Texts / Academic Article

Note on Nitrous Oxide, from “On Some Hegelisms”

The note William James added to his essay "On Some Hegelisms" in Mind (1882), reporting nitrous oxide experiments he made after reading Blood's pamphlet. He describes a sense of metaphysical illumination and reconciliation of opposites that fades on recovery into "a few disjointed words and phrases." James reprinted the note in The Will to Believe (1897), and Charles Tart excerpted it in 1969 as "Subjective Effects of Nitrous Oxide."

On Anhalonium Lewinii

Berlin pharmacologist Louis Lewin (1850–1929) reports on "Muscale Buttons" received from Parke, Davis & Co. during a visit to the United States in 1887. The botanist Paul Hennings identified the dried cactus as a new species and named it Anhalonium Lewinii after him, and Lewin describes a crude base he called anhalonine and its strychnine-like convulsant effects in frogs, pigeons and rabbits. Hosted here are the introduction, the preliminary chemistry, and the full section on the drug's effects, with the historical survey of cacti omitted.

Consciousness under the Influence of Cannabis Indica

The Yale psychologist Edward Wheeler Scripture takes an alcoholic extract of cannabis to test the common claim that it stretches time and space. He reports strong fluctuations of attention and a sense that objects and events had become remote, and compares these with laboratory findings on attention.

Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons)

A Study of the Drug, with Especial Reference to its Physiological Action upon Man, with Report of Experiments

Prentiss and Morgan conducted the first American clinical study of peyote at Columbian University on buttons supplied by ethnologist James Mooney. They recorded physiological effects alongside subjects' first-person accounts of visions, including kaleidoscopic colors and dissociative experiences.

The Mescal Plant and Ceremony

An account of the Kiowa and Comanche peyote ceremony by ethnologist James Mooney, published in the Therapeutic Gazette in 1896. Drawing on field observation and participation since 1891, Mooney describes the all-night rite, dosages, and cases including his interpreter Paul Setkopti and leader Quanah Parker.

Effects of Anhelonium Lewinii

S. Weir Mitchell's account of his own peyote self-experiment on May 24, 1896, read before the American Neurological Society. Mitchell describes detailed visions and includes a second self-experiment by a colleague, Dr. Eshner, with physiological notes and subjective observations.

On Pellote (Second Communication)

Leipzig pharmacologist Arthur Heffter (1859–1925) reports his separation of five alkaloids from mescal buttons, among them mescaline ("Mezcalin"), and a series of self-experiments made between June and November 1897. Testing the whole drug, its resin, the mixed alkaloids and each isolated base in turn, he found that 0.15 g of mescaline hydrochloride alone reproduced the visions, slowed pulse, dilated pupils and loss of time sense produced by the cactus. Hosted here are the description of mescaline and its salts and the whole of section VI on the drug's action in humans.

Physiological Action of Anhalonium Alkaloids

A pharmacologist at St Thomas's Hospital reports systematic experiments on Anhalonium alkaloids using frogs, cats, dogs, and rabbits, combined with self-experimentation. Dixon's account is more clinically restrained than Weir Mitchell's or Ellis's but adds music-color synaesthesia and comparisons to cannabis and strychnine.

Mescal: A Study of a Divine Plant

A Study of a Divine Plant

Havelock Ellis's account of his own peyote self-experiment, conducted on Good Friday 1897 in his London chambers. Written for a general scientific audience, it situates his diary of jewel-like visions within the clinical work of Prentiss, Morgan, and Weir Mitchell, alongside Indigenous religious use of the plant.

Psychic Action of Mescalin

New York psychiatrists inject themselves and colleagues with pure mescaline sulphate in twenty-three experiments to model insanity's visual hallucinations. Subjects' reports include specifics—a glass-screen head, the 'mosque of Omar'—and the authors propose a five-level theory of hallucinations versus images.

An Aztec Narcotic

Safford, a USDA botanist, analyzes peyote's physiological effects and Native American ceremonial use in 1915. The article incorporates sworn testimony from Menominee, Omaha, and Winnebago members of the Sacred Peyote Society.

On Aztec Botanical Names

An essay by physician and ethnobotanist Blas Pablo Reko arguing against Safford's claim that teonanácatl was a fanciful name for peyote. Reko insists teonanácatl was a real mushroom still eaten by Indigenous communities in Oaxaca.

Contribution to the Study of the Toxic Drinks of the Northwest Amazon

French physician P. Reinburg's account of his ayahuasca ingestion among the Záparo in May 1913, published in the Journal de la Société des Américanistes. Rather than visions, he experienced a severe toxic reaction with pulse loss, vomiting, and spasms, recorded in clinical detail.

Study on the Active Principle of Yagé

A 1923 doctoral thesis reporting Fischer Cárdenas's isolation of the yagé alkaloid that Rafael Zerda Bayón had named telepathine (telepatina) decades earlier without isolating it. Seven case reports detail effects on human subjects, including the author's self-experiment, describing vivid dreams, visual hallucinations, and euphoria at low doses, followed by a systematic summary of physiological action.

Documents Toward a Study of Yagé

Rouhier's two-part dossier for Bulletin des Sciences Pharmacologiques: a translation of Barriga Villalba's 1923 paper on alkaloid yagéine, followed by Rouhier's ethnographic and pharmacological notes. Rouhier catalogues dose-dependent effects and includes chemical analysis of a Jívaro preparation.

On Banisterine, an Intoxicating Substance from Banisteria Caapi

Berlin pharmacologist Louis Lewin announces his isolation of banisterine from Banisteria caapi and its identity to harmine. He describes animal experiments and preliminary human trials showing that banisterine relieved the muscular rigidity of encephalitis lethargica (post-influenza sleeping sickness).

