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As the medicinal plant industry blooms into a billion dollar business, it reaches beyond collection, propagation, harvesting and sale of crude vegetal drugs into product formulation, packaging and dispensing of sophisticated phyto-pharmaceuticals and herbal preparations. The scientific study of these medicines and the systematic uplifting of the industry to preserve the ancient and serve the modern, is now a global challenge. The Medicinal Plant Industry puts together the various facets of this multi-disciplinary industry and its global interest. It discusses the dire need for developing countries to acquire technologies and techniques for programmed cultivation of medicinal plants. It addresses a wide variety of topics including the old philosophies, modern impact of traditional medicines, and methods of assessing the spontaneous flora for industrial utilization. It covers aspects of cultivation and climatic variations, biological assessment and formulation, process technologies, phytochemical research and information sources. The book reviews highly developed traditional medicine in China and India, and covers experiences in Africa and other continents.
A definitive history of mescaline that explores its mind-altering effects across cultures, from ancient America to Western modernity Mescaline became a popular sensation in the mid-twentieth century through Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception, after which the word "psychedelic" was coined to describe it. Its story, however, extends deep into prehistory: the earliest Andean cultures depicted mescaline-containing cacti in their temples. Mescaline was isolated in 1897 from the peyote cactus, first encountered by Europeans during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. During the twentieth century it was used by psychologists investigating the secrets of consciousness, spiritual seekers from Aleister Crowley to the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, artists exploring the creative process, and psychiatrists looking to cure schizophrenia. Meanwhile peyote played a vital role in preserving and shaping Native American identity. Drawing on botany, pharmacology, ethnography, and the mind sciences and examining the mescaline experiences of figures from William James to Walter Benjamin to Hunter S. Thompson, this is an enthralling narrative of mescaline's many lives.
The most comprehensive guide to the botany, history, distribution, and cultivation of all known psychoactive plants • Examines 414 psychoactive plants and related substances • Explores how using psychoactive plants in a culturally sanctioned context can produce important insights into the nature of reality • Contains 797 color photographs and 645 black-and-white illustrations In the traditions of every culture, plants have been highly valued for their nourishing, healing, and transformative properties. The most powerful plants--those known to transport the human mind into other dimensions of consciousness--have traditionally been regarded as sacred. In The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive ...
In 'A Different Medicine', Joseph Calabrese presents a case study that challenges many deeply ingrained cultural assumptions and attempts to mediate a centuries-old clash of cultural paradigms. The book explores a controversial Native American ritual and healthcare practice: ceremonial consumption of the psychedelic Peyote cactus in the context of a postcolonial healing movement called the Native American Church. Calabrese argues against the War on Drugs and the Supreme Court decision that jeopardized the right of Native Americans to use this medicine. He urges us to recognize the multiplicity of the normal and the therapeutic.
Encouraged by the medicinal success of quinine, early 19th century scientists hoped strychnine, another plant alkaloid with remarkable properties, might also become a new weapon against disease. Physicians tried for over a century, despite growing evidence to the contrary, to treat everything from paralysis to constipation with it. But strychnine p
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In a wide arc from the Paleolithic to the present day, this book explores the changing structure of human experience and its impact on the dynamics of cultures, civilizations, and political ideas. The main thesis is a paradigm shift: the structure of human experience is not a universal constant but changes over time. Looking at the entire range of human history, there are a total of nine transformations, beginning with conscious perception and imagination in the Paleolithic and ending, for the time being, in modern times with the discovery of the unconscious. In between, this book explores six more transformations that took place in different regions and at different times, which include a sense of order, self-reflection, the eye of reason, spiritual experience, as well as the experience of creativity and of consciousness. As such, The History of Experience presents both a cross-cultural and comparative theory of experience and cultural dynamics, and an exploration of rich materials from East and West. This book is of great use to upper-level undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars interested in the relationship between history, human experience, culture, and political order.