page_title: Physochlaina
section_title: Hallucinogenic use of  Physochlaina physaloides  in Central Siberia
hierarchical_section_title: Physochlaina / Hallucinogenic use of  Physochlaina physaloides  in Central Siberia
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Antoine François Prévost (1697-1763) aumônier de s.a.s. Mgr. le Prince Conti
context_page_description: Physochlaina is a small genus of herbaceous perennial plants belonging to the nightshade family, Solanaceae, found principally in the north-western provinces of China although one species occurs in Western Asia, while another is found as far east as those regions of Siberia abutting the eastern borders of Mongolia and, furthermore, not only in Mongolia itself, but also in the Chinese autonomous region of Inner Mongolia. Some sources maintain that the widespread species P. physaloides is found also in Japan, but the species is not recorded as being native in one of the few English-language floras of the country. The genus is a valuable one, since its species are not only of considerable medicinal value, being rich in tropane alkaloids, but also of ornamental value, three species having been grown for the purpose, although hitherto infrequently outside botanical gardens. Furthermore, the genus contains a species formerly used as an entheogen in Siberia.
context_section_description: Intrepid German naturalist, botanist and geographer Johann Georg Gmelin records in his Reise durch Sibirien of 1752 a remarkable account of the intoxicating properties of Physochlaina physaloides, which bears repetition in its entirety.
  On the 11th of August of the year 1738, Gmelin and his fellow explorer Stepan Krasheninnikov were negotiating the cataracts of the lower reaches of the Angara river – then known as the Upper Tunguska – in the Yenisei Basin, when they encountered a waterfall with a curious name :
  ...we came to Bessanova or Pyanovskaya D. which lies on the left bank of the river, and, two versts down, to another falls – Pyanoy Porog [ Russian : Пьаной Порог : 'The Drunken Rapids' ]...They were christened The Drunken Rapids by the first Yeniseian Cossacks to travel up from Yeniseisk on the stream and pass through them.
   They found in the vicinity of these rapids a herb, which they took, from the appearance of its leaves and flowers, to be Lungwort [ Russian : Медуница : Medunitsa ] and so used the leaves in the preparation of a vegetable soup and the roots to make a purée and, partaking of these dishes, grew so utterly intoxicated that they knew not what they were doing. When they had returned to their senses, they named these falls The Drunken Rapids and, because one suffers a headache after such a debauch, they named the falls that they encountered next Pokhmelnoy Porog [ Russian: Похмельной Порог : The Hungover Rapids ].
  His curiosity aroused, Gmelin investigated, and discovered an attractive new species :
  This account has given me the opportunity to reveal the identity of the beautiful plant involved, which was unknown to any botanist before me :  Hyoscyamus foliis integerrimis calicibus inflatis subglobosis  [Botanical Latin : 'The Henbane having simple, untoothed leaves and (fruiting ) calyces that are more or less round and inflated' [ i.e. like those of a Physalis ]] Linn. h. Ups. 44. 2.
  Having identified the ( Linnaean ) genus Hyoscyamus to which the intoxicating plant of The Drunken Rapids ( since moved by Don to the genus Physochlaina ) belonged, Gmelin went on to quiz his local guides and learned the following concerning its intentional consumption :
  If one steeps the leaves or even the finely-chopped roots of this plant in brewed beer – or, better yet, in beer that is still undergoing fermentation – then it takes but a single glass of such beer to make a man exceedingly foolish : it is surely a strange draught that he quaffs, for he is robbed of all his senses, or at least finds his senses grossly disordered, mistaking tiny things for huge ones : a straw for the thickest of beams, a drop of water for a mighty ocean and a mouse for an elephant. Wherever he goes he encounters [ what he imagines to be ] insurmountable obstacles. He pictures continually to himself the cruellest and most dreadful imaginings of an inevitable death awaiting him, and, as it seems, all this fills him with despair, because his senses are withering away; thus, should one such drunkard go to step over a beam, he will take a great stride out of all proportion to the actual size of it, while another will see deep water in front of him [ where there is only shallow ] such that he dare not venture into it.
  In conclusion, Gmelin then adds, concerning the plant itself : 
  The local inhabitants often use these roots when they want to play a prank upon each other. The Russian merchants often bring these roots back with them when they return to Russia, because they maintain them to be a sovereign remedy for bleeding haemorrhoids and also against the haematuria – a claim which I have been unable to verify.
  
  Gmelin's Reise durch Sibirien –  with its evocative account of his findings concerning the plant now known to science as Physochlaina physaloides –  received a translation into French which was published as part of Volume 18 of Abbé Prévost's monumental Histoire générale des voyages – a compendium of eighteenth century exploration by land and sea, continued beyond the original fifteen volumes, by other authors following the death o
caption: Abbé Antoine François Prévost, author of the first 15 volumes of Histoire générale des Voyages, volume 18 of which made Gmelin's account of Physochlaina use better-known to subsequent scholars.
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