemical and pharmacological literature. Michiels and Clinquart, who published pharmacological observations no Claes's material, believed that the material was referable to Prestonia amazonica. The most grievous chemical misstep due to this error resulted from the study published in 1957 by Hochstein and Paradies who reported that ayahuasca or Banisteriopsis Caapi contained the expected harmala alkaloids and yajé or leaves of Prestonia amazonica yielded "another psychotomimetic amine, N,N-dimethyltryptamine". Upon inquiry, I learned that there were no voucher specimens and that the leaves of yajé had been identified as Prestonia amazonica from the use of the common name yajé. I now believe that these leaves represented Banisteriopsis Rusbyana from which, as stated above, N,N-dimethyltryptamine has been isolated. This tryptamine is unknown in the Apocynaceae, as pointed out in 1960 when Raffauf and Folger insisted that the "reported occurrence of only one simple indole in the Apocynaceae ... is of sufficient interest to warrant some speculation. The structure looks enough out of place to suggest that the sample studied was not Prestonia at all, and indeed N,N-dimethyltryptamine was isolated from an aqueous extract of leaves, the botanical origin of which appears to be in doubt."

There is, at present, no botanical support, nor any reliable support in the literature, for the assumption that any species of Prestoniais employed as a prime ingredient of the hallucinogenic drink known as ayahuasca, caapi or yajé. While we have known that this narcotic complex is malpighiaceous, we should not too lightly dismiss from further ethnobotanical and chemical study the interesting genus Prestonia, a tropical American group of some 30 species about which next to nothing is known phytochemically.

The possibility that an apocynaceous species may be employed as an hallucinogen in the Colombian Amazon does exist. The Tanimuka Indians, who live in complete isolation on the Rio Apaporis, employ an as yet undetermined plant to prepare a vision-inducing drink for the initiation rites of boys into manhood. It is used much as is the well known Banisteriopsis-drink, but it is certainly not malpighiaceous, and the natives are quick to point out that it is not the same plant. The bark of the root of an extensive lacticiferous forest liana, without the admixture of any other plant material, is subjected to long boiling to prepare the narcotic beverage. On my short visit with these Tanimukas in 1952, I was not able to see the vine, but all information pursuant to my questioning was consistent. There is some possibility that this liana, reportedly rich in latex, may represent an apocynaceous species, but only field studies amongst these natives will be able definitively to solve the question.

Morning glory family ( Convolvulaceae)

Ipomoea violacea, Rivea corymbosa

The early Spanish chroniclers of conquered Mexico reported time and again on the religious use of the hallucinogenic lentil-like seeds called ololiuqui by the Aztecs. They came from a vine with cordate leaves known in the Nahuatl language as coaxiluitl or "snake-plant ". Its use has persisted to the present time and, although it represents probably the major Mexican divinatory narcotic best known and most widely employed by Indians in parts of southern Mexico, it is the least known to the outside world.

In 1615, Ximénez published a portion of Hernández's ethnobotanical notes collected in Mexico between 1570 and 1575. He did not identify the plant, stating merely that " ... it will not be wrong to refrain from telling where it grows, for it matters little that this plant be here described or that Spaniards be made acquainted with it ". Sahagún, a contemporary of Hernández, enumerated three plants called ololiuqui, one of which was " ... an herb called coatl-xoxouhqui, and it bears a seed called ololiuqui". Another early record, dated 1629, reported that " ... when it is drunk, this seed deprives of his senses him who has taken it, for it is very powerful ".

A number of early Mexican chronicles contained highly interesting references to ololiuqui. One, for example, recorded that many things (springs, rivers, mountains, ololiuqui, etc.) "have their deities. Ololiuqui ... deprives those who use it of their reason ... The natives communicate in this way with the devil, for they usually talk when they become intoxicated with ololiuqui, and they are deceived by various hallucinations which they attribute to the deity which they say resides in the seeds ... ". Another chronicler, in 1634, reported the answers of an Indian penitent to questions during a confession, one of which was: "I have believed in dreams, in magic herbs, in peyote, and in ololiuqui, in the owl, etc. ".

Still another stated, in part, of ololiuqui: "These seeds ... are held in great veneration ... They place offerings to the seeds ... in secret places so that the offerings cannot be found if a search be made. They also place these seeds amongst the idols of their ancestors ... They do not wish to offend ololiuqui with demonstrations before the judges of the use of the seeds and with public destruction of the seed by burning."

A more medically oriented early report from 17th Century Mexico informs us that " ... it was a serious fever and the medicine man advised the patient to take ololiuqui. The patient refused. Finally, however, the medicine man persuaded all members of the family ... to drink ololiuqui to help the patient. After drinking, they lighted candles and gave ololiuqui to the sick man.

All became drunk ... and when they regained their senses, the sick man began to rage in agony, calling the doctor a knave and witch. With this, the patient died ... It is not without concern that the Christian priests see the facility with which the devil works amongst these people, even after they have been ... accepted into the church."

There is a still unexplained aspect concerning the use of ololiuqui in ancient Mexico: that aspect pertaining to its employment in a magic potion supposed to possess an apparent analgesic effect. One report states that the Aztec priests, before making sacrifices on mountain tops, " ... took a large quantity of poisonous insects, ... burned them... and beat their ashes together ... with the foot of the ocotl, tobacco, ololiuqui and some live insects. They ... rubbed themselves with this diabolical mixture and ... became fearless to every danger". Another stated that " ... this unction was made of divers little venomous beasts ... with much tobacco or pectum, ... an herb that they use much to benumb the flesh ... They ... also mingled with those ashes scorpions, spiders and palmiers alive ... then they put to it a certain seed ... called ololuchqui, whereof the Indians make a drink to see visions ... The priests being slobbered with this ointment lost all fear." This same report continued in a more specific vein: " ... they said that they felt thereby a notable ease, which might be, for that the tobacco and ololuchqui have this property of themselves, to benumb the flesh, being applied in the manner of an emplaster ... and for that it did appease and benumb the pain, they held it for an effect of health and a divine virtue ". Hernández, likewise, mentioned the pain-killing properties of ololiuqui.

