Le Peyotl: La Plante Qui Fait les Yeux Émerveillés, also known as Peyote: The Plant That Fills the Eyes with Marvels, is a 1927 book about peyote by the French pharmacist Alexandre Rouhier. Peyote contains the psychedelic drug mescaline.
The book extensively reviews peyote, including its botany, chemistry, history, ethnography, and medical properties. In addition, it included original research by Rouhier on peyote and its alkaloids. It is said to have introduced France and Europe to mescaline in various ways.
The book followed and was largely based on Rouhier's 1926 dissertation, Monographie du Peyotl: Echinocactus Williamsii Lem. (Peyote Monograph: Echinocactus Williamsii Lem.). It was reprinted in 1975 with minor corrections. Rouhier also published other articles on peyote. In addition, besides peyote, he published works on other drugs such as yagé and yoco (caffeine).
Several reviews of the book have been published. It was described as the most comprehensive review of the drug that has been published up to that date. Alexander Shulgin read the book along with other works prior to eventually trying mescaline himself in 1960. "Mescaline: a magic name and a magic compound. My first encounter with this word was just after World War II, when I returned to Berkeley [...] In the area of serious and thoughtful texts, there were the writings and the famous maps of Alexander Rouhier in 1926. There was the treatise by Kurt Beringer, which described the responses of many scores of subjects to effective doses of mescaline, administered almost always by injection. His book, "Der Meskalinrauche siene Geschichte und Erscheinungsweise," (1927) has never been translated into English. [...] I read all the more recent literature about it that had appeared, the essays of Aldous Huxley in the mid-1950's (the exuberant Doors of Perception and the more cautious Heaven and Hell) [...] But it was not until April of 1960 that a psychologist friend of mine, Terry Major, and a friend of his who was studying medicine, Sam Golding, reinforced my interest and provided me with the opportunity to be "babysat" on an experience with 400 milligrams of mescaline sulfate. It was a day that will remain blazingly vivid in my memory, and one which unquestionably confirmed the entire direction of my life. [...]"
Rouhier grew and sold peyote from his pharmacy in France from 1927 until the 1960s. No prescription was required and advertisements appeared in the popular press.
See also List of psychedelic literature Mescaline § History Psychedelic drug § The phenethylamine psychedelic mescaline Der Meskalinrausch (Mescaline Intoxication) (1927) Mescal: The 'Divine' Plant and Its Psychological Effects (1928)
References
External links Le Peyotl: La Plante Qui Fait les Yeux Émerveillés (1926)