Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom

by Alex Letcher

  We must, of course, exercise a little caution when interpreting early records, for writers and archivists prior to the late twentieth century did not use unambiguous terms such as 'psychedelic', 'hallucination' i or 'tripping', but looser terms like 'choaking', 'vertigo' and 'giddiness'. What appear to us to be the animated antics of the bemushroomed could have struck earlier writers as 'convulsions'. Nor were they able to identify categorically the responsible species until the scientific advances of the Victorian age had revolutionised fungal taxonomy. Nevertheless, the language they used and the symptoms they describe i are often more than suggestive of magic mushrooms, even if we can never be ioo per cent certain what species they were referring to.

  The earliest hint of an accidental mushroom consumption, then, comes from the herbalist and botanist Albertus Magnus (1193?1280), in his thirteenth-century treatise De Vegetabilibus. There he cautioned against mushrooms 'of a moist humour' that 'stop up in the head the mental passages of the creatures [that eat them] and bring on insanity'.' He seems not to have been referring here to the fly-agaric, for he describes it later on in the treatise. Carolus Clusius (Charles Lcluse, 1526-1609), in his Rarorium Plantarum Historia of 1601, described a fungus known in Germany as the narrenschwammem, or 'foolish fungus1, which made people 'mentally upset' (unfortunately, the mushroom that most accurately fits his description is Amanita vaginata, but it is not psychoactive).4 And, more strikingly, from the Netherlands, the sixteenth-century physician known as Forestus (Pieter van Foreest, 1522-1597) recorded two possible cases of acci­dental intoxication: in one, a countrywoman fell after eating mush­rooms into a state of 'grievous disorder1 from which she never recovered; in the other, a young woman was 'flung into violent con­vulsions and the Risus sardonicus by eating mushrooms'.5 Risus sardonicus is a medical term that refers to the fixed rictus grin symptomatic of tetanus, but in earlier medical parlance it described 3 condition of pathological or uncontrollable laughter, which, as we know, is one of the well-attested characteristics of the bemushroomed.

  Apart from that of Clusius, we have no records at all from the sev­enteenth century, though the eighteenth is more forthcoming; indeed, record-keeping and fungal taxonomy become sufficiently advanced for us to hazard attempts at identifying the species concerned. While if is generally accepted that the earliest instance of someone eating Liberty Caps occurred in Britain in 1799, there are other tantalizing pieces of evidence from earlier in the century. In 1755 the Reverend Roger Pickering (£.1720-1755), amateur botanist and Fellow of the Royal Society, submitted 'A brief dissertation upon Fungi in general, and concerning the poisonous faculty of some species in particular.. to the Gentleman's Magazine, a journal to which Dr Johnson was a regular contributor.' There, apart from referencing the examples from Forestus, he distinguished two distinct types of mushroom poisoning: the one 'bringing on violent vomitings, diarrhoeas, dysentries, &c' but the other, more tellingly, affecting the nervous system with 'a sense of choaking, convulsions, Risus sardonicus &c'.7 -

  Two years later, in 1757, the same magazine reported that a tailor, a Mr Kirk from Salisbury, together with his wife, daughter and journey­man, 'were in great danger of losing their lives in a stupor and con­vulsions, with which they were seized, in consequence of their eating some stewed mushrooms for supper, which they gathered the same day on the downs near AmesburyV Mr Kirk 'had [the] presence of mind, soon after he found himself affected, to call an apothecary, or 'tis imagined they must all have perished by the morning, as 'twas with the greatest difficulty the daughter and journeyman were recovered, after lying some hours quite insensible'. Clearly Kirk did not, like his more famous namesake, imagine himself boldly going where no man had gone before, but thought instead that he and his family were poi­soned and very probably dying. Nevertheless, the fact that the mush­rooms were picked on pastures, and that the family's alarming symptoms wore off after some hours, are consistent at least with the Liberty Cap.

  Some fifteen years later, the physician W. Heberden also wrote to the Gentleman's Magazine to warn readers of 'the noxious effects of some Funguses'.9 He described how a man and his family picked and ate some 'champignons' but were, some five minutes later, 'all much disordered'. The man 'was unable to shut his eyes and was so giddy he could hardly stand; the woman felt the same symptoms in a more vio­lent degree; and the child, who had but just tasted them, had convul­sive agitations in its arms'. The family responded well to the emetics that were typically prescribed in such cases of poisoning; the mother, who had been unable to drink anything, made a complete recovery some days later without this treatment.