The most reliable discussion of the hallucinogenic effects and uses of ololiuqui appear to be those of Hernández who, after describing in great detail its many presumed medicinal virtues, stated that "when the priests wanted to commune with their gods and to receive a message from them, they ate this plant to induce a delirium. A thousand visions and satanic hallucinations appeared to them."

Most of the chroniclers who railed against this" diabolic seed" represented the ecclesiastical power of Spain, and Christian persecution drove the native cult into hiding. Corroboration of the identity of ololiuqui waited for more than 400 years. All evidence from the literature and several early, though crude, drawings, especially the excellent illustration provided by Hernández, indicated that the plant must be a morning glory. Botanists first identified ololiuqui as a morning glory as early as 1854. Later reliable Mexican botanists, notably Urbina, insisted that ololiuqui was, in fact, a morning glory - Ipomoea sidaefolia - even though no member of the Convolvulaceae had been found in use as an hallucinogen in Mexico and no intoxicating constituents were known to exist in this family.

Dr OLILIUHQVI, feu planta orbicularium foliorum. Cap. XIV.

_O

LILIVHQVI, quam Coaxibuitl, feu herbam Serpentis alij vocant, volubilis herba eft, folia viridia ferens, tenuia,cordis figura. caules teretes,virides,tenuefq;. flores albos, &longiufculos. femen rotundum fimile Coriandro,vnde nomen. radices fibris fimiles, calida quarto ordine planta eft . Gallicam curat . dolores è frigoreortos fedat . flatum, ac prater naturam tumores difcutic. puluis refina mixtus pellit frigus . luxatis aut fractis offibus, & lumbis fœminarum laxis,aueto robore mirum auxiliatur in modum.S eminis etiam, eft vfus in medicina, quod triutm, ac deuoratum, illicumq; capiti, & fronti, cum lacte & chilli, fertur morbis oculorum mederi, deuoratum verò, venerem excitat. Acri eft fapore, & temperie, veluti & planta eius, impensè calida. Indorum facrifici cum videri volebant verfari cum Superis, acrelpófa accipere ab eis,ea vefcebatur planta, vt defiperent, milleq; phantafmata, & dæmonu oburesãtium effigies circumfpectarent. qua in re Solano maniaco Diofcoridis fimilis fortaffe alicui videri poffit.

The earliest illustration and detailed discussion of the uses of ololuiqui in Francisco Hernandez' Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae thesaurus, seu plantarum, animalium, mineralium historia (published in Rome in 1651)

It was Hartwich who, in 1911, first stated that ololiuqui might well be a member of the Solanaceae, a suggestion that was furthered by Safford in 1915 when he identified ololiuqui as Datura meteloides. His identification, even now still widely accepted by botanists and anthropologists, was based on several arguments. Many Indian groups in Mexico used Datura as an hallucinogen, and, while this genus certainly was well provided with psychoactive compounds, no convolvulaceous genus was known to possess any principles affecting the central nervous system. The flowers of the morning glories were tubular and superficially resemble those of Datura, and the Indians could easily have misled the early Spanish writers with a substitution of the former for the latter. Furthermore, the symptoms described for ololiuqui-intoxication coincided well with those known for Datura-intoxication . Underlying Safford's arguments was his belief that "...a knowledge of botany has been attributed to the Aztecs which they were far from possessing ... The botanical knowledge of the early Spanish writers... was perhaps not much more extensive: their descriptions were so inadequate that, even to the present day, the chief narcotic of the Aztecs, ololiuchqui, which they all mention, remains unidentified ". Although I believe-that Safford's lack of faith in the botanical knowledge of the Aztecs and of early writers like Hernández seems unjustified, it was probably very influential in his dismissal of the Convolvulaceae as a source of ololiuqui.

Rivea corymbosa

In Mexico, the attribution of ololiuqui to Rivea corymbosa was rather generally accepted. In 1919, for example,B. P. Reko, on the basis of field observations, defined ololuc as the round, lentil-like seed of Rivea corymbosa and, in 1934, published an historical review of the use of ololiuqui. Narcotic seeds which-he sent to Safford were determined as representing this convolvulaceous species. Admitting that narcotic constituents were not known from the family, Reko argued that chemical investigation in the Convolvulaceae had been sparse.

It was not, however, until 1939 that unquestionably identifiable voucher specimens of Rivea corymbosa were collected when, in northeastern Oaxaca, I encountered a cultivated plant in the dooryard of a Zapotec witch doctor who employed the seeds in his divinatory rituals. I reported these seeds from several other tribes of Oaxaca: Chinantecs, Mazatecs, Mixtecs and sundry groups of Zapotecs, and, as Wasson has aptly written, "today in almost all the villages of Oaxaca one finds the seeds still serving the natives as an ever present help in time of trouble". In 1941, I published a summary of what was then known of ololiuqui and Rivea corymbosa, and the identification of the ancient and modern hallucinogen appeared finally to have been clarified.

