![]() 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: Note the administration of the salve." Credit: Wellcome Institute Library, London Wellcome Instituteīut what about the issue of flying on said broomsticks? Shown in Mann's book with the caption, "A seventeenth-century engraving of a witch being prepared. These passages account for why so many of the pictures of the time depict partially clothed or naked witches "astride their broomsticks," as shown in the woodcut image featured here. "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? According to Mann, the earliest clue comes from a 1324 investigation of the case of Lady Alice Kyteler: So, the vulvovaginal and axial means of application detailed below are the ones that truly overcome first-pass hepatic metabolism.) (For my front-row students who always kept me on my toes, some pharmacology texts state that rectal drug administration does expose as much as half of the absorbed drug to first pass metabolism as the superior hemorrhagic vein drains into the mesenteric circulation. lady young woman mopping floor, holding mop jumping flying on white background." Each generation has appropriated the image of a woman astride a broomstick or, in this case, a mop. * This section updated to remove references to ergot forming on already-baked bread ergotism results from the grain itself being tainted.This stock image from Shutterstock carries the caption, "Cleanup housework concept. Her work is the subject of continued debate, but has been substantiated by later scholars: The Massachusetts of 1692 likely did see an outbreak of the fungus that had contributed, in other contexts, to "witch's brew." In 1976, Linnda Caporael presented work suggesting that the Massachusetts of the late 17th century had been the unknowing victim of an outbreak of rye ergot. But "witches" in the cultural imagination, of course, don't necessarily need re-purposed cleaning supplies to be accused of sorcery. So there you have it, rye to flying brooms. 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. ![]() At the same time I experienced an intoxicating sensation of flying …. 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. So people used their developing pharmacological knowledge to produce drug-laden balms-or, yep, " witch's brews." And t o distribute those salves with maximum effectiveness, these crafty hallucinators borrowed a technology from the home: a broom. And the most receptive areas of the body for that absorption were the sweat glands of the armpits. What people realized, though, was that absorbing them through the skin could lead to hallucinations that arrived without the unsavory side effects. ![]() When consumed, those old-school hallucinogens could cause assorted unpleasantnesses-including nausea, vomiting, and skin irritation. ![]() ![]() So why do the brooms fit into this? Because to achieve their hallucinations, these early drug users needed a distribution method that was a little more complicated than simple ingestion. Writing in the 16th century, the Spanish court physician Andrés de Laguna claimed to have taken "a pot full of a certain green ointment … composed of herbs such as hemlock, nightshade, henbane, and mandrake" from the home of a couple accused of witchcraft. Forbes's David Kroll notes that there are also hallucinogenic chemicals in Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Hyoscyamus niger (henbane), Mandragora officinarum (mandrake), and Datura stramonium (jimsonweed). And they experimented with other plants, as well. So people, as people are wont to do, adapted this knowledge, figuring out ways to tame ergot, essentially, for hallucinatory purposes. A 17th-century wood engraving of a "witch" being prepared for "flight" (Wellcome Institute, London, via John Mann) ![]()
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