  Heberden was not content to leave the matter there as he wanted to broadcast the identity of the culpable mushrooms pro bono publico.

  He suspected two varieties, which he labelled as 'the fungus parvus pediculo oblongo, pileolo hemisphaerico, ex albide subluteus' and 'the fungus minimus e cinereo albicans, tenui et praelongo pediculo, paucis subtus striis'. He obtained these snappy, pre-Linnaean Latin descriptions from John Ray's Synopsis, the authoritative flora of the time,10 but clearly, by modern standards, the experts' unwieldy attempts to identi­fy the mushrooms were scarcely better than those of the family who had mistakenly eaten them: we cannot identify the species in question."

  One further incident, however, from 1799, has proved to be more conclusive. Early one October morning Dr Everard Brande, a physi­cian, was summoned urgently to a house in London's Piccadilly where a family had been taken ill. The father, known only as J.S., had gone out to Green Park to gather wild mushrooms for his family's break­fast, as he was accustomed to do every morning. He cooked up a broth in an iron pot, and served the mushroom soup with tea. But one hour later strange symptoms began to manifest themselves in the children. The doctor later described how the youngest son, Edward, aged eight, 'was attacked with fits of immoderate laughter, nor could the threats of his father or mother restrain him'. Shocking as this was, it was suc­ceeded by attacks of vertigo, then stupor, and when roused Edward answered yes or no willy-nilly to a series of questions put to determine how he was feeling. His pupils, Brande observed dispassionately, were 'dilated to nearly the circumference of the cornea'.,a

  Shortly afterwards his father, now equally wide-eyed, also started experiencing vertigo, then complained that everything had 'gone black'. The world was restored after ten minutes or so, but this was not sufficient to elevate his mood for he became convinced that he was dying. His other children Martha, eighteen, Harriet, twelve, and Charlotte, ten were all affected to a greater or lesser extent. Charlotte, in particular, was delirious, her sight impaired. All of them had variable pulse rates, a feeling of coldness in the body, and loss of voluntary motion. Dr Brande, joined by his colleague Dr Burges, immediately suspected poisoning, and proceeded then to apply emet­ics and cathartics to his patients; he remained with them all day unril the distressing symptoms had passed.

  Gathering the remains of the mushrooms from the broth, and instructing the father (who claimed that he had picked and eaten the same sort of mushrooms for years, with no deleterious effects) to col­lect some more, Brande arranged to have the samples sent to a D. Williams, Botany Professor at Oxford, for identification. Williams consulted with another expert, James Sowerby (1757-1822), and Together they concluded that the mushroom was a variety of the recently described species Agaricus glutinosus. The botanists noted that the other experts in the field, Dr William Withering (1741-1799) and Dr William Curtis (1746-1799) (the latter author of the magnifi­cent Flora Londinetisis), had listed this particular species as harmless. Brande, a belt and braces man, obtained a second opinion from a Mr Wheeler, Demonstrator of Botany for the Apothecary's Company, who confirmed the identification. Brande confidently wrote up the incident for publication in the London Medical and Physical Journal, concluding with a description of the offending variety of Agaricus glutinosus so that further incidents might be avoided.

  It is thanks to Brande's diligence and perspicacity that later mycolo­gists have be
en able, in the light of the nineteenth century's taxonomical revolution, to reclassify this species as Psilocybe semilanceata. For on hearing about the case, James Sowerby hurriedly postponed publi­cation of his Coloured Figures of English Fungi or Mushrooms, which had been due for release in January 1800, to insert an account of the incident and an additional plate illustrating the offending species.13 It is from his paintings, and from Brande's description, that the fresh identification was made in the late 1960s. The American mycologist Dr Rolf Singer stumbled across the episode in Sowerby's book and immediately identified the mushroom as the Liberty Cap.'4

