Note 37 — APPENDIX 6: PHYSIOLOGY OF PEYOTE

But not to all persons! The typical over-enthusiasm with which new materia medica are received is itself an interesting ethnographic commentary. Prentiss and Morgan (Therapeutic Uses, 4-5) prescribed it variously for “cramps, griping and colic ... [and] nervous headache” as well as “tickling in the throat.” They also report (The Alkaloids of Anhalonium, 123-37) uses by other doctors. Two brothers, doctors, prescribed peyote for their brother who was suffering from “softening of the brain.” He died a few months later, uncured. Nevertheless, they prescribed peyote for their sister, who was “very low and out of her head;” she later recovered. Richardson (D. A.), (A Report, 194-95) reports still more spectacular sequelae. He administered peyote to a man with “frontal cephalalgia.” “Especially would I remark,” he says, “on the clearing of the skin of pimples over the chest and back, and a marked softening of the hair, which before the exhibition of the anhalonium was dry, with a tendency to break easily.” It nevertheless also decreased the abnormal oiliness of the skin. Further, he thought it was a solvent for uric acid, likely to be of value for stones in the bladder. Lastly, “In my opinion, anhalonium is a superior cardiac tonic, and, like nitroglycerine, its effects are prolonged after the administration of the drug is withdrawn.”

The efficacy of peyote in native doctoring seems as little established also. Reasons of ethnographic nature have already been cited for doubting the anti-alcoholic virtue of peyote. Indeed, the leader of one meeting I attended I visited in jail later in the week; he had been arrested for drunken street-fighting. I could uncharitably cite half-a-dozen similar cases, but it seems amply enough demonstrated that there is no relation of exclusiveness between peyotism and alcoholism.