Sean Barile

Comp 101 – Essay 2

11/28/06

The work of Richard Evans Schultes has been

revolutionary to both modern medicine and human culture
itself. Though his name may not be recognized by most, his
work in the Amazonian rainforests during the 40’s and 50’s
affects the whole world to this day. During his career, he
laid the foundation for modern surgical techniques,
initiated the psychedelic counterculture of the 60’s, and
fathered a newly emerging form of scientific exploration –
Ethnobotany, the study of the relationship between plants
and humans.
A New England native, his interest in plants began on
his uncles Massachusetts farm, pressing specimen in an
encyclopedia and slowly collecting and learning about the
local flora. He grew up and was schooled in East Boston.
When he started his formal education at Harvard in 1933, he
considered his future to be in medicine. This direction
changed after he enrolled in Biology 104, "Plants and Human
Affairs”, a basic description for what one day would become
Ethnobotany. His curiosity about psychoactive plants was
piqued around this time. He did his undergraduate thesis on
the ritual usage of the Peyote cactus by traveling to
Oklahoma to take part in the Kiowa Indian rituals, he
himself using the drug. Later in his student tenure, he
traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico to learn of the then
unidentified substance known as Teonanacatl. In his studies,
he identified the substance in question as Panaeolis
sphinctrinus, a mushroom containing the psychoactive
chemical Psilocybin and just one of the many species known
today as “magic” mushrooms. After completing this study, he
used the information gained from his Mexican explorations
to complete his thesis on the useful plants of the Mazatek
Indians, a tribe native to Oaxaca.
His truly important work was begun after his 1941
graduation. He was simultaneously offered the position of
biology master for a New England school, and a grant from
the National Academy of Sciences to travel to South America.
His decision to accept the grant initiated one of the great
explorations of the 20th century. He was charged with the
task of finding and learning about an arrow poison known as
curare. During the 1930’s, scientists isolated the chemical
D-tubocurarine from Chondodendron tomentosum. While
researching the extract, it was recognized to be greatly
useful as a muscle relaxant for use in surgery for its
ability to produce muscle relaxation independently from
anesthesia, permitting anesthesiologists to adjust the two
effects as needed. The National Academy of Sciences wanted
Schultes to find out what he could from the natives about
their different arrow poisons and varieties of curare. In
his study, he was able to identify 14 varieties of curare
from over 70 different plant species. Synthetic relatives
of tubocurarine are still used today. To this day, his work
with curare is that for which he is best known.
During his stay in South America, the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor. When he heard the news, Schultes ran
to the nearest American embassy. He thought that he would,
and possibly should, be called to duty – and he was, in a
vsense. When he arrived, he was given a new mission – go
back to the jungle.
Until the invention of neoprene by the Dupont Company
in 1930, the United States was reliant on Southeast Asia
for their supply of rubber. Natural rubber was expensive
because of its relative rarity and difficulty to grow, and
because of the demand for rubber for the tires of American
Automobiles, that required large quantities. With the
bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States Army and
manufacturing industry was effectively cut off from its
source of rubber.
Since farming rubber trees had been proven
counterproductive by the Ford companies “Fordlania” project
(a massive American style suburb, rubber farm, and
manufacturing plant erected in Brazil in the 1930’s), the
U.S. government asked Schultes to help the war effort by
persuading the Indians to tap wild rubber. In early 1942,
Schultes began his work as a field agent for the
governmental Rubber Development Corporation. His task was to
locate rubber trees and to teach the Indians extraction and
processing methods. Seeds he collected contributed to
breeding programs and allowed higher yields and sturdier
plants to be developed. His work with rubber continued for
the rest of his career and his life.
During his wartime rubber conquest, under a Guggenheim
Foundation Fellowship, he began researching Amazonian
ethnobotany. The bulk of his work in ethnobotany began
after this. Of the tens of thousands of medicinal plants he
found, relatively few have ever been explored or used in
western medicine. Today in America, his legacy lies in the
psychedelic drugs he uncovered in the Amazon.
Ayahuasca is both the native name of a large woody
vine (Banisteriopsis caapi, a name assigned by Schultes)
and the name of the herbal infusion made from the vine.
Although Schultes was certainly not the first to bring
Ayahuasca to the attention of the United States, he was the
first to bring scientific scrutiny upon the plant and the
drink. Because of his close work with organic chemists, he
was able to identify the chemicals within the plant as
