William Burroughs: Sailor of the Soul

ABSTRACT

In 1953, William Seward Burroughs made several important and largely unrecognized discoveries relating to the composition and clinical pharmacological effects of the hallucinogenic plant potion known as yagé or ayahuasca. Illustrations of Burroughs’ voucher sample of Psychotria viridis and his letter to the father of modern ethnobotany, Richard Evans Schultes, are published here for the very first time.

KEYWORDS:

• Ayahuasca
• neurology
• Psychotria viridis
• William Seward Burroughs

Acknowledgments

Oliver Harris, in his introduction to Yage Letters Redux, inspired this investigation and Wade Davis confirmed Burroughs’ unlikely precedence in the ethnobotanical annals of yagé. Both were supportive of this essay. I am grateful to the Economic Herbarium of Oakes Ames of Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, for permission to publish the letter from William Burroughs to Richard Schultes and a photograph of Burroughs’ voucher specimen of the leaves of Psychotria viridis. I am also grateful to Michaela Schmull, Director of Collections, and her staff at the Harvard University Herbaria for their assistance, without which the originality of this publication would be negligible. I would also like to thank James Grauerholz, my mentor and pen friend, who encouraged this investigation.