Plant Intoxicants: A Classic Text on the Use of Mind-Altering Plants

First of all the Notes section of the book is written by Jonathan Ott and that alone makes this book a valuable purchase, especially considering the prices of Mr. Ott's other works. As the back cover goes.. Plant Intoxicants is a pioneering study of psychoactive plants and their role in society. Initially pusblished in Nuremberg is 1855, it is one of the first books to examine the cultivation, preperation, and consumption of the world's major stimulants and inebriants. Drawing on his own travel experiences as well as the writings of his predeccessors, Baron Ernst von Bibra (1806-78) devotes a full chapter to each of seventeen plants, ranging from such mild stimulants as coffee and tea, through tobacco and hashish, to powerful narcotics and hallucinogens such as opium and fly agaric mushrooms. Written in a lively style, Plant Intoxicants paints a fascinating panorama of the worldwide use of psychoactive plants in the nineteenth century. Von Bibra brings to the subject a keen intellect, an engaging sense of humor, and a refreshing open-mindedness unusual for his, or any, time. While frankly acknowledgeing and describing in vivid detail the depravities of the opium den, he holds the opinion that intoxicants, when used in moderation are "gifts bestowed by the gods on man to alleviate his misery and reconcile men with one another." His findings, unhampered by the restrictive morality of his era, are a testemant to the intellectual freedom enjoyed by wealthy private researchers in the nineteenth century. Complementing and enhancing von Bibra's work is a full annotation by his modern-day counterpart Jonathan Ott, an ethnobotanist and the author of Pharmacotheon along with many other great books. A foreward by Martin Haseneier, the world's foremost authority on von Bibra's life and work, supplies a biographical sketch and places Plant Intoxicants at the vangaure of popular scientific writing on the role of plants in human culture.