Rivea corymbosa in flower. Photograph J. Morton, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida

All doubt as to the narcotic properties of Rivea corymbosa was dispelled when, in 1937, Santesson discovered psychoactive substances in the seeds. Due to an insufficient supply of seed material, he was unable thoroughly to investigate the nature of the substance, but he intimated that it might be a glycoside masked in some way, possibly a glycoside linked somehow with an alkaloid, since, after but not before "splitting" with hydrochloric acid, all tests for alkaloids were strongly positive. His experiments showed that the extract induced "a partial deadening of the mind, a kind of narcosis or semi-narcosis ".

Following publication of my report on Rivea corymbosa in 1941, little interest was evident until the appearance, in 1955, of Osmund's fascinating paper containing a description of the first psychiatric self-experiment with an intoxication from seeds of this plant. Phytochemical investigation soon followed, but early work failed to uncover hallucinogenic principles. Finally, Hofmann, discoverer of the synthetic lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD 25), turned his attention to Rivea corymbosa and announced to a disbelieving scientific world that the seeds contained lysergic acid derivatives. One of the reasons why it was difficult to accept such an announcement lay in the fact that this class of compounds was known to exist in the plant kingdom only in the lower fungi, in the ergot parasite Claviceps purpurea. It would be chemotaxonomically highly improbable, the argument ran, to find in one of the highest metachlamydeous families substances known only from the fungi. Furthermore, there were suspcions - later experimentally discredited - that spores of these fungi might have contaminated the seeds of Rivea corymbosa. It was soon established beyond a doubt, however, that this morning glory in reality was a veritable factory of hallucinogenic lysergic acid derivatives: the principal psychotomimetic principle, ergine or d-lysergic acid amide; an alkaloid of secondary importance, isoergine or d-isolysergic acid amide; as well as chanoclavine, elymoclavine and lysergol, all apparently without psychotomimetic effects.

As with many species of the Convolvulaceae, there is much confusion and disagreement in taxonomic and nomenclatorial aspects of the plant which is widely called Rivea corymbosa. It has at least nine botanical synonyms, of which Ipomoea sidaefolia and Turbina coryrmbosa are frequently employed. Since Rivea corymbosa has become firmly established in the ethnobotanical and phytochemical literature, however, it is advisable to continue to use Rivea corymbosa, until a thorough and authentic study should prove it not to be the acceptable binomial.

Another step in the study of the narcotic morning glories of Mexico came in 1960 with MacDougall's remarkable announcement of the use of seeds of Ipomoea violacea (1. tricolor) in conjunction with or in place of those of Rivea corymbosa, especially amongst certain groups of southern Zapotec Indians in Oaxaca. The narcotic seeds called badoh negro amongst the Zapotecs of Mitla, reported by Parsons, I first believed were referable to Rivea corymbosa, but it now appears that they are correctly identified as Ipomoea violacea. They are both employed in the same way and for the same purposes. The seeds of the two species differ so significantly that they cannot be confused: those of Rivea coryrmbosa are brown and round; of Ipomoea violacea, black, long and angular.

As with Rivea corymbosa, there has been confusion and uncertainty concerning the proper binomial for the concept here called Ipomoea violacea. It has sometimes been called Ipomoea tricolor. The best name, however, appears to me to be Ipomoea violacea, at least until critical studies indicate that a change is in order.

Wasson has suggested that Ipomoea violacea may be the narcotic plant known amongst the ancient Aztecs as tlitlitzin, a term from Nahuatl derived from the word for "black" with a reverential suffix. An old chronicler, for example, wrote of " ololiuhqui, peyote and tlitliltzin" ascribing to all three the same properties.

Chemical studies of the seeds of Ipomoea violacea have completely substantiated ethnobotanical data pointing to their use as an hallucinogenic. They have been found to contain the same or similar lysergic acid derivatives as those isolated from Rivea corymbosa: ergine, isoergine, chanoclavine, elymoclavine; lysergol was not present; while ergometrine, a strong uterotonic and hemostatic alkaloid known from ergot, is a constituent of Ipomoea violacea but not of R. corymbosa.

Ipomoea violacea

Later comprehensive phytochemical studies have indicated that numerous species of the Convolvulaceae contain these indole derivatives. In sundry species of Argyreia, Convolvulus, Ipomoea and Stictocardia, the following ergoline derivatives have been found: ergine, isoergine, ergosine ergosinine, chanoclavine, elymoclavine, lysergol, ergometrine, ergometrinine, agroclavine, penniclavine and lysergic acid - d-hydroxyethylamide.

It is interesting that, once the hallucinogenic properties of the Mexican morning glories became common knowledge, certain fringe groups in European and American society began to ingest convolvulaceous seeds, mainly horticultural varieties of sundry morning glories, procuring their supplies primarily from the nursery and garden industry. This abuse grew so serious at one time that, in certain areas, methods for control have had to be adopted and enforced by public health officials.

The perplexing question is: why, with hallucinogenic compounds geographically and philogenetically so widespread in the Convolvulaceae, have primitive peoples outside of Mexico apparently never employed these plants for their psychotomimetic effects ? Or - have they ?

Mint family (Labiatae)

That hallucinogens be found in the mint family, so rich in essential oils, should not come as a surprise. Perhaps the curious fact is that natives have employed so few species for their psychoactive properties.

Lagoehilus inebrians

An interesting narcotic of Central Asia is derived from the small shrub, Lagochilus inebrians, that occurs on the dry steppes of Turkestan. For centuries the Tajik, Tartar, Turkomen and Uzbek tribesmen have used this intoxicant, gathering the leaves usually in October. A tea of the toasted leaves, occasionally mixed with stems, fruiting tops and the white flowers, is prepared, with honey or sugar to lessen the intensely bitter taste of the plant. The aromatic fragrance is said to increase on drying and storage.

