Victor A. Reko
Viktor Aloisius Reko, (born 3 August 1880 in Vienna) was an Austrian teacher and scientific author who moved to Mexico in 1921. He is best known for his popular book "Magische Gifte: Rausch- und Betäubungsmittel der Neuen Welt" (""Magic Poisons: Inebriating and Narcotic Substances of the New World""), first published in 1936. This book recorded a number of second-hand observations on New World psychoactive drugs, paraphrased from notes he took of conversations with his cousin, the eminent Mexican ethnobotanist Dr. Blas Pablo Reko, including the first published refutation of Dr. William Edwin Safford's uncharacteristically untenable  assertion that teonanácatl was not a mushroom, but a cactus. Reko's book also covered the following drugs, many of which were not mentioned in the earlier book "Phantastica" by Louis Lewin: sinicuichi ("Heimia" spp.) for which he claimed psychoactivity, "Ololiúqui" ("Turbina corymbosa"), peyotl ("Lophophora williamsii"), marihuana ("Cannabis sativa"), toloachi ("Datura stramonium" var. tatula), ayahuasca, colorines ("Erythrina" and "Sophora" species), coztic-zapote ("Pouteria campechiana"), ("Gelsemium sempervirens"), camotillo ("Dioscorea composita)", and cohombrillo ("Ecballium elaterium"). The second edition also contained chicalote (supposedly obtained from a cross between "Argemone mexicana" and "Papaver somniferum"), minapatli ("Sebastiania pavoniana", Mexican jumping bean), and herbas locas ("Dioon  edule", "Astragalus amphyoxys", and "Oxytropis lambertii"). Victor A. Reko became a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences.