Darwin's Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere by Richard M. Doyle

Author:Richard M. Doyle [Doyle, Richard M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780295803005
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2011-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

DOUBLE TAKE

Problems of reportage troubled the discourse of LSD almost from its very inception, and certainly from its very first ingestion. In his fundamental ergot studies in 1938, Albert Hofmann first synthesized Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD-25 (Lyserg-saure-diathylamid) for laboratory usage. This novel molecule was primarily noted for its strong effects on the uterus, but as Hofmann retroactively reports in his autobiography named for a molecule, LSD: My Problem Child:

The research report also noted, in passing, that the experimental animals became restless during the narcosis. The new substance, however, aroused no special interest in our pharmacologists and physicians; testing was therefore discontinued. (12)

That an ergot-derived compound would affect the uterus was not a surprise: Hofmann's agenda was “to isolate the active principles (i.e., the effective constituents) of known medicinal plants to produce pure specimens of these substances” (ibid., 36). And “ergot…had been used since olden times by midwives” (ibid., 40). Hofmann continued his work in the ergot field, but LSD-25 was thought to have little pharmacological value, so between 1938 and 1943 “nothing more was heard of the substance LSD-25.”

And yet Hofmann still had ears for the crying of LSD-25. According to his own account, LSD wouldn't leave him alone:

And yet I could not forget the relatively uninteresting LSD-25. A peculiar presentiment—the feeling that this substance could possess properties other than those established in the first investigations—induced me, five years after the first synthesis, to produce LSD-25 once again so that a sample could be given to the pharmacological department for further tests. This was quite unusual; experimental substances, as a rule, were definitely stricken from the research program if once found to be lacking in pharmacological interest.…Nevertheless, in the spring of 1943, I repeated the synthesis of LSD-25. As in the first synthesis, this involved the production of only a few centigrams of the compound. (14)

Although Hofmann's attribution of presentiment must be placed within its context as an autobiographical confession, it nonetheless well names a peculiar agency that often adheres to those self-experiments that are survived: the inability to forget. Note the exogamous agency of Hofmann's synthesis: he was “induced” to produce LSD-25 once again. The memory of LSD and, as we shall see, LSD-25 itself, seems to have little truck with the usual operations of will. Indeed, according to Hofmann, his response to the crying of LSD-25—synthesis—resulted paradoxically in an interruption or dissolution:

In the final step of the synthesis, during the purification and crystallization of lysergic acid diethylamide in the form of a tartrate (tartaric acid salt), I was interrupted in my work by unusual sensations. (15)

This interruption of the I, rather than ending an experiment, instigates one. In a report to a superior, Hofmann did his best to offer a description of the phenomenon that ensued after the interruption, but he only “surmised” a connection with the LSD-25. Intriguingly—given the origins of the ergot pharmacopeia—Hofmann's neighbor, supplying him with milk he had requested as an antidote to the “poisoning”—literally, nursing him—took on the appearance of a witch:

The

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