BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
VoL. 18, No. 1 
CampBripGce, MassacnusetTts, JUNE 7, 1957 
THE IDENTITY OF THE 
MALPIGHIACEOUS NARCOTICS 
OF SOUTH AMERICA 
BY 
Ricuarp Evans ScCHULTES 
This is all I have seen and learnt of 
caapi or aya-huasca. . . . Some travel- 
ler who may follow my steps with 
greater resources at his command, will, 
it is hoped, be able to bring away ma- 
terials adequate for the complete anal- 
ysis of this curious plant. 
Richard Spruce 
I 
Tue New World narcotics to which man has attributed 
the most extraordinarily bizarre powers of altering the 
state of his body and mind hid out successfully from pry- 
ing European eyes and were not discovered and identified 
botanically until about one hundred years ago. They 
remain, even to-day, the most poorly understood of the 
hallucinogens of the Americas and the narcotics whose 
identification is most baffling. Indeed, we may truthfully 
say that we stand merely on the threshold of our inves- 
tigations into the botany, ethnology, history, pharma- 
cology, chemistry and therapeutics of that complex of 
intoxicants known as ayahuasca, caapt or yaje. 
II 
The purpose of this paper is to summarize what Is 
known about the identity of the malpighiaceous narcot- 
[1] 
