Mike Jay - From Peyote To Mescaline: The Birth Of Psychedelic Science скачать в хорошем качестве

Mike Jay - From Peyote To Mescaline: The Birth Of Psychedelic Science

In 1891 the peyote cactus was ritually consumed for the first time by a white man, the Smithsonian ethnographer James Mooney. In 1894 it was introduced to medical science in a series of trials on human subjects. By 1897 it had been sampled by America’s most famous neurologist, her leading psychologist and London’s literary and artistic avant-garde. In 1898 its active chemical was successfully isolated and named mescaline. Western science’s first engagement with a major psychedelic was in many respects bolder and more far-reaching than that of today. It was driven by self-experiment and subjective reportage; it ranged across a broad spectrum of disciplines from medicine to ethnography, biochemistry to aesthetics, psychology to mysticism; and it combined clinical perspectives with those of writers, artists and indigenous peoples.