“Cody Johnson beautifully balances historical knowledge with cutting-edge science to produce a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening read which paints a holistic picture of the risks and benefits of psychedelic use in modern day medicine and culture.” —Rick Doblin, PhD, Founder and Executive Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). Magic Medicine explores the fascinating history of psychedelic substances and provides a contemporary update about their growing inclusion in modern medicine, science, and culture. Each chapter dives into the rich history of a single plant or compound and explores its therapeutic and spiritual uses in cultures near and far. Firsthand quotes allow glimmers of psychedelic light throughout. Learn all about: Classical psychedelics, including 2C-B, ayahuasca, LSD, and peyote The empathogenic psychedelics MDA and MDMA Dissociative psychedelics, including DXM, ketamine, and salvia Unique psychedelics, including cannabis, DiPT, and even fish and sea sponges The history of psychedelic plants and substances is full of colorful facts and stories, and intriguing questions. Did US Army Intelligence really use LSD as an enhanced military interrogation technique? How is DiPT able to make a familiar tune sound utterly foreign? Can MDMA (Ecstasy) help people overcome traumatic experiences? Many psychedelic plants and substances have a long history of being incorporated into various healing traditions—such as cannabis and opium in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Science is beginning to research what traditional cultures have told us for years: psychedelics have transformative healing properties. Anyone who has ever wondered about psychedelics—from complete neophytes to veteran trippers, seekers and sages to skeptics and scientists, therapists and patients to green thumbs and armchair anthropologists—will find something in this engrossing and beautifully designed book.

Possibly the most profound and far-reaching effects of Buddhism on Chinese culture occurred at the level of practice in religious rituals designed to cure people of disease, demonic possession, and bad luck. A basic concern with healing characterizes the entire gamut of religious expression in East Asia. By concentrating on the medieval development of Chinese therapeutic ritual, the author discovers the origins of many surviving rituals across the social and doctrinal frontiers of Buddhism and Taoism, including transmission to persons outside the Buddhist or Taoist fold. The author describes and translates many classical Chinese liturgies, analyzes their structure, and seeks out nonliturgical sources to shed further light on the politics involved in specific performances. Unlike the few previous studies of related rituals, this book combines a scholar's understanding of structure and goals of these rites with a healthy suspicion of the practitioners' claims to uniqueness.

Herbal and Magical Medicine draws on perspectives from folklore, anthropology, psychology, medicine, and botany to describe the traditional medical beliefs and practices among Native, Anglo- and African Americans in eastern North Carolina and Virginia. In documenting the vitality of such seemingly unusual healing traditions as talking the fire out of burns, wart-curing, blood-stopping, herbal healing, and rootwork, the contributors to this volume demonstrate how the region’s folk medical systems operate in tandem with scientific biomedicine. The authors provide illuminating commentary on the major forms of naturopathic and magico-religious medicine practiced in the United States. Other essays explain the persistence of these traditions in our modern technological society and address the bases of folk medical concepts of illness and treatment and the efficacy of particular pratices. The collection suggests a model for collaborative research on traditional medicine that can be replicated in other parts of the country. An extensive bibliography reveals the scope and variety of research in the field. Contributors. Karen Baldwin, Richard Blaustein, Linda Camino, Edward M. Croom Jr., David Hufford, James W. Kirland, Peter Lichstein, Holly F. Mathews, Robert Sammons, C. W. Sullivan III

This absorbing account of the evolution of modern medicine from its roots in folk medicine will entertain and inform both scientist and general reader alike. It explains the chemical basis of pharmacology, and provides a fascinating description of how the use and abuse of natural products in various societies throughout the ages has led to the development of many of the drugs we now take for granted.

"Distilling baby's first tear into the eye of a blind man to make him see"; "Plucking herbs upward for emetics and downward for purgatives"; "Stroking one's goiter with a dead man's hand to make the growth shrivel away"--these are not beliefs and customs found among primitive peoples in remote parts of the world but are examples of hundreds of items of magical medicine found in Professor Hand's remarkable collection of essays dealing with this neglected field in twentieth-century Europe and America. Fantasy and imagination still have free reign in people's lives, more than any of us will admit. In a time when science is preeminent, irrational thinking ca lay hold on the mid of man as much as in olden times. Folk medicine has expanded in recent years to include holistic medicine and other forms of alternative medicine, but little attention has been paid to magical medicine. Despite the benefits of medical science in an advance culture, the magical medicine of Europe and America has clung to an unusually rich and original body of magical lore that lies at the base of its folk medical thought. Ethnomedicine in the inner cities of America can be better understood by practitioners who know something about folk medicine and, especially, if they kno some of the basics of magical medicine. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980.

The only book that brings together: an authoritative, stunningly illustrated field guide; a how-to book for identifying, collecting, and reserving plants; the fascinating story of the legends and lore of medicinal plants; and a do-it-yourself guide to planting and using herbs in cooking, cosmetics, and health. Illustrated.

Medical expert Paul A. Offit, M.D., offers a scathing exposé of the alternative medicine industry, revealing how even though some popular therapies are remarkably helpful due to the placebo response, many of them are ineffective, expensive, and even deadly. Dr. Offit reveals how alternative medicine—an unregulated industry under no legal obligation to prove its claims or admit its risks—can actually be harmful to our health. Using dramatic real-life stories, Offit separates the sense from the nonsense, showing why any therapy—alternative or traditional—should be scrutinized. He also shows how some nontraditional methods can do a great deal of good, in some cases exceeding therapies offered by conventional practitioners. An outspoken advocate for science-based health advocacy who is not afraid to take on media celebrities who promote alternative practices, Dr. Offit advises, “There’s no such thing as alternative medicine. There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t.”