![]() Single or paired, golden-yellow (occasionally reddish), pea-like flowers (15-25mm, Sep-Apr) are followed by oblong green pods (30-60 mm) that turn black as they mature and eventually disperse seeds explosively, leaving empty coils hanging from the plant. Leaves are divided into three sections (each 5-20 mm) that readily fall off the stems. Silky-hairy young twigs mature into woody, flexible green stems that are 5-ribbed and hairless. It works this way in everyone, not just witches.English or Scotch broom, Sarothamnus scoparius Where is it originally from?Įurope, Asia Minor, Russia What does it look like?Įrect, much branched, almost leafless, deciduous shrub (<2.5 m) with a woody rootstock. In 1979, Horwitz and her then-doctoral student, Peter B Schiff, and Jane Fant, published in Nature the seminal report demonstrating that taxol acts by promoting microtubule polymerization to the point that tumor cells cannot coordinate chromosomal segregation. To learn more about the colorful convergence of drugs and history, you owe yourself the indulgence of John Mann's book.Īn aside: Legendary pharmacologist, Dr Susan Band Horwitz, reminded me that the same passage from Macbeth quoted above also contains a reference to the source of one of our most useful natural product anticancer drugs, Taxol / paclitaxel. ![]() I never cease to be amazed or impressed by how much of our folk history is influenced by drug from nature - natural products - used in cultural or medical rituals. Soooo, these psychosensory experiences of flying were associated with boiled up hallucinogenic plants applied to the vaginal area with a broomstick. At the same time I experienced an intoxicating sensation of flying.I soared where my hallucinations - the clouds, the lowering sky, herds of beasts, falling leaves.billowing streamers of steam and rivers of molten metal - were swirling along." Each part of my body seemed to be going off on its own, and I was seized with the fear that I was falling apart. "My teeth were clenched, and a dizzied rage took possession of me.but I also know that I was permeated by a peculiar sense of well-being connected with the crazy sensation that my feet were growing lighter, expanding and breaking loose from my own body. The tropane alkaloid hallucinogens tended to cause sleep, but with dreams that involved flying, "wild rides," and "frenzied dancing." A 1966 description of tropane alkaloid intoxication was offered by the Gustav Schenk: So as not to directly offend those with delicate sensitivities toward the naked female form, here is a link to such a picture.īut what about the issue of flying on said broomsticks? These passages account for why so many of the pictures of the time depict partially clothed (or naked) witches "astride their broomsticks." "But the vulgar believe, and the witches confess, that on certain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride on it to the appointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy places." "In rifleing the closet of the ladie, they found a pipe of oyntment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin."Īnd from the fifteenth-century records of Jordanes de Bergamo: Just how did the alleged witches apply said ointments? The earliest clue comes from a 1324 investigation of the case of Lady Alice Kyteler: These routes of administration also bypassed rapid metabolism by the liver (and severe intestinal discomfort) had the user drank the boiled up plant extract. Somewhere along the line, the observation was made that the hallucinogenic compounds, hyoscine in particular (also known as scopolamine), could be absorbed through sweat glands (especially in the armpit) or mucus membranes of the rectum or vagina. During the Middle Ages, parts of these plants were used to make "brews," "oyntments," or "witches' salves" for witchcraft, sorcery, and other nefarious activities.
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