STEVENSON] MEDICAL PRACTICES AND MEDICINAL PLANTS 41 



bewitched by man. Then ho acts m the capacity of theurgist, 

 employing the medicines of tlie gods, whom he invokes for their spir- 

 itual presence and bestowal on him of power to heal the disease. 



Medicines supposed to belong to the gods Are administered with 

 much ceremony, for the medicines themselves are of vhtue because 

 they are the property of certain gods who must be present in spirit 

 and give power to the theurgist to act for them, otherwise the reme- 

 dies would not be efficacious. 



The use of Datum hj the Indians has long been known. In the 

 dark ago of medical science "the Royal Societ}' of London gi-avely 

 mquh'ed of Sir Philberto Vernatti, 'Whether the Indians can so pre- 

 pare the stupefying herb Datura, that they make it lie several days, 

 montlis, or years, according as they will have it, in a man's body, 

 and at the end kill Imn without missing half an hour's time?'"' 



There can be no question as to the early use of antiseptics and 

 narcotics by the Zuni, as well as by other primitive peoples,- but 

 with civiUzed man it remained for Lister to revolutionize surgery by 

 the introduction of scientific antiseptic treatment. Datura strO/- 

 monium was uitroduced to the medical profession in 1762 by Baron 

 Stoerck, of Vienna, and it was given a place in the homeopathic 

 pharmacopoea about a centiuy ago when Hahnemann established its 

 action and therapeutic uses. It is claimed that the European gypsies 

 in the mitklle ages employed the smoke of Datura stramonium to 

 delude their dupes. The Zuni rain priests administer Datura 

 meteloides that one may become a seer, and the Zuni "doctor" gives 

 the root of the plant to render his patient unconscious while he 

 performs simple operations — setting fractured hmbs, treatuig dis- 

 locations, making incisions for removing pus, eradicating diseases 

 of the uterus, and the like. Tlie narcotic is seldcmi employed by 

 the Zuni for the extraction of bullets, as men, they say, are not like 

 w'omen, and they must be men. In such cases the Zuni "doctor" 



makes an incision with his flint knife in the form of a ci'oss, after 



« 



1 Bigelow, Amer. Medical Botany, 1817, vol. I, pp. 21-22. 



- The Pueblos of New Me,xieo and .Vrizona generally, the California Indians, the Mohave, the Pima, 

 and perhaps many others, make use of Datura meteloides and D. stramonium. See Dodge in Report of 

 the Commissioner of Agriculture for iS70, p. 423, Washington, 1S71; Palmer in Amer. Jour. Pharmacy, 4th 

 ser., vol. 8, p. .S89, Phila., 1H7S. In 1879 the present writer obtained a s[)ecimen of Datura meteloides in 

 powdered form and submitted it to Prof. F. W. Clarlie, chief chemist of the United States Geological Sur- 

 vey, but the quantity was not sufficient for analysis, and it was not imtil 1902 that she learned the identity 

 of the drug. 



In 1891 Mr. James Mooney, of the Bureau of -Vmerican Ethnology, found the peyote (.inhaloniumletcinii, 

 " mescal button " ) extensively employed in ceremony by the Kiowa and other tribes of the southern plains 

 for the purpose of bringing about an ecstatic state. In 1894 Mr. Mooney brought to Washington a quantity 

 of peyote, which was subjected to analysis by Dr. E. E. Ewell, of the Department of .\griculture, and 

 subsequent investigation showed that the peyote possesses properties imlike those of any other known 

 drug. "The study ol Anhalonium leuinii," say Doctors Prentiss and Morgan (Mescal Buttons, Medical 

 Record, Wa.shington, .\ug. 22, 1896), "is of comparatively recent date, the .subject having been brought 

 to the attention of the medical world in 1S88 by Doctor l^win. of Berlin, who published at that time the 

 results of his observations upon the drug. In 1894 Doctors Lewin and Heflter, of Germany, reported the 

 results of further study of the subject." 



