Item of the Month February 2011: Notes on Yagé

Back in July last year, we wrote about some items from our collections relating to Arthur Conan Doyle. We deliberately left one item out from that post, as we wanted to write in more detail about it at a later date.

So, as our Item of the Month for February 2011, here's a post dedicated to this item: a manuscript that links Conan Doyle, fellow novelist H Rider Haggard and a hallucinogenic plant from South America (WMS/Amer.148).

It's a report from 1927 by Edward Morell Holmes, an English botanist, into the properties of Yagé, a South American drug, which - refering to a conversation initiated by Sir H. Rider Haggard, author of King Solomon's Mines - "causes clairvoyant and telepathic effects". The manuscript refers to a full account of the drug by A. Rouhier in Bulletin des Sciences Pharmacologiques, 1926, 33, 252-261 (which Holmes' notes summarise) and also to South American knowledge of Yagé.

But the Conan Doyle connection comes with the most fascinating aspect of this manuscript. The notes talk of a tincture of the drug prepared by the leading pharmacist W.H. Martindale (1875?-1933) and Holmes's attempts to pass it on to "some of our leading scientific Spiritualists to experiment with including Sir A. Conan Doyle, Professor (Sir) Oliver Lodge, and Sir (W.) F. Barrett".

These beliefs of these men in the ability to contact the spirit world is well recorded: Conan Doyle took his belief strongly enough to publish a History of Spiritualism in 1926; Lodge, a key figure in the development of the wireless, was like Conan Doyle a member of the Society for Psychical Research, and Barrett was a physicist and the author of such works as The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism and On The Threshold Of A New World Of Thought.

But do we know if their interest in spiritualism was enough for these men to test out the "telepathic effects" of the tincture"? Did Holmes, indeed, ever contact them? So far, our research has drawn a blank...

Whilst we often feature as our Items of the Month, material from the Library that is well-researched, here's an instance of a manuscript we feel in need of more attention. Given its hoped for attraction to men of letters from the early 20th century, we even wonder if the notes may even shed light on the interest in Yagé of the beat author William Burroughs in the 1950s, in light of possible explanations as to how Burroughs developed an interest in the drug.

We wonder then, if Holmes's notes featured here may add something to this debate: even if not, they shed an intriguing light on scientific and literary circles in the early part of the twentieth century, and suggest a topic that we feel would have piqued the interest - and possibly the taste buds - of Holmes's namesake and Conan Doyle's most famous literary creation.

Images:
- Text of Holmes's Notes on Yagé
- Portrait of Edward Morell Holmes

With thanks to Mike Jay

The Basketry skills of the Kali'na

Illustration: Group of Kali'na, 1892.

The Kali'na live along the southern shores of the Caribbean and have homes that stretch from Venezuela to Guyane. They are considered to be small minorities in each of the modern countries that they now find themselves being citizens of. However, before the arrival of Europeans they dominated the area between the mouths of the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. The Kali'na have lived in the vicinity of the two South American rivers for at least two millennia and have undoubtedly been in the area for much longer than the material evidence so far shows.

Self-sufficiency has always been an important element of the culture of the Kali'na and, as far as possible; all aspects of life could be procured from their immediate environment. Woven craft products were produced from raw materials found within the local environment and ranged from large to small scale, with shelters being the most immediate example. However, it is the smaller domestic ware that shows most originality and diversity, with numerous finely woven baskets and bags produced for both long-term storage and that of the more immediate foraging bags.

Illustration: Kali'na village, 1839.

Basketry was always an important and inherent part of learnt craft skills and was always part of the practical necessities of life. However, as with all human cultures, the decorative arts were never far behind those practical necessities. Embellishment and the expansion of the ordinary came in many forms. In Kali'na basketry, it was shown by using differently coloured and toned raw materials to produce outwardly patterned effects. However, there was also the much subtler approach of using patterned weave. Even though the raw weaving material may be the same tone and colour and therefore immediately indistinguishable, the weave pattern would break up, enhance and vary the weave giving both a subtle decorative pattern and texture to the woven basket or bag.

Illustration: Examples of Kali'na basketry, 1839.

There is an immediacy and connectedness with the proximity of the surrounding world that links the Kali'na with a sense of intimately belonging to that world, whether through ancestral roots or perhaps the use of surrounding raw materials that they would have seen as being crucial to both their survival and way of life. In some respects the culture of the Kali'na was their surrounding environment. The craft skills they passed on through the generations enhanced and supported the life of the community and allowed them to expand and grow within their immediate environment.

Illustration: Kali'na man, 1892.

