Documents Toward a Study of Yagé

Documents toward a study of yagé

VARIETIES

In 1903, a Colombian naturalist, [Dr.] Rafael Zerda Bayón, returning from a scientific expedition through the little-known territories of the Colombian Caquetá and the Putumayo, brought back — along with a rich harvest of documents and raw materials of vegetable origin — a liana wreathed in a strange and marvelous legend: yagé. By makeshift means he isolated from it a crude alkaloid, to which, for reasons that will become clear, he gave the unexpected name of telepathine.

The interest awakened by this "plant of the prophets" prompted other Colombian researchers to take up its study. G. Fischer Cárdenas, in 1923, made it the subject of a short medical thesis. Mrs. Georgina Muñoz v. de Salinas undertook, around the same time, a series of interesting psycho-physiological trials soon to be published.

Quite recently, Professor Barriga Villalba of the University of Bogotá, having abundant material at his disposal, took up and carried further the chemical study of yagé.

He was the first to isolate, in crystallized form, and to study Zerda Bayón's alkaloid, renaming it, more appropriately, yagéine. He further discovered a second alkaloid, which he called yagénine.

What follows is a translation of his work, published in the Boletín de la Sociedad Colombiana de Ciencias Naturales of Bogotá, March 1923.

A. Rouhier.

I. A New Alkaloid: Yagéine

"In the vast Colombian regions of the Putumayo and Caquetá rivers grows a plant that the inhabitants of these regions call yagé.

"The Indians prepare from this plant a special drink, by decoction of the woody stem cut into pieces roughly a span long. They concentrate the liquor by boiling it down to a tenth of its volume, add water, and concentrate it again. The result is a reddish liquid with greenish tones which, after settling, turns topaz-colored and shows a beautiful blue-green fluorescence.

"The natives drink quantities of about 60 cm³ of this liquor, each dose equivalent to roughly 0.50 g of alkaloids. They drink it either at great, solemn ceremonies or in private. For this they use a special vessel they call a mate.

"The Indian under the influence of yagé ends up intoxicated (which also happens to whites), and yet, according to trustworthy people who have lived among them, no poisonings appear to have been recorded. Under the plant's effect, the Indians leap, shout, run in every direction, and let out cries in imitation of forest animals. When the effects wear off, they intoxicate themselves again by drinking more of the liquor, and this can go on for days at a time.

"The effects of the drink have been greatly exaggerated by white people who claim to have taken it. They say it brings on divination, the vision of the future, distant (telepathic) and extraretinal vision, and many other effects that are far from the truth. We can affirm the contrary, on the basis of the experiments we have carried out with the pure salts of the alkaloid.

"The plant has the appearance of a sparsely leaved shrub that tends to twine around neighboring trunks. Its maximum height does not exceed 3 to 4 m. The maximum diameter of the trunk is 5 dm. The leaves are opposite and olive-green in color.

"It grows at a minimum altitude of 700 m, in a climate where the temperature exceeds 28° centigrade.

"It contains two alkaloids that crystallize readily. The more important is present in a proportion of 1.50% of the dry plant, the other at 0.023%. It also contains an acid whose lime salt crystallizes well; this is probably what saturates the alkaloids. The plant also contains a dichroic coloring matter that oxidizes readily in air, turning scarlet red. A small amount of fatty matter and a resin are also found.

"We have designated the principal alkaloid yagéine, and the other, yagénine.

[A detailed account follows in the original of the chemical extraction method, the physical and crystallographic properties of yagéine, a solubility table, the elemental analysis and proposed formula (C₁₂H₈N₂O), the color reactions with various alkaloid reagents, and a table of lethal doses in the guinea pig (from 0.10 g, fatal in 9 hours, to 1 gram, fatal in 10 minutes). This purely chemical and animal-toxicological material is omitted here.]

"In summary, yagéine is an alkaloid that produces general anesthesia, and whose applications hold a certain promise as a medicine particularly selective for certain organs; it neither touches nor alters the other essential functions."

A. M. Barriga Villalba, M.A., D.Ph., Professor of Chemistry at the University of Bogotá. (Translated by A. Rouhier.)

II. Supplementary Notes on Yagé

Yagé is a liana native to the great tropical forests of the upper Amazon basin.

Its range therefore extends across several South American countries: upper Brazil, Venezuela, Peru, Colombia, and perhaps Guiana. It also spills over onto the Pacific slope of the Cordillera, where the liana is known by the name pildé.

Yagé is thought to be an Apocynaceae: Haemadictyon amazonicum Benth. The recent death of the Colombian botanist Santiago Cortés made it impossible to confirm this identification. The various samples that have recently reached France — thanks to the active kindness of Mr. Pinto Valderrama, of His Excellency Count Dejean, and to the courtesy of Mrs. G. Muñoz and Mr. L. Marulanda of Cali — unfortunately lacked flowers and fruit, and so did not permit it either.

Some of the material we have been able to examine so far even leads us to suspect that plants of different varieties or species may be grouped under the same name of yagé (the yagé of the Putumayo, the yagé of Naya, for example).

Dr. Reinburg published a study on yagé in France in 1921, as did Professor Em. Perrot in 1923, and we ourselves in 1924.

What is the action of yagé? It obviously varies according to dose, and also according to the race of the experimenter.

We have been able to establish that small doses (50 to 100 drops of the 1:5 tincture) produce mild nervous stimulation, expressed as a feeling of well-being, mental activity, and muscular alacrity, similar to that of caffeine-like substances and, in truth, to that of many stimulants of the intellect. Slight pupil dilation is observed.

