Isolation and characterization of naturally occurring cyanogenic compounds

Frequency of cyanogenesis in tropical rainforests of far north Queensland, Australia.

In the context of this paper, northeastern Mexico refers primarily to the state of Coahuila and immediately adjacent portions of Chihuahua on the west and Nuevo Leon on the south and east. Trans-Pecos Texas herein refers to that portion of the state of Texas west of the Pecos River. The term psychotropic drug collectively designates those agents whose ingestion results in an altered state of consciousness including specifically hallucinations and euphoria. Within the arid area noted above, the use of psychotropic drugs is well documented in early post-contact times. The aboriginal Coahuiltecan speakers of this region were using both peyote, Lophophora williamsi, and the so-called "red" or "mescal bean," Sophora secundiflora at first European contact (La Barre 1938, 1969). Both plants were also used extensively by the Tamaulipecans and Tarahumari of the northern and northeastern deserts (La Barre 1938, 1969). The earliest reference to the use of the red bean from the area under discussion is Cabeza de Vaca's report of 1539 (Schultes 1963), while early references to peyote are many. Though the Pre-Columbian use of psychotropic agents has long been known and a considerable time depth postulated, until quite recently no exact dates were available on the antiquity of this practice. Recently, however, a series of well dated archaeological sites from northeastern Mexico and Trans-Pecos Texas have demonstrated that the use of psychotropic drugs extends back to the ninth millennium B. C. Moreover, as will be shown, the evidence further indicates an evolutionary development

D. Seigler

Papers

New cyanogenetic lipids from Ungnadia speciosa