various derivatives of Belladonna (Atropa belladonna)
These flora have the ability to simulate fits of confusion and madness that persist from days to weeks and are, in larger concentrations, lethal. The highly skilled crone could be depended upon to blend the alkaloids in her brew with such precision that the outcome of imbibing was highly predictable: transient confusion, prolonged dementia, or mortis - all were at her command.
Thus, the witch of the Middle Ages was no more than a clever chemist, though she encouraged false attributions of demonic power in order to create an aura of omnipotence. The same can be said of the shamans and voodoo priests of Haiti and other Caribbean islands. The mental and physical disturbances brought about by their so-called spells are nothing more than intoxication achieved through the cunning use of alkaloids.
In Chapter Two Shinners-Vree charted his travels to Latin America and noted that 'an unusually high concentration of mind-altering plants are indigenous to the New World. The gi-i-wa puffball of the Mixtecs, the sacred mushroom known as teonancatl (divine flesh) by the Aztecs, the tree fungus of the Yurimagua of Peru, the hex potion ayahuasca distilled by the Zaparo from the banisteriopsis vine as described by Villavicencio (1858) - all can be said to produce alkaloid exudates similar, chemically, to that obtained from Atropa belladonna. All are Phantasticants, all worthy of further study.'
'I, however, have chosen to concentrate my attentions upon a specific source of belladonna: the tree datura, specifically the subgenus brugmansia, because of its unique vegetative properties. The remainder of this volume will be dedicated to that end.'
I flipped through the illustrations - vivid and detailed renderings of shrubs and small trees, all sporting broad leaves, drooping, trumpetlike white or yellow flowers, and large, smooth, podlike fruit - and jumped into Chapter Three.
As the intrepid Professor S-V told it, 'Brugmansia is the archetypical Phantasticant, both because ingestion of its various parts produces behavioural states that mimic, uncannily, the symptons of acute dementia and other mental diseases and because of the degree of human control that can be exercised over its effects.'
Human control. I read on, heart pounding:
Such control is due to the fact that brugmansia shrubs tend to mutate spontaneously and rapidly and that these mutations can be easily propagated by sticking a piece of stem in moist earth. So simple is the process that, in principle, even a dull child could rise to the task.
I have discovered in the valleys below the High Andes, the prevalence of curiously malformed 'races' of the species, some so misshapen that any resemblance to the parent plant has disappeared. Remarkably, each has unique and predictable Phantasticant properties, caused, no doubt, by minute chemical alterations. Use of these races is not peculiar to one tribe. The Chibchas, the Chocos, the Qechuas, and the Jfvaros are only some of the primitives who have grown expert in its application. (Matters of personal safety prevented contact with several of the others.)
The Indians use these 'races' quite specifically. One is earmarked for the disciplining of wayward children, who are forced to drink a potion of its seeds ground up in water. Auditory disturbances follow, during which long- dead ancestors appear and admonish the youngsters. Another is believed to reveal the existence of treasures buried in graves; still another, to prepare warriors for battle by presenting to them the macerated faces of those they must kill. Though I have not witnessed this firsthand, I have been told that one of the more savage tribes employs a 'race' of b. aurea to intoxicate the wives and slaves of dead warriors so that they acquiesce without struggle to being buried alive with their masters.
The 'races' vary in potency, with the shamans of
each tribe quite knowledgeable as to which are weak and which are strong. What is most remarkable, in fact, is the degree of sophistication with which these so-called primitives are able to manipulate the human mind through the selective application of intoxicating alkaloids.
I put the book down, feeling chilled and queasy. A little more than a year before I'd stepped into a greenhouse of horrors - horrific clones, the product of one madman's revenge against the fates. Now here I was, once again, confronting Nature at her most perverse. My thoughts were interrupted by footsteps. I saw Jennifer, carrying an armful of books, descend the stairs and head toward the section where I'd found Shinners-Vree's book.
'Hi,' I said, and she jumped, arms flying out reflexively, books tumbling to the floor. She put her hand over her heart and turned toward me, pale and wide-eyed.
'Oh.' Deep breath. 'Alex. You scared me.'
'Sorry,' I said, getting up and walking to her side. 'Are you okay?'
'Fine,' she said hastily.
I stooped and collected the books.
'Silly of me to be so jumpy,' she said. 'It's just that it's spooky down here.' Nervous laughter. 'As if we're the first people to come down here in ages.'
'We probably are,' I said. 'What are you looking for?'
'An old botany book. I've found something, and it's the original source.'
'Come with me,' I said, and led her to the cubby. After laying the books down, I lifted the big canvas volume.
'This it?'
She took it and thumbed the heavy pages.
'Yes!'
'You wouldn't happen to have been drawn to it by a reference in an anthro monograph from Stanford? McAllister, et. al., 1972?'
She looked at me, astonished, then pulled a thin volume out of the pile on the desk, opened it, and read:
'The Use of Herbaceous Anticholinergic Alkaloids in the Maintenance of Social Order: The Brugmansia Rituals of the Indians of the Valley of Sibundoy, Southern Colombia. McAllister, Levine, and Palmer. How did you know?'
'A footnote in a piece on chemical warfare. What about
you?'
'A cross reference from an anthro journal on live-burial
rites. Amazing.'
'Great minds travelling in the same direction.' We moved from the cubby to a large table. She listened while I summed up the Shinners-Vree book, then lifted the McAllister monograph and said:
'The Stanford group retraced Shinners-Vree's steps, Alex. Used his book and went into the Sibundoy Valley, searching for hallucinogen cults. McAllister was the prof; the other two were grad students working under him. When they got there, they found things virtually unchanged from the way Shinners-Vree had described them: several small, obscure tribes living in the jungles at the base of the Andes, cloning brugmansia and using it for every aspect of their life - religion; medicine; puberty rites. The Colombian government was planning a highway that threatened to destroy the jungle and eradicate the tribes, so they hustled to collect their data.
'Levine was into the biochemical variations between the clones. He found that the psychotomimetic ingredient in all of them was some kind of anticholinergic alkaloid - very similar to atropine and scopolamine. But his analysis failed to pinpoint the minute differences between the clones, and I never found any further publications of his, so his research may have come to nothing.
'Palmer was more culturally oriented. And a lot more productive; the book's her master's thesis. Do you suppose they put her name last because she was a woman?' 'It wouldn't surprise me.'
'Thank God for feminism. Anyway, her research was a detailed description of how the anticholinergics were used for social control. Her main hypothesis is that for the Indians, drugs took the place of God. In the discussion
section she speculates that all religions had their origins in psychedelic experiences. Pretty radical stuff. But the main thing, Alex, is that those Indians knew exactly which clone to use to elicit exactly the system they wanted. That's proof it can be done.'
'Atropine poisoning,' I said. 'A modern-day witch's brew.'
'Exactly!' she said excitedly. 'Anticholinergics block the action of acetylcholine at the synapse and screw up nervous transmission. You could thoroughly mess someone up by using them. And a psychiatrist wouldn't think to screen for them routinely, would he?'