Harmine and Harmaline. But neither of these chemicals we’re
psychoactive. After more research, he made a discovery.
Another plant used in the decoction, Chacruna (Psychotria
viridis, another name assigned by Schultes), contained DMT,
or dimethyltryptamine, a hallucinogen related to LSD and
the neurotransmitter serotonin. Both these plants, by
themselves, had no medicinal value or psychoactivity when
taken orally, because DMT is metabolized almost instantly
in the digestive system by enzymes called monoamine
oxidases, or M.A.O.’s. However, when one ingests an M.A.O.
inhibitor such as Harmine or Harmaline, effects are easily
achieved. Although the Ayahuasca vine had been known of for
some time, nothing was known of Chacruna in America, nor
did anyone know of the synergistic qualities of these two
plants; only the natives and Schultes, who shared what he
learned with the rest of the world.
His work with DMT continued unexpectedly with the
discovery of tribes who used snuffs. These snuffs were
prepared from different species of plant resins mixed with
alkaline substances, such as plant ashes or snail shells.
The alkaline materials allow the drug to enter the
bloodstream easier and quicker. They would use these snuffs
by inserting one end of a bird bone into each nostril while
another person (usually a shaman or medicine man) would
blow the fine dust through from the other end. There are
possibly hundreds of species of plants from which these
snuffs are made- several different species in the Virola
genus, Justica pectoralis, and Anadenanthera peregrine,
which make the most powerful snuff, known as yopo. Schultes
participated in many of the snuff ceremonies himself, and
assigned Latin names to all of the species.
Richard Schultes spent 13 straight years in the Amazon
after receiving his doctorate, and spent much of his life
there after his original trek. His interest in the Amazon
began as a child when he became sick, and his parents read
him “Notes of a Botanist on the Amazon and Andes” by
Richard Spruce, an account not unlike the notes within his
own writings. He became Spruces successor, in many ways,
ushering in the first waves of interest in ethnobotany. He
himself has trained and spawned several successors,
including Wade Davis, author of 1985’s “The Serpent and the
Rainbow”, an autobiographical account of his research on a
Haitian voodoo potion that turned its users into zombies
(was found to be because of toxins in one of its
ingredients, Puffer Fish).
Dr. Schultes also had several important collaborators.
After studying Teonanacatl in Oaxaca, he received a query
from a Banker named R. Gordon Wasson, interested in the
mushrooms. Wasson later went to Oaxaca and identified
around 25 varieties of psychedelic mushrooms similar to
Teonanacatl, and was generally credited for the discovery
of psilocybin mushrooms. On his trip to Oaxaca, Wasson
brought with him a German chemist from Sandoz
Pharmaceuticals named Albert Hofmann, the inventor of L.S.D.
All three met after the mushroom journey and became very
good friends. Schultes wrote books with each of them,
“Plants of the Gods” and “The Botany and Chemistry of
Hallucinogens” with Hofmann, and “Flesh of the Gods” with
Wasson. With the work of the three mostly encompassed
between 1940 and ’50, they paved the way for the
psychedelic counterculture of the 60’s. Together, they have
had a profound effect on American Culture.
Richard Schultes took countless risk pursuing
knowledge. Simply being white and foreign has gotten many
killed in these remote areas of the Amazon. He respected
and revered the Indians who taught him. He was never harmed
by the natives with whom he traveled and lived. However,
during that time period in that part of the world,
Tuberculosis and Leprosy were quite common. Schultes was
infected with malaria, infested with stomach parasites,
suffered from beriberi and hunger, and nearly drowned. But
nothing kept him from exploring.
In his career at Harvard, he was also curator of the
Orchid Herbarium in 1953, curator of Ethnobotany for the
Botanical Museum from 1958 to 1967, and as Executive
Director from 1967-1970. In 1970 he was named Professor of
Biology and Director of the Botanical Museum. He retired in
1985 from higher education, but continued writing until his
2001 death. He has written almost 500 technical papers and
written 10 books on botany and ethnobotany. He has
collected nearly 25,000 different plants, of which more
than 2,000 are still used today. He received Colombia's
highest honor, the Cross of Boyaca, the annual Gold Medal
of the World Wildlife Fund, the Tyler Prize for
Environmental Achievement and the highest award in the
field of botany, the Linnean Gold Medal. His name appears
as over 200 species of plans, a cockroach genus, Schultesia,
a mountain, Mesa Schultes, and a 2.2 million hectare
conservation tract in Colombia, Sector Schultes.
He has changed the world in many ways since his birth,
most profoundly in reducing the risk and grimacing outlook
of many prospective surgical patients, in initiating
psychedelic culture, and in affecting American culture.
Without his guidance, hundreds of medicines would never
have been uncovered by man. With his courageous
explorations, he has changed the world of modern medicine
and affected every person living today.