Aztec's Sacred Mushroom

1916

Mushrooms are dangerous enough in the United States, where those who gather and eat them prize their flavor, and sometimes perish by reason of wrong diagnosis, for the deadly kind that are called toadstools look much like some of the edible mushrooms. In Mexico it would seem that the mushroom situation is worse than here, for while Americans hunt mushrooms for food, the Mexicans have reason to regard them as both meat and drink. Read the following statement of what happens after consuming the sacred mushroom of the Aztecs:

It is a powerful narcotic, producing the most fantastic visions, and is regarded by the Indians as a key which, in their ceremonial, opens to them all the glories of another and better world. A tincture made by simply chopping up the plant and allowing it to soak in diluted alcohol for a couple of weeks is a most serviceable remedy for nervousness, headaches and insomnia. When chewed (the Indians say) it stops the painful coughing of consumptives.

Botanists assert that the "sacred mushroom" is not a mushroom at all, but a cactus. That, however, is merely a matter of bald detail. What is important is the action of the plant on the system, This is attributed to an alkaloid principle it contains known as anhalonin, which chemists say is separable in the form of white, needlelike crystals.

The plant resembles a radish in shape. It has a button-like top, which is all of it that appears above the ground, and this is why it has been taken for a mushroom. The top is covered with prickles.

The early missionaries disapproved of the "sacred mushrooms." Because its use was part of the religious ceremonial of the native priests, the good missionaries called it "devil root." Another name of it is "dream plant," because of the visions it produces. Besides the dream inducing alkaloid, it yields a deadly poison; so it would not do for people unfamiliar with the plant to experiment with its effects on their own persons. People who have had it administered to them by physicians declare it is a remedy for the headachy condition that follows the drinking of alcohol.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 6.