For his doctoral thesis in 1939, he went to northeast Oaxaca state in
Mexico, where he studied the hallucinogenic mushrooms called
teonanacatl. He also studied a vine related to the morning glory called
ololiuqui, the seeds of which were psychoactive and produced a numbing
effect when chewed. In a paper published the same year, he provided
what Davis later described as "the first irrefutable evidence of a
psychoactive mushroom used by Indians."
Schultes' work received little attention until 1953. That year, his
thesis was discovered by a Morgan Guaranty Trust executive named
Gordon Wasson, whose hobby was studying the role of mushrooms in
European and Asian cultures.
One question Wasson had puzzled over was why some cultures
revered, even worshiped, mushrooms. When he read Schultes' thesis,
he took off for Oaxaca, setting in motion a chain of events that would
shape American social history.
hape American social history.
Wasson managed with great difficulty to find a curandera who
allowed him to ingest the mushrooms as part of a sacred ceremony. His
description of the mystical experience was published in a Life magazine
article, catchily titled "Seeking the Magic Mushrooms." It would be read
by a young Harvard lecturer named Timothy Leary, who a few years
later would try the mushrooms too.
Thanks to a colleague of Wasson, samples of the ololiuqui plant were
sent to the laboratory of a Swiss chemist named Albert Hofmann, who
in 1943 had synthesized lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. When
Hofmann isolated the psychoactive chemicals in the seeds of the plant,
he could not believe what he found: Their active ingredients were nearly
identical to the compounds in LSD.
The Davis mentioned in the obit is
