who have been at work in the Valley of Sibundoy for more than a 
quarter of a century suspect that the death of one aged witch- 
doctor may have been due to an overdraught of this narcotic. 
Smaller doses of the drug are administered to boys who are study- 
ing witchcraft. Certain of the medicine-men’s secrets apparently 
are imparted only when the novitiate is “‘under the protection’’ of 
this narcotic. 
Both Schultes’ and Theilkuhl’s descriptions of the 
method of preparation of the drug are nearly the same 
as that described below for the other cultivars. 
Theilkuhl, after visiting the Sibundoy in 1956, wrote 
of this clever use of eulebra borrachera (85): 
. it is suspected that occasionally unscrupulous Indians use it 
as a ‘burundanga’, that is, to deprive outsiders of their senses and 
rob them. 
It seems that the ‘médicos’ or ‘curacas’ take an aqueous macera- 
tion of the leaves to produce hallucinations, during which they say 
they see the solution of difficult cases of divination, prophecy or 
diagnosis. One of the “médicos’ questioned affirms that the ‘cule- 
bra borrachera’ is employed in a manner similar to that of ‘yagé’ 
[ Banisteriopsis spp.; (6)], the focal point of Amazonian medical 
practice. 
Yepes, Schultes and Theilkuhl use the words divina- 
tion, prophecy, diagnosis and witchcraft in describing 
the psychotropic use of Datura, yet no Sibundoy I en- 
countered stated such reasons for using any Datura drug. 
Nor has Haydée Seijas found these usages during more 
than one year of investigating Sibundoy ethnomedicine 
(pers. comm.). Most of those with whom I talked ap- 
peared to consider the drugs hallucinogens, but I failed to 
record precisely their statements. Had this been done by 
myself and the other observers, we might assess the psy- 
chological, as well as social, significance more accurately. 
The Sibundoy observer, Pedro Juajibioy, has recorded 
five instances of intoxication with Datura among his 
acquaintances (20). In three cases, it is stated that the 
leaves were taken to cure disease: agua blanca (‘white 
[ 191 ] 