  Back in the early nineteenth century, however, fungal taxonomy w^ still far from an exact science, and very often several species were lumped together as different varieties, as was the case with Agaricus glutinosus. Binomial classification had only just been introduced, fol­lowing Linnaeus, and even then it was assumed that all mushrooms belonged to the same homogenous genus, Agaricus (named from an ancient Greek word for mushroom). Nevertheless, the improvements in classification, such as they were, meant that further cases of this kind of poisoning were swiftly recognised. Sowerby himself reported two more, from Mitcham in Surrey and Christ Church in Hampshire.'1 Some thirty years later his son, James Junior (1787-1871), stepping into his father's shoes, remarked that Agaricus glutinosus was well known as an injurious species.1" He noted that a 'poor family at Lambeth, in 1830, having eaten but few for supper, were taken very ill and continued so all night; but by means of the stomach-pump and medicines, were in a day or two recovered'.1"

  In 1816 a Dr G. Glen was called to Knightsbridge to assist a man who was suffering very badly indeed.18 The man had gone out in the morning to Hyde Park to pick mushrooms from his favourite spot, the trees behind Horse-Guard Barracks. He cooked up his pickings in a delicious stew, but ten minutes after eating them he was 'suddenly seized with a dimness or mist before his eyes, lightness and giddiness of his head, with a general trembling and sudden loss of power'. The poor man forgot who and where he was, and was so stunned he near­ly fell off his chair. Recovering slightly, he staggered out onto the street to find assistance (as luck would have it, the doctor lived only five hun­dred yards away), but then forgot who he was and where he was going. A neighbour came to his rescue, and by the time he reached Glen his 'countenance betrayed great anxiety; he could scarcely stand, but reeled about somewhat like a drunken man; he spoke with hesita­tion and reluctance; he complained of no pain . . . [but] he suffered much from giddiness'." After a day's treatment he appeared to recov­er completely.

  Glen took samples of the mushrooms to his friend and mentor, William Salisbury of Sloane Street, who identified them as Agaricus campanulatus (now called Panaeolus campanulatus) because he had previously written to the Gentleman's Magazine to record two further cases of poisoning with this species." His identification could have been correct, for Panaeolus species have been found to contain psi'0* cybin. albeit only occasionally and with great variability of concentra­tion.41 It is possible, however, that Salisbury was mistaken, for his diagnosis was disputed shortly afterwards." It may well have been that what he thought was Patiaeolus campanulatus was actually Psilocybe semilanceata.

  Eager mushroom pickers were not the only ones affected, for chil­dren left playing unattended were particularly at risk. In September 1879, a three-year-old boy, 'B.J.', was brought to see Mr J. Ernest Bullock, the resident medical officer of the Western General Dispensary on London's Marylebone Road. The poor boy was in a fit, and could neither speak nor stand. According to his older sister, he had gone out to play in Hyde Park, then picked and eaten a few mushrooms, after which he had collapsed and been carried home by a passer-by. His teeth were so firmly clenched that no emetic would pass his lips, but by the next day he had recovered completely, with no memory at all of what had happened. This, and other similar cases, led the respected naturalist Mordecai Cubitt Cooke (1825-1914) to issue a stern admo­nition to 'parents and guardians, that children at play in the fields may be warned against putting in their mouths any of the little "toad­stools" which grow amongst the grass'/5

  Nor were these incidents restricted to England. In 1883 a Dr E. Downes wrote to The Lancet from India to describe how several of his 'coolies' had been taken ill after eating mushrooms. None of them seemed to know what they were saying or doing, and they charged around as if drunk. Neither salt water nor strong tea made the slight­est difference to their condition, so the doctor had them tied down lest they roll down the precarious Indian hills during the night, never to be seen again. Their symptoms falling into a deep slumber, before rising up and rushing around madly strongly suggest that this was a rare case of accidental fly-agaric intoxication.

  But of all the nineteenth-century accounts, the following will strike the modern reader as the most recognisable and, because of the con­trast between the doctor's punctilious manner and the patients' outra­geous symptoms, the most delightfully comic. In late August 1830, D. 0. Edwards, surgeon at Westminster Hospital, was called to assist a young family Frederick Bickerton, aged twenty-five; his wife, Anne, twenty-three; and their child George Bickerton, aged four who were restlessly pacing around the waiting room. At first Edwards was rather annoyed at the inconvenience because he thought they were drunk and wasting his time. However, closer inspection convinced him 'that the inebriation proceeded from no ordinary cause'.'4 The Bickertons were taken with the 'highest hilarity' and, giggling hysterically, they strode around 4in continual motion, either dancing or throwing themselves into grotesque attitudes'. Remarkably, 'their consciousness was quite unclouded' and on 'being charged with drunkenness, the adults exhib­ited the most lively indignation'. Frederick 'was most vividly affected by the poison; his eyes glistened; the pupils expanded; the pulse was full and frequent... He conversed without embarrassment, and said that he was intelligent of everything that passed around him.' It was, for Edwards, a most perplexing case; that is, until he discovered the provenance of the symptoms.