With stronger doses (5 to 10 cc of the 1:5 tincture) a marked tendency toward sleep follows the more pronounced initial phase of excitement. This sleep is characterized by great activity of dream production.

Still higher doses — from the 30 g of stems used in the native manner, as a decoction, in Mrs. G. Muñoz's experiments, which must correspond approximately to 0.50 or 0.60 g of alkaloids, up to the much higher amounts to which only the Indian devotees of yagé are accustomed — produce the following effects:

First, broad blue glimmers seem to haloe external objects, or even color them entirely with an intense azure glow.

Then hallucinations occur, sometimes of incomparable beauty and great vividness of color, recalling in this respect the visions of peyote or hashish, and sometimes frightening and horrible.

As with peyote as well, and as a result of the excitation of the cerebral center of vision, visual sensitivity is heightened, to the point that the person under yagé is able to perceive objects in near-total darkness. Another phenomenon, probably of the same origin, occurs that we will not describe in more explicit terms, since we have not observed it personally: the subject feels as though his eyes "are made of crystal": "Everything I see," says one of them, "is as if 'caught' by the pupil" (todo lo veo como prendido de la pupila). Another tells the person beside him that he can see the inside of his own body (que estaba viéndome interiormente mis entrañas). The Caverres Indians use almost identical terms in attributing a similar power to yagé.

Here, then, produced by the drug, is a whole series of visual anomalies that it will be interesting to study more closely.

Then the patient abruptly gives way to an overpowering, deep sleep, during which his insensibility becomes almost total.

The acceleration of the subconscious imagination produced by the drug fills this sleep with dreams of astonishing precision and clarity, some of which, apparently taking on a metagnomic [paranormal-knowledge] character, have helped to give yagé, in popular belief, its solid reputation as a magical, divinatory herb.

On waking, the person under yagé describes all the visions he has undergone, which remain strongly etched in his memory: visions of coming events, of distant scenes, of stolen or lost objects, of fantastic figures, of marvelous landscapes, of journeys made through cities or across unknown lands.

These images of the yagé dream have a clear tendency to be now micropsic, now megalopsic. In the sleeping state they reproduce the lilliputian hallucinations observed and described by Dr. Leroy, and those other, gigantic ones which, by antilogy, we shall call "brobdingnagian" — both of which are found in many toxic deliriums, in cocaine psychoses, and so on, and which are also produced by ayahuasca and by peyote.

It is curious to note that missionaries — hardly to be suspected of bias in the matter — do not deny the metagnomic phenomena brought on by yagé, as appears from one of their letters: "As for the divination of the future, an infinity of facts are cited for which, at first sight, it is not easy to find an explanation... Perfectly honest people, even some of some virtue, have taken yagé out of curiosity, intending to recover lost objects. They themselves were astonished at the surprising result they obtained. It would seem, then, that this is a plant of very active properties, which excites the nervous system and plunges one into a kind of hypnosis — something that certain people put to bad use."

Very high doses of yagé are used on the occasion of ritual ceremonies and in practices of religious magic by numerous Indian tribes, several of them cannibalistic. They use the stems and sometimes the leaves, in very concentrated decoctions, which they sometimes reinforce further with other plants of more formidable physiological activity: aya-huesca (Banisteria Caapi Spr.), tobacco, huanto (Datura arborea). Such drinks — some so dangerous that they are used only by sorcerers and medicine men — confer on those who take them a kind of initiation, and the intoxication they produce, as dangerous as that obtained from the potions consumed in certain African ordeals, is held to be a true communion with the gods.

The doses of yagé are then so massive that the Indian, seized by a furious delirium, believes himself changed into a beast — tiger, cobra, tapir, etc. — and runs here and there, imitating the animal's cries and gait. Sometimes, having reached an intense degree of nervous excitement, he tries to throw himself upon those he meets, to devour them.

[Remarks follow on the anthelmintic action of yagé observed by Mrs. Muñoz, and technical detail on the assay of the official 1:5 tincture; this purely analytical passage is omitted.]

We had occasion to examine a liquid Indian preparation of yagé, made by a tribe of Jívaro near Macas, Peru.

Characteristics: an aqueous vegetable decoction, very cloudy, yellowish in color, with a slightly acid litmus reaction. Density at 15° = 1.030. Already beginning to spoil. Faint taste, very slightly bitter and astringent, not at all unpleasant. A faintly alcoholic smell, although the liquor contains no alcohol.

Seen at a certain angle, it shows a very slight fluorescence, which becomes more pronounced on dilution with a little alcohol.

Acids slightly pale its color but do not clarify the liquid. Alkalis turn it blood-red, and then, with time and exposure to air, red-brown.

It contains a brown sediment, part of which has settled on the walls and bottom of the bottle. This sediment (unweighed), formed in part of woody and earthy matter, contains an alkaloidal substance characterized as yagéine.

Filtered and evaporated, it leaves 5.40% dry residue.

Assayed by the same procedure as the tincture, this decoction shows an alkaloid content of 0.26%. This alkaloid is yagéine, showing all of its reactions.

A. Rouhier.

[Author's note:] This preparation was sent by our Minister of France in Quito to His Excellency Count Dejean, who kindly forwarded it to us.

--- Translator's note: prepared for the archive from the French original; a careful working translation that has not yet been checked by a specialist reader. The Spanish phrases embedded in the original (quoted from Colombian informants) are kept in italics as in the source, immediately followed by the English sense given in the surrounding sentence.