A crystalline material called lagochiline and thought at first to be an alkaloid was isolated in 1945, but more recent studies, in 1957, showed that it was a polyhydric alcohol, present up to 3 % of the dried plant material. The versatile pharmacological effects of Lagochilus inebrians have led to its being adopted officially in the 8th edition of the Russian Pharmacopoeia. It is employed as an infusion or tincture as an antihemorrhagic for its hemostatic effects, to reduce permeability of blood vessels and aid in coagulation of the blood. It has also been recommended for use in treating certain allergies, glaucoma, and skin diseases, and has been reported to be valuable for nervous disorders as a hypotensive, anti-spasmodic and sedative. Its properties as a sedative are due possibly to the same constituents responsible for the central nervous activity basic to the folk use of the plant as a narcotic.

Further ethnobotanical research should be carried out as a basis for more critical and extensive phytochemical and pharmacological studies which the plant merits.

Salvia divinorum

One of the recently discovered psychotomimetic mints is Salvia divinorum of Oaxaca, Mexico, employed by the Mazatec Indians of the northeastern part of this state in divination. They may chew the leaves fresh but more commonly crush them on a metate, dilute the plant materials with water and strain the mixture. Formerly, it is reported, the whole plant was employed, but, at the present time, leaves alone are preferred.

Salvia divinorum

The Mazatecs call this drug hojas de la Pastora in Spanish or shkapastora, the equivalent in the native tongue: both mean "leaves of the Shepherdess ". The plant is familiar to all Mazatec Indians and many, if not most, families possess a supply of the plants which are reproduced vegetatively. The Indians usually choose isolated or remote mountain ravines for planting Salvia divinorum. It appears to be a cultigen, rarely if ever setting seed and possibly not occurring as a wild plant.

Wasson, who first reported and identified this unusual intoxicant, believes Salvia divinorum to represent the ancient narcotic which the Aztecs called pipilzintzintli and used as a sacred hallucinogen.

What may have been Salvia divinorum was the plant referred to by Reko in 1945 as "... another magic plant whose leaves produce visions and which the Cuicatecs and Mazatecs... call 'divination leaf'. The loose leaves that I have received do not permit their scientific identification ". Another reference, undoubtedly to this narcotic mint, is that of Weitlaner who spoke of leaves of yerba María, collected only after the Indian medicine man kneels and prays to it, employed in medical divination amongst the Mazatecs.

In Oaxaca, Salvia divinorum is employed usually only when supplies of the sacred narcotic mushrooms or morning glories are short. The hallucinating effects, as experi- enced by Wasson, resemble those of the mushrooms but last a shorter time and are not so striking; colours in kaleidoscopic motion and three-dimensional designs characterize the intoxication induced by ingesting the juice of 68 leaves. Wasson states that the "effect of the leaves came sooner than would have been the case with the mushrooms, was less sweeping and lasted a shorter time. There was not the slightest doubt about the effect, but it did not go beyond the initial effect of the mushrooms - dancing colours in elaborate, three-dimensional designs."

Up to the present, chemical studies by Hofmann have failed to isolate a psychotomimetic constituent, due probably to the ephemeral or unstable nature of the active principle.

Coleus spp.

Curiously, these same Mazatec Indians may have discovered hallucinogenic properties in the leaves of several other species of mints, Coleus Blumei and C. pumila - both Old World introductions from southeastern Asia.

It is interesting that the Mazatecs, according to Wasson, consider Coleus pumila and C. Blumei to belong to the same "family" as Salvia divinorum. The Salvia is "the female ": Coleus pumila is "the male" and two forms of C. Bhamei are known as" the child" and" the godson ".

Corroborative experiments proving whether or not these two species of Coleus are definitely hallucinogenic have not been carried out. Chemical studies on these two species - at least on Mexican-grown material of them - have not yet been initiated. Although other Old World species of Coleus valued in folk medicine have been investigated, nothing approaching a psychotomimetic agent has been isolated from any member of the genus.

Other species of the mint family

There have been occasional reports of the use in bohemian circles in the United States of large doses of some of the spices of the mint family, such as sage and marjoram, to induce hallucinations. Perhaps the economically important mint most widely misused in sophisticated circles is catnip, Nepeta Cataria. Hallucinogenic effects of these plants may be attributable to components of their essential oils, but little research in this direction has as yet been undertaken.

Potato family (Solanaceae)

Atropa, Hyoscyamus and Mandragora spp.

The deadly nightshade or belladonna, Atropa Belladonna, one of the famous poisons and hallucinogens thought to have formed part of the witches' brews of the DarkAges of Europe, has had a long history in medicine and folklore. The ancient classical writers - Theophrastus, Dioscorides and others - were aware of its drastic psychotropic properties. It was apparently first admitted to a critical pharmacopoeia in 1741, when it appeared in the Wurttemberg Pharmacopoeia, but it figured significantly in all of the mediaeval herbals of Europe.

Atropa Belladonna, like many of the other solanaceous hallucinogens, owes its toxic properties to a relatively high content of the tropane alkaloid atropine.

Hyoscyamus niger, an annual or biennial native to Europe but now growing spontaneously across northtemperate Asia and North America, is commonly known as henbane in English because of its extremely poisonous properties. It has been employed medicinally from early times. It has been valued as a sedative and anodyne for inducing sleep, both the leaves and seeds being used in pharmacy, but hallucinations frequently accompany its incautious ingestion. Sundry accidental poisonings from henbane are recorded from medieval times and earlier in Europe, and it is thought to have been one of the active ingredients in some of the potently psychoactive witches' brews of the Dark Ages, when visual hallucinations and flights of fancy were effects frequently sought by those practising this form of witchcraft.