  The Bickertons, resident at No. 2, Providence Court, Peter Street, Westminster, had fallen on hard times. Frederick was a labourer and a chancer, but out of work for some time; the family had neither food nor money. Ever enterprising, they determined to pick mushrooms in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, and then sell them for people to make ketchup, or 'catsup', which was a popular condiment at the time. Perhaps the mushroom market was saturated, or perhaps the general public had become alert to the dangers of buying wild mush­rooms from dubious-looking street sellers, but whatever the reason, the family could not rid themselves of a single punnet. Of course, if they had, they might have been responsible for the biggest outbreak of magic mushroom poisoning on record, but as it was, tired, hungry, and dejected, they went home and cooked up a broth with the morn­ing's pickings. Between them they ate the lot, washed down with water. Edwards records that they had picked 'rather more than a quart of them', which, even if only a small proportion had been Libert}' Caps, would have made for a sizeable dose, especially when taken on an empty stomach.

  Their symptoms came on rapidly. First Frederick was 'affected with giddiness; this gradually increased until a dimness of sight super­vened'. Then he saw himself surrounded by 'flames'; his hearing became painfully acute and everyday objects 'became confused to the eye. He occasionally felt a sentiment of uncontrollable gladness, which prompted him to the muscular movements. Yet he remained fully con­scious that he was in a state of preternatural excitement.' Annes symptoms were identical, but 'the condition of the child could only be gathered from the obviously excited irritability'. Once they had found their way to the hospital, Edwards's emetics immediately had a bene­ficial effect upon mother and child, but made little impression on Frederick, who was by this stage overcome with it all and virtually unconscious on the floor. Edwards immediately employed the stomach pump, after which 'the patient vomited a quantity of water' and 'halfdigested mushrooms'. 'By this process,' concluded Edwards, 'the man was quickly relieved,' and with a few judicious
'leeches applied to the forehead, he was, as well as his wife and child, sufficiently recovered to be discharged next day.' And with that, the Bickertons disappear from history.

  These, then, are the records which, while not conclusive, strongly suggest that magic mushrooms had been eaten. Amusing as they are to the knowing modern reader, they show that until the end of the nine­teenth century both amateurs and experts were woefully ignorant about how to identify mushrooms, and that victims and medics alike took any strange symptoms as evidence of poisoning. Not even the Bickertons, who arguably had the most pleasant time of it, disagreed with this diagnosis; though the medic's eagerness to reach for the leeches and the stomach pump potentially contributed to an unpleas­ant ending to their trip. This widespread confusion about mushrooms and their unexpected effects is surprising, particularly when compared with the more advanced understanding of plants at the time. Remarkably, to understand the cause of this bewilderment we need to go all the way back to the ancient classical world where natural philosophers, baffled by these strange autumnal fungal growths, cre­ated a Gordian knot of confusion and disorder that would not be sliced apart until the nineteenth century.

  For country dwellers and metropolitan philosophers alike, mush­rooms have always seemed mysterious and problematic. Their sudden appearance and equally rapid decay, their often grotesque shapes, smells and textures, their association with rot and decomposition, have all contributed to their becoming objects of fascination and occa­sional abhorrence. Perhaps not surprisingly, these slippery forms man­aged to elude all classical attempts to categorise them. They were clearly not animals, yet neither were they plants. They grew in great profusion but appeared to have no flowers and to shed no seeds. They were sometimes exquisite to eat, sometimes deadly poisonous. Such a puzzle, thought classical writers, demanded philosophical, not empir­ical, inquiry and thus they attempted to reason the nature of mush­rooms and thereby to address the two fundamental problems: first exactly what mushrooms were and how they reproduced; and second, how poisonous and edible varieties could be distinguished.