Word: alkaloid
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From the Snakeroot. The new drugs are as important, in their way, as the germ-killing sulfas discovered in the 1930s. Two drugs ushered in the new era: chlorpromazine* (TIME, June 14), a synthetic compound, and reserpine †(TIME, June 21), a pure alkaloid from the juices of the snakeroot (Rauwolfia serpentina), crude extracts of which had been used for centuries by medicine men in India. Both drugs became available in the U.S. in 1953. But most ivory-tower mental hospitals, attached to medical schools with good research facilities, passed up the chance to be first to try the drugs...
Like many a researcher before him (including the late great Havelock Ellis), British Psychiatrist John Smythies was fascinated by the extraordinary visions he had after taking mescaline, an alkaloid derived from a Mexican cactus.* Unlike opium and other drugs, which bring on hallucinations, mescaline seems to leave the power of critical observation intact. And what the subject sees, says Dr. Smythies after comparing notes with his friends, are visions of "the utmost poetical integrity...
Some fish live by eating marine plants and others live by eating other fish. Both kinds can cause the mysterious poisoning. Dr. Halstead's hypothesis: the poison comes from plants, with the fish-eating fish picking it up from the plant eaters. The poison itself is probably an alkaloid, but Dr. Halstead has not been able to identify it. Next month, Dr. Halstead will head for Okinawa and Japan to get fresh material for his study: the western Pacific is full...
...Parasite. Last week the word came back from the police laboratory:"We have identified a vegetable alkaloid having the toxic and biological characteristics of ergot, a cereal parasite." Pont-Saint-Esprit had been stricken by ergot poisoning, a medieval disease as old as its proud bridge, so old that it had almost been forgotten. Modern medicine knows about ergot, but has rarely seen it in the form of an epidemic disease.* It is a black fungus that grows on wet grain, contains chemicals that powerfully affect the blood vessels and the nervous system. Doctors often use ergot extracts to start...
...chowdered, mussels may be eaten, like oysters, during the "R" months. But while oysters are not harvested during the summer because they are propagating, summer mussels are not harvested because they are dangerous if they have been feeding on a variety of plankton (Gonyaulax catenella), which contains a powerful alkaloid poison. Diggers should pass up the long, purplish-yellow mussels, tough and poor-tasting, in favor of the slate-black, chunky variety...