The biodynamic activities of Hyoscyamus niger are due to two alkaloids: 1-hyoscyamine and 1-hyoscine or scopolamine.

Some of the other 20 species of Hyoscyamus - especially H. muticus - may likewise have been similarly employed as narcotics.

The famous mandrake of Europe, Mandragora officinarum, has long been known for its toxic properties and actual and presumed medicinal virtues. Its intricate history as a magic plant has hardly been equalled by any other species. The fear in which the Europeans of the Middle Ages and earlier held the mandrake and many of its folk uses were inextricably bound up with the so-called "Doctrine of Signatures". Folk medicine regarded Mandragora as a panacea and recommended its use, notwithstanding its great toxicity, as a sedative and hypnotic agent in treating nervous conditions and pain. It actually was widely valued by surgeons during medieval times for its pain-killing properties. It was employed further for many other illnesses and abnormal conditions, and, in many regions was considered to be an effective aphrodisiac.

Mandragora officinarum, like Atropa and Hyoscyamus, may be hallucinogenic and was undoubtedly a common ingredient of witches' brews used in Europe during the Dark Ages, and may be one reason for the German vernacular name Hexenkraut. The psychoactive effects are due to its content of tropane alkaloids. The root may contain up to 0.4 % of hyoscyamine, atropine and scopolamine.

Brunfelsia spp.

One of the most promising possibilities of increasing our knowledge of hallucinogens concerns the solanaceous genus Brunfelsia in South America. A tropical New World genus of 25 or fewer species, Brunfelsia plays an important role in aboriginal folk medicine in equatorial America. The fluid extract of one species - Brunfelsia Hopeana - is employed in Brazilian medicine as a diuretic and antirheumatic. Although almost nothing chemically is known of other species, Brunfelsia Hopeana has been reported to contain brunfelsine, manacine and mandragorine, atropine-type alkaloids which, in view of the phylogenetic position of Brunfelsia would not be surprising. The aglycone scopoletine, a coumarine derivative found in a number of plant families, has likewise been isolated from Brunfelsia. We know full well, therefore, that the genus does possess very definitely psychoactive constituents.

Evidence for the narcotic use of Brunfelsia is quite real but is not yet corroborated by a good body of evidence and field observation. Annotations on labels of several herbarium specimens collected in eastern Colombia and Peru indicate that the plant, cultivated in Indian dooryards, is considered to be narcotic and medicinal. Other collections from Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru indicate a broad spectrum of therapeutic uses, ranging from the treatment of "yellow fever" to snake bite. Its most widespread uses in folk medicine seem to be to relieve "rheumatism" and as a febrifuge, since its ingestion is usually followed by a sensation of chill and coldness: both of these uses might easily be explained on the basis of atropine-like alkaloids.

Several vernacular names appear to indicate former employment of Brunfelsia as an intoxicant. The Kofán Indians of Colombia and Ecuador grow a species of Brunfelsiaextensively as an ornamental but refer to it as borrachera, a term in Spanish applied to sundry narcotic or intoxicating plants, especially the tree-Daturas.

Datura spp.

Probably the most important of the solanaceous hallucinogens - at least in so far as its widespread use is concerned - is the genus Datura. Although the botany of the group is still far from well understood, the esteem in which primitive societies in both the Old and the New Worlds have held sundry species is attested by innumerable references.

The history of the narcotic use of Datura goes back beyond written records. It is thought, for example, that the priestesses at the Oracle of Delphi foretold the future under the influence of Datura. In the classical literature of Mediterranean and Near Eastern lands, references to the use of Daturaabound. The early Sanskrit and Chinese literature likewise richly extols the medicinal and narcotic properties of these plants.

A very early account of Datura Metel was offered by the Arabian physician, Avicenna. He described the fruit of the medicinal and narcotic species known as jouzmathel, from which the technical specific epithet and vernacular term metel nut are derived. Later writers reported its extensive employment in the East Indies and in India as an aphrodisiac or in love-potions. Acosta, writing of this topic in 1578, stated that "he who partakes of it is deprived of his reason..." and "... I have seen some who have gone about for several days perturbed !" from the effects of Datura Metel. The Chinese valued this drug far back into ancient times. A comparatively recent Chinese medical text, published in 1590, reported that "when Buddha preaches a sermon, the heavens bedew the petals of this plant with rain drops ". Datura Metel has been intimately connected with numerous religions of the Far East, mainly because of its psychoactive properties. In Africa, the Tonga administer this species as an ordeal poison, and in Tanganyika the seed and root are used as an intoxicant and the leaf as a poison. In China, it is valued as a fish poison.

The generic name Datura, chosen by Linnaeus, derives from an Indian name of D. Metel, dhatura.

In many parts of Asia, even at the present time, the seeds of Datura Metel, crushed and parched, are sometimes mixed with food and tobacco for illicit use, especially by thieves for the purpose of stupefying victims who are often intoxicated for several days.

Other Old World species also valued for their narcotic and medicinal properties are Datura ferox and D. fastuosa, sometimes considered a synonym of D. Metel.

The real centre of the hallucinogenic use of Datura lies in the New World, where many more species play major roles in magic, medicine and religion in sundry cultures.

