BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
THE HALLUCINOGENIC MUSHROOMS OF 
MEXICO AND PSILOCYBIN: 
Dp DIBLIOGRAPHY 
R. Gordon Wasson* 
THE past six years have seen unprecedented activity in the study of the halluci- 
nogenic mushrooms of Mexico. So diverse and extensive has this activity been, 
and so numerous are the publications about these mushrooms and their deriva- 
tives, that we believe a bibliography on the subject is timely. It will prove useful, 
we hope, in mobilizing our knowledge about them and in facilitating further 
research. 
This interest—scientific, cultural, popular—flows directly from the writings 
of Roger Heim and the Wassons. On February 13, 1956, Professor Heim sub- 
mitted his first Note about these mushrooms to the Académie des Sciences, Paris, 
based on the discoveries that my wife, Dr. Valentina P. Wasson, and I had made 
in the Sierra Mazateca, Oaxaca, in the summer of 1953. This initial Note, pub- 
lished in the Compte rendu of February 20, has been followed at intervals by 
others. 
In the spring of 1957 my wife and I brought out our book, Mushrooms Russia 
and History, the fruit of almost thirty years of intermittent research. Timed to 
coincide with its appearance, we published articles of haute vulgarisation on our 
Mexican mushrooms in Life (illustrated with reproductions of water-colors of 
the mushrooms by Professor Heim) and in This Week. 
Meanwhile Professor Heim was enlisting teams of scientists to work on the 
mushrooms. He himself has naturally coped with the mycological problems, 
ably assisted by his technician, Roger Cailleux. The scientists of the Swiss phar- 
maceutical house of Sandoz A. G. were quick to help. Drs. Arthur Brack and 
Hans Kobel succeeded in developing mass production of the fungal material in 
*Research Fellow, Botanical Museum of Harvard University. Paper submitted in August, 
eT ee 
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