1899

In the late 1800s, Mexican scientists knew little about peyote while researchers in the US, UK, and Germany advanced rapidly. This changed when Mexico's Instituto Médico Nacional (IMN) began peyote studies around 1900, using historical accounts, reports from government agents in indigenous regions, and experiments on animals and hospital patients in Mexico City. Unlike foreign researchers, Mexican scientists could not extract mescaline and used whole peyote buttons. They focused on peyote's physical effects, especially its potential as a heart tonic, rather than its psychoactive properties. Their work ended when the Mexican Revolution closed the IMN in 1915.

Study at a glance

Abstract

While research on peyote accelerated in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany during the last decade of the nineteenth century, Mexican scientists remained largely ignorant of the properties of the cactus. This changed when Mexico’s Instituto Médico Nacional (IMN) sponsored a series of peyote studies at the turn of the century. In part, those studies relied on historical accounts and reports from government agents working in regions where indigenous peyotists lived. In part, they entailed experiments, first with a variety of animals and then with patients in the Hospital General de San Andrés in Mexico City. In contrast to their counterparts elsewhere, Mexican researchers lacked the capacity to extract mescaline from peyote, and they depended on solutions made from whole peyote buttons for their research. They were also much less inclined to experiment on themselves than researchers elsewhere, and they were more interested in the corporeal effects of peyote than its capacity to affect states of consciousness. In particular, they attempted to demonstrate peyote’s potential to be used as a heart tonic. Their work was ultimately undone by Mexico’s 1910 Revolution, which resulted in the closing of the IMN in 1915.