In North America, the importance of Datura finds its highest concentration in the American Southwest and Mexico, but even the Algonquin and other tribes of the Eastern Woodlands are thought to have employed Datura Stramonium - jimson weed - as the principal ingredient in an inebriating medicine - wysoccan - administered to youths undergoing initiation rites. The youths are confined for long periods, given "... no other substance but the infusion or decoction of some poisonous, intoxicating roots..." and "they become stark, staring mad, in which raving condition they are kept eighteen or twenty days... ". These poor creatures drink so much of that water of Lethe that they perfectly lose the remembrance of all former things, even of their parents, their treasure and their language. When the doctors find that they have drunk sufficiently of the wysoccan... they gradually restore them to their senses again... Thus they unlive their former lives and commence men by forgetting that they ever have been boys."

There has been much disagreement as to whether Datura Stramonium is native to the Old World or New.

Modern investigators tend to accept this species as indigenous to the Western Hemisphere.

The species of Datura employed as the source of a narcotic in the American Southwest appears to be D. inoxia. This species appears in the literature usually under the name Datura meteloides, but recent botanical investigations have shown that it preferably should be called D. inoxia. In Mexico several others may also be valued: D. ceratocaula, D. kymatocarpa and D. reburra.

In the American Southwest, many tribes have utilized Datura ceremonially, with an especially noticeable concentration in California, Arizona and New Mexico. Amongst the tribes using Datura in their rituals are the Yokuts, Tubatulabals, various groups of the Yumans, Papagos, Navahos, Tewas, Luiseños and Zunis.

The Zunis employ Datura inoxia, called a-neg-la-kya, extensively as a narcotic, anaesthetic and, in the form of a poultice, for treating wounds and bruises. When the rain priests commune at night with the feathered kingdom, they put the powdered root in their eyes, and they chew the root to commune with the spirits of the dead who intercede for rain. According to the Zunis, this plant had a divine origin and it still belongs only to the rain priests who alone may gather it. The Luiseños employ Datura inoxia in an initiation ritual known as mani. A decoction is administered to boys who begin to dance, screaming like animals, until they finally succumb to the effects of the narcotic and are carried off; the following day is devoted to the instruction of the boys in certain mysteries.

The River Yumans took Datura inoxia to induce dreams and gain occult powers. The future could be predicted through these powers. The roots were chewed or a decoction of the leaves was drunk, but care had to be exercised not to take a lethal dose.

Amongst the Yokuts, this species, called ta-nai, finds its commonest use in an early spring ceremony designed to ensure future good health and long life to adolescent children of both sexes. Some of the young people believe that they acquire supernatural helpers through the power of the drug, and much secret knowledge is thought to be gained during the ceremony. Yokuts usually take the seeds only once in a lifetime, but the boys who are seeking supernatural powers must undergo the intoxication once a year.

These several examples indicate how widely the use of Datura inoxia varies amongst the south-western Indians. In most of the tribes, however, the hallucinating effects of the plant seem to be basic to its use for divinatory, magic or religious purposes.

The utilization of Datura in Mexico goes far back into pre-conquest history. It was valued both as a medicine and narcotic. One of the earliest accurate reports is that of Hernámdez who described Datura inoxia - toloatzin to the Aztecs, from which has come the modern Mexican term toloache - and listed its many therapeutic uses amongst the natives. He recorded its use in poultices as an anodyne, warning that excessive application could drive the patient to madness and "various and vain imaginations ". Toloache is still widely employed in Mexico as a medicine and narcotic. The Tarahumares, for example, add Datura inoxia or tikuwari to tesquino (a drink prepared from sprouted maize) to make it strong, and the roots, seeds and leaves of this species are the basis of a beverage used ceremonially to promote visions - and taken by Tarahumare medicine-men to help diagnose disease.

Datura inoxia or t olohuaxihuitl , a medicinal and narcotic plant of ancient Mexico. From "The Badianus manuscript" (Ed. E. W. Emmart) t. 49 (1940)

An extremely interesting Mexican species is Datura ceraticaula, a fleshy plant with thickish forking stems that grows in marshes or shallow waters. It has very pronounced narcotic properties, as its Mexican name torna-loco (" maddening plant ") indicates. The ancient Mexicans invoked its spirit in treating certain diseases.

In South America, where the indigenous species - all arborescent - belong to Brugmansia, a distinct section or subgenus of Datura, they have been and still are of great significance to many tribes and, in certain ancient Andean civilizations, they assumed roles of inestimable importance. Handsome trees with large, showy flowers and now highly valued in horticulture, they are probably all chromosomally aberrant cultigens unknown in the truly wild state as, probably because of their medicinal

Flowers and leaves of Datura candida. Bogotá, Colombia Photograph R. E Schultes

Flowers and fruits of Datura sanguinea, Zipaquira, Colombia Photograph R. E. Schultes

A recent taxonomic study has suggested that the tree-Daturas be treated as comprising three species - D. candida, D. sanguinea and D. suaveolens - and numerous cultivars of these species. They are known by many local names, amongst the most frequently encountered being borrachero, huacacachu, huanto, chamico, campanilla, fioripondio, maicoa, tonga and toa.

While Datura suaveolens is recognized as toxic and employed to some extent medicinally in the Amazon, the hallucinogenic use of the tree-Daturas is concentrated mainly in the west: in the Andes and along the northern Pacific coast of South America. Although they are employed widely, the literature is very deficient and has reported only a few tribes as using Datura: the Chibchas, Chocos, Inganos, Kamsas, Sionas, Kofans of Colombia; the Quechuas of Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru: the MapucheHuilliches of Chile; and the Canelos, Piojes, Omaguas, Jivaros and Zaparos of eastern Ecuador and Peru. In some of the western Amazonian tribes of Ecuador - as with the Mapuche-Huilliches of Chile - Datura, probably D. candida and D. sanguinea, is valued as a correctional measure for unruly children. The Jivaro expect the spirits of their ancestors to speak to and admonish the children in their intoxication-dreams and hallucinations. The Chibchas of pre-conquest Bogota gave chicha with Datura - probably D. candida, D. aurea or D. sanguinea - to wives and slaves of dead warriors or chieftains to induce a state of stupor before being buried alive with their husbands and masters.