The Elements of Mazatec Witchcraft

A Berkeley anthropologist's field survey of Mazatec witchcraft from a 1938 expedition to Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca. Hosted here is a fair-use excerpt: Johnson's eyewitness account of a curing ceremony he and his party attended on July 16, 1938 -- the first outsider-witnessed session involving the sacred mushrooms -- along with his description of the mushroom species and their ritual use among Mazatec brujos.

Teonanacatl

The Narcotic Mushroom of the Aztecs

Schultes's botanical account of his 1938-39 fieldwork with Blas Pablo Reko among the Mazatec, tracing the teonanácatl rediscovery from Reko's 1923 letter through Robert Weitlaner's 1936 visit to Huautla de Jiménez. Schultes identifies the mushroom as Paneolus campanulatus var. sphinctrinus.

A Contribution to Our Knowledge of Rivea Corymbosa

The Narcotic Ololiuqui of the Aztecs

Schultes's botanical monograph settling the identity of ololiuqui, the Aztec morning-glory narcotic. He credits Urbina's 1897 identification as Rivea corymbosa, corrects Safford's 1915 misidentification as jimsonweed, and surveys continued ritual and medicinal use among the Chinantec, Mazatec, Mixtec, and Zapotec of Oaxaca.

LSD, a Phantasticum from the Ergot Group

Werner Stoll's first systematic clinical study of LSD, examining sixteen healthy volunteers and six schizophrenic patients, plus Stoll's own self-experiment. Published in 1947 following Hofmann's 1943 discovery at Sandoz, it established key vocabulary for psychiatric LSD research.

Schizophrenia

A New Approach

Osmond and Smythies argue that schizophrenia involves a naturally occurring adrenaline derivative chemically close to mescaline. Hosted here is a fair-use excerpt: their case that mescaline intoxication reproduces the symptoms of acute schizophrenia, the biochemical note on how a disorder of adrenaline's transmethylation could form such a compound, and their resulting hypothesis and discussion.

Experimental Schizophrenia-Like Symptoms

Rinkel and colleagues at Boston Psychopathic Hospital administered microgram doses of LSD tartrate to normal volunteers and schizophrenic, depressive, and paranoid patients. They reported the drug reliably produced thought disorder, hallucination, and depersonalization resembling clinical schizophrenia.

Studies on LSD-25: Tolerance in Former Morphine Addicts

I. Effects in Former Morphine Addicts and Development of Tolerance During Chronic Intoxication

Harris Isbell and colleagues at the NIMH Addiction Research Center in Lexington, Kentucky, gave LSD daily for up to eighty-five days to former morphine addicts to measure tolerance and compare effects to psychosis. They found rapid tolerance to both physiological and mental effects, which disappeared upon discontinuation.

A Review of the Clinical Effects of Psychotomimetic Agents

Osmond surveyed psychotomimetic agents and proposed new terminologies, settling on "psychedelic, mind-manifesting" as his choice. This paper put the word into circulation among psychiatrists, coining the term still used today.

Psychoanalysis and LSD-25

Foundations for a Combined Therapeutic Technique

Luisa G. de Álvarez de Toledo's paper to the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association in Buenos Aires on September 10, 1957, setting out a method for combining LSD sessions with psychoanalysis. Case reports by Alberto E. Fontana and Francisco Pérez Morales follow. It is one of the earliest attempts in Latin America to fit LSD into psychoanalytic treatment.

Lysergic Acid Diethylamide

Side Effects and Complications

Sidney Cohen surveyed researchers at the VA Neuropsychiatric Hospital who had administered LSD or mescaline to nearly 5,000 subjects across more than 25,000 doses. He found no cases of serious prolonged physical harm and quantified low rates of suicide attempts, psychotic breaks over 48 hours, and other adverse effects.

A New Mexican Psychotropic Drug

The first scientific identification of Salvia divinorum, published in Harvard's Botanical Museum Leaflets. Wasson reports ingesting the Mazatec 'leaves of the Shepherdess' at two ceremonies in Oaxaca in 1961-62, attended on the second occasion by Albert Hofmann and his wife.

Psychedelic Review, No. 1

The founding issue of The Psychedelic Review, published in June 1963 by Timothy Leary and Ralph Metzner's International Federation for Internal Freedom. Hosted here are the issue's unsigned Editorial and Statement of Purpose, which set out the journal's program and explain its choice of the word 'psychedelic.' The issue's bylined articles, by Gerald Heard, R. Gordon Wasson, and Alan Watts, are described in the front matter but not reproduced.

Psychotropic Properties of the Harmala Alkaloids

A Chilean psychiatrist's report on harmala alkaloids, ayahuasca-related beta-carbolines, and comparative human experiments with harmaline and mescaline at the University of Chile.

El contexto cultural de un alucinógeno aborigen

Banisteriopsis caapi

A Colombian Amazon ethnographic study placing Tukano use of Banisteriopsis caapi, or yajé, within a wider cultural system of mythology, ritual, symbolism, perception, and social knowledge.

The Narcotic Pepper

The Chemistry and Pharmacology of Piper methysticum and Related Species

Alexander Shulgin's review of kava, Piper methysticum, covering Pacific preparation practices, pharmacological classification, and the chemistry of kavalactones and related Piper species.

Virola theiodora como alucinógena e tóxica

A short Brazilian natural-products chemistry article confirming the double use of Virola theiodora bark in Yomanê hallucinogenic snuff and arrow poison from the Tototobi River region of Roraima.

NIDA Research Monograph 146

An Update (NIDA Research Monograph 146)

Proceedings of a 1992 NIDA technical review on hallucinogen research, prompted by rising LSD use among teenagers. Includes Rick Strassman's account of the regulatory process (IRB, DEA, FDA) for his DMT study, the first human hallucinogen study approved since the early 1970s.