A source of powerful medicine in antiquity. Western medicine today believes the crocus to have anti-carcinogenic properties. An American color lithograph, dated 1901, advertises the alkaloid products of the New York Quinine and Chemical Works. Cannabis seeds in a flat, circular flask of leather decorated with a leather cut-out design showing a griffin attacking a grouse. From a Scythian tomb, found in Pazyryk Barrow 2, Southern Siberia.
Peyote cactus produces the chemical known as mescaline in their mushroom-shaped caps.
When the caps, or buttons, are dried and eaten, brewed into tea, or powdered into capsules, the mescaline becomes an active hallucinogenic agent. Native Americans have used peyote since pre-Columbian times as part of their religious rites.