In most of the Andean area except Chile, Datura assumed an important role in shamanistic, magic and religious rituals. The preparations and uses differ widely in areas of South America, but the drug is taken usually in the form of pulverized seeds dropped into fermented chicha or as an infusion; or leaves and twigs may be utilized. Amongst some - such as the Sionas and Kofans of Colombia and Ecuador - leaves of Datura suaveolens may be added to the yajé-drink prepared from Banisteriopsis inebrians to fortify its hallucinogenic effects.

Intoxication from the tree-Daturas is marked usually by initial effects so furious that the partaker must be restrained pending the onset of a deep, disturbed sleep during which hallucinations, interpreted as spirit visitations, enabling the witch-doctor to diagnose disease, discover thieves and prophesy the future of tribal affairs and aspirations, are experienced.

As in North America, information on the species used by South American tribes for special purposes is rarely available. The species involved in each instance must usually be guessed from phytogeographic or ecological reasoning, or, perhaps, from a vernacular name. Since most, if not all, species of Datura, however, contain similar tropane alkaloids - hyoscyamine, scopolamine, atropine - varying only in relative concentrations, this does not pose the serious problem that it might with some other hallucinogens. The time is long overdue when comparative chemical analyses of all species against voucher specimens be undertaken, for if the taxonomy of this genus can be described still as uncertain - which is indeed the case - the chemistry is chaotic due primarily to careless or superficial plant identification and failure to file away an authenticating specimen for each analysis.

Not only is there a suspicion that all species of treeDaturas are cultigens, but these plants offer other fascinating but complex biological problems connected with their use by man. Bristol has stated: "Many writers have noticed the frequency with which the tree-Daturas are associated with human habitations, but the extent of this association and its implications have not been fully understood. I have seen no indication in herbaria nor during 13 months of field work in southern Colombia and northern Ecuador that any tree-Datura was not associated with human activity; and Schultes ( pers. comm.), in his many years of familiarity with northwestern South America, has never seen a tree-Datura that he could say was truly wild. The northern Andes, however, is the centre of variability and probable area of origin of this group."

The Kamsa Indians of the Valley of Sibundoy in the Colombian Andes employ several species of Datura - D. candida, D. dolichocarpa, D. sanguinea - and sundry named clones of D. candida. These clones which are vegetatively propagated simply by planting pieces of stem in the damp soil, are so highly atrophied that they may possibly represent incipient "varieties" as the result of mutations. Some of these clones or "races" are such monstrosities that their botanical identification to known species has, until recently, defied efforts, even though the Indians have very definite native names for them and recognize them easily. They are said by the natives to differ in their narcotic strength and, since they are stronger, weaker or in other ways different from "healthy" Daturas in their effects, they are employed for very specific uses by the witch-doctors and medicine-men.

One of the atrophied" races" of Datura candida which the Kamsá Indians reproduce vegetatively for use as a source of a narcotic drink. Sibundoy, Colombia. Photograph R. E. Schultes

There has been no satisfactory explanation of the concentration in this high, mountain-girt Valley of southern Colombia of so many atrophied "races" of Datura. One suggestion attributed the condition to extreme viral infection, not at all uncommon in the Solanaceae, but here is an excellent and almost wholly untouched problem well worthy of investigation. In this connexion, furthermore, Bristol's suggestion is pertinent: "The very extensive work of Blakeslee and his associates ... with the herbaceous Daturas demonstrated a great range of variability and the spontaneous appearance of many unusual characteristics. Of the 541 gene mutations encountered, 72 appeared following heating, wounding and ageing, or spontaneously in nature. Recessive genes controlling leaf shape, flower size, shape and colour, and fruit form are amongst those uncovered. It is entirely possible that these single recessive genes affecting taxonomically significant characters are present also in the tree-Daturas."

Flowering branch of the tree Methysticodendron Amesianum. Sibundoy, Colombia.Photograph R. E. Schultes

Kamsá Indian holding leaves and flower of Methysticodendron Amesianum from which an hallucinogenic drink is prepared by witch doctors for use in divination. Sibundoy, Colombia. Photograph R. E. Schultes

Methysticodendron Amesianum

In addition to their several species of tree-Daturas and the clones or "races" of D. candida, the Kamsá Indians cultivate a most extraordinary and enigmatic tree which I described as a new genus: Methysticodendron Amesianum, known locally as culebra borrachera or, in Kamsá, as mits-kway borrachero. Apparently a strict endemic of the Valley of Sibundoy, it is propagated vegetatively and reserved for very specific medicinal and narcotic use.

Methysticodendron is obviously closely akin to the tree-Daturas and it may be shown - as has already been suggested - that it represents not a distinct genus but an extraordinarily atrophied clone. If it is a clone, it is not possible, with our present understanding, to assign it to any species of Datura. It differs from Datura primarily in having a deeply lobose corolla slit nearly to its base, very elongated, ligulate leaves and a major and possibly fundamental departure in the morphology of the ovary and styles. The Indians assert that it is more potent and dangerous to use than the Daturas themselves. Its chemical composition includes 1-scopolamine and hyoscyamine with very minor amounts of other alkaloids.

