BoraNnicAL MuseuM LEAFLETS VoL. 25, No. 6 
HALLUCINOGENIC PLANTS IN CHINESE HERBALS 
Hu 1-LIn Li* 
The Chinese literature contains an extensive series of works 
on pharmaceutical botany, composed mainly of pharmacopoe- 
ias or materia medicas known as pén-t’sao or herbals. These 
works deal with drugs of all origins, mineral, animal, but 
mainly vegetable, hence the name. Then there are also many 
other treatises on plants and natural products from various 
parts of the country or neighboring states. All these works, 
accumulated in the last two thousand years, provide us with a 
vast store of knowledge on medicinal and economic plants and 
their uses, as well as on natural history in general, origin and 
distribution of plants, ethnobotany, agricultural history, and 
other related subjects. Plants with hallucinogenic properties 
are the subject of the present study. 
Since very early times, the Chinese, like many other 
peoples, have discovered plants with hallucinogenic properties 
in their native flora, finding them perhaps along with their 
search for plants for medicinal uses. Plants with hallucinogenic 
effects were recorded in the earliest herbals nearly two 
thousand years ago. The special significance of these halluci- 
nogenic plants was, however, not specifically discussed until 
the sixteenth century, when Li Shih-chén, the greatest author- 
ity on Chinese medicinal plants, in his magnus opus Peéen-ts'’ao 
kang-mu (first published in 1596 after his death) recorded along 
with details of a criminalistic episode involving the possible use 
of some hallucinogenic drugs. So far as I know, there has been 
no report of any use of hallucinogenic plants in China in more 
modern times. We do not know whether the practice of using 
some such plants by ‘‘sorcerers’’ or some other peoples as 
mentioned in earlier works occurred also in recent ages or not. 
It is not impossible that some use of hallucinogens may be 
found among the aborigines or other non- Han tribesmen along 
*Honorary Research Associate in Chinese Economic Botany. ‘Current address: De- 
partment of Biology, University of Pennsylvania. 
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