Yagé

Copy (of a) Report on Yagé.

Holograph draft (on rectos only).

Holmes refers to a conversation initiated by Sir H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925) on a South American drug 'causing clairvoyant and telepathic effects', to the identification of the drug, and to the writer's attempts at trial with a tincture prepared by W.H. Martindale (1875?-1933) on 'some of our leading scientific Spiritualists ... including Sir A. Conan Doyle, Professor (Sir) Oliver Lodge, & Sir (W.) F. Barrett.'

The author, aware of difficulties of identification and nomenclature, describes indigenous methods of preparation, and refers to a full account of the drug by A. Rouhier in Bulletin des Sciences Pharmacologiques, 1926, 33, 252-261, and to South American work on it.

Produced in London.

See Martindale (1977), p. 883 for a succinct account of the alkaloidal relationship of yagé (Colombia), with caapi (Brazil and Colombia), and with the better known ayahuasca (Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia).

1927

8. ff. 23x15 cm. Unbound.

Purchased in April 1931

At Wellcome Collection:

A letter by Sir H. Rider Haggard is held as MS.8716.

Described in: Robin Price, An Annotated Catalogue of Medical Americana in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1983).