Latua pubiflora

Although Indians have stated that culebra-borrachera grows wild in the neighbouring mountain forests, it has never been found by botanists and this information is now doubted. When the tree is in cultivation, it is apparently the hereditary property of certain families, forasmuch as the witch-doctors pass it on to the eldest son together with the secrets attending its use.

Latua pubiflora

More than a century ago, a highly toxic plant native to the coastal mountains of Chile was described as a new species, Latua venenosa. The correct name of the spiny shrub, known locally as latué or árbol de los brujos (" sorcerers' tree "), is now Latua pubiflora.

This unusual solanaceous plant was employed by medicine men as a virulent poison capable of producing delirium and hallucinations and oftentimes occasioning permanent insanity. It was used especially by the Indians of the Province of Valdivia. No cult or ritual apparently accompanied its utilization, but it was widely known and feared. It was said that a madness of any duration could be induced according to the strength of the dose, and that the natives kept the dosage a guarded secret. Accidental poisonings also happened, since Latua pubiflora closely resembled Flotowia diacanthoides, a shrub known as tayu employed medicinally as a decoc- tion of the bark to treat bruises and blows and with which many people confounded it.

Latua pubiflora is apparently nowhere abundant, and there are even very few specimens of it in the world's herbaria.

Chemical analysis of Latua pubiflora has not been rigorously carried out, and, although alkaloids presumably of the tropane series were reported from earlier studies, modern techniques should be employed in an examination of properly vouchered material.

Composite family (Compositae)

The most recently reported hallucinogenic use of a plant concerns a popular Mexican folk medicine, Calea Zacatechichi, an inconspicuous shrub ranging from central Mexico to Costa Rica. The specific name is derived from an Aztec word signifying "bitter grass ", an appropriate name since it is an intensely bitter plant. The same vernacular name is applied in Mexico to another composite, Conyza filaginoides DC.

Although there is no evidence of a magico-religious cult in connexion with this plant, MacDougall reports that the Chontal Indians of Oaxaca who "believe in

Calea Zacatechichi

Calea Zacatechichi

visions seen in dreams" employ a "secret plant" to induce hallucinations. Crushed dried leaves are infused in water and the resulting tea is imbibed slowly, after which the Indian lies down in a quiet place and smokes a cigarette of the dried leaves of the same plant. According to MacDougall, "sufficiency of dose taken is said to be indicated by a sense of repose, when the person 'hears his own heart and pulse beats' ". Amongst the Chontal medicine-men, Calea Zacatechichi is called thle-pela-kanoor "leaf of god" and is valued "for the clarification of the senses ".

Calea Zacatechichi is a well known folk medicine in Mexico, utilized especially for use in treating intermittent fevers and, while it apparently does reduce fevers, it is of no value in curing malaria. It is employed also as an aperitive and as an astringent in cases of diarrhoea. A dose consists usually of about 10 grams of dried leaves in water thrice daily, before meals; it may be taken also in the form of a tincture. Calea Zacatechichi and other species of this genus have been employed as weak insecticides.

Alkaloids have not been found in the plant. Its medicinal reputation seems to be attributable mainly to a bitter principle, the precise nature of which has not yet been determined, and an aromatic constituent.

Further ethnobotanical studies of this interesting plant are indicated, and more thorough chemical investigations, using modern techniques, may uncover an hallucinogenic principle.

VIII

"The most fascinating part of ethnopharmacology ", it has truly been said, "is perhaps that dealing with man's use of intoxicating compounds."

This brief and cursory survey of hallucinogenic plants that man has found useful indicates, if it does nothing else, how widely and unpredictably psychotomimetic constituents occur in the plant kingdom. It likewise hints at how tantalizingly rich in potentially psychoactive substances must be the plant world... "into whose silent growth and creative abundance" in the words of Lewin, "man has not yet fully penetrated."

When one considers the total number of species of plants, the census of those known to be employed as hallucinogens is insignificantly small. There must, however, be many more species with hallucinogenically active constituents than we have suspected. How many of the total number has man ever known or used ? During the past 30 or 40 years, ethnobotanical investigation has uncovered a heartening array of plants still employed in primitive societies for their psychotomimetic properties. There can be no doubt that an appreciable number of plants with hallucinogenic uses undiscovered by modern science still lurk unheeded in the frantic rush of the civilized world.

There is an urgency to our need for interdisciplinary research into hallucinogenic plants. Civilization is on the march in many, if not most, regions of the world still sacred to primitive societies. It has long been on the advance, but its pace is now accelerated as the result of world wars, extended commercial interests, increased missionary activity, widened tourism. The rapid divorcement of primitive peoples from dependence upon their immediate environment for the necessities and amenities of life has been set in motion, and nothing will check it now. The rapidity of disintegration in aboriginal societies of a knowledge of plants and their properties and uses is frightening. Our challenge must be to salvage some of the native botanical lore, especially that relating to folk medicine in its broadest sense, before it becomes forever entombed with the cultures that gave it birth.

Acknowledgments

Part of the research reported in this article was supported by grant No. LM-GM 00071-01 from the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. A number of the line drawings prepared for this article were supported by this same grant.

The drawings were made by several artists working in the Botanical Museum of Harvard University: Mr. Gordon W. Dillon; Mr. Elmer W. Smith; Mr. Joshua B. Clark; and Miss Irene Brady.

To the many colleagues and friends, at home and abroad, who have been kind with their suggestions and assistance I express my deepest gratitude.

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Now known as Epithelantha micromeris.

Now known as Ariocarpus fissuratus.