It is important to remember that there are no levels or tiers separating human cultures. Europeans observed and judged people like the Kali'na and often these took two familiar forms. They could either be seen as primitive savages lacking in sophistication and accomplishments, or they could be seen as noble savages, still unsophisticated and lacking European accomplishments, but living a life of unsophisticated purity. Either way the European example of cultural life would be seen as the higher form.

Illustration: Examples of Kali'na weaponry and tools, 1839.

Of course, these European views and judgements were grossly inaccurate and misinformed, often purposely. The Kali'na were as sophisticated and accomplished as any European, as were their decorative and craft arts which flourished, expanded and reflected both the individual crafts person and that of the community. Indeed, craft skills were at times beyond the level achieved by Europeans.

Illustration: Kali'na youth, 1892.

Basketry by its very nature is a practical result of the needs of the community linked with the availability of the surrounding environment. The embellishment of that practical necessity often says much more about a culture and a community than any number of European judgements and fantasies about simple people and savages.

Further reading links:
Na'na Kali'na: Une histoire des Kali'na en Guyane (French Edition)
La Guyane française au temps de l'esclavage, de l'or et de la francisation
Histoire de la Guyane contemporaine, 1940-1982: Les mutations economiques, sociales et politiques (French Edition)
Histoire de la societe guyanaise: Les annees cruciales, 1848-1946 (Etudes et documents / Centre guyanais d'etudes et de recherches) (French Edition)
La Guyane francaise, de la colonisation a la departementalisation: La formation de la societe creole guyanaise (French Edition)
Demographics of Suriname: Ethnic Groups in Suriname, Arawak, Non-Resident Indian and Person of Indian Origin, Saramaka, Maroon, Kali'na People
Society of French Guiana: Ethnic Groups in French Guiana, Religion in French Guiana, Kali'na People, Palikur, Wayampi 

International Archives Day

June the 9th is International Archives Day, designated by the International Council on Archives (ICA). Of course, archives are everywhere: wherever there is writing, there are people using it to document their activities. Less obvious, perhaps, is the global span of the archives held at the Wellcome Library. It is, however, a sad truth that wherever human beings go, disease and injury follows them, so the medical profession is needed everywhere, and as the European powers expanded across the world in previous centuries medical men and women followed, noting their impressions. Below are a few samples from the Wellcome Library holdings of archives generated in far corners of the world during the nineteenth century, the tip of an iceberg.


John Temperley Gray (1835-1892), a ship’s surgeon for P&O, between 1862 and 1888 filled a volume (MS.5875) with notes on local wildlife (including beautiful coloured pictures of snakes, birds and a caterpillar), the population of Bombay (inter alia, sketching the various characteristic types of hat worn by the Parsees), local customs such as the different child-birth practices of various religious communities, local songs (which he transcribes with musical notation) and a whole gallery of other subjects, as well as the notes on scientific subjects and the French lessons with which, presumably, he sought to fill productively the long hours at sea.

At one point Gray records a couple of humorous anecdotes in which dialogue takes place in an Indian language and the peremptory sahib and mem-sahib (fluent chiefly in command and abuse) are wrong-footed by the responses of their Indian servants. In contrast to these, fifty years early a young surgeon on the East India Company ship the William Miles records a child of English parents who "does not speak a word of English. . . . It certainly did strike me as a singular thing, to see a little fellow of 5 or 6 speaking to the natives so fluently, close to several of his own countrymen, trying to speak a word or two, with such difficulty." (MS.7114, p.180)

On the other side of the world, the naval surgeon Henry Piers passed around the coast of South America in the 1860s on his way to Vancouver. On the way, he recorded his impressions of the Falkland Islands: "the land [was] boggy and covered with a coarse grass, but not a tree or shrub was to be seen - a heath, bearing small berries resembling but smaller than cranberries, was very common and called, from the geese feeding on its fruit, 'Gooseberry'... It was difficult, in many parts, to avoid sinking into the bog ... The land was undulating, with hills of moderate elevation - some of them topped with crags - the aspect of the place, in general, was very uninviting ..." (MS.6110, p.7)
He notes that, doubtless in compensation for the unappealing landscape, the town of Stanley although small boasts four beer shops. A few weeks later he gives a vivid description of being anchored in the narrow Straits of Magellan: "Our anchorage at 'Sandy Point' was so close to the shore - within half a mile I should think - that we could distinctly hear noises resembling the croaking of frogs &c. and the ripple breaking on the shore..." (MS.6110, p.17)

This is, of course, only a tiny sample of the international content of the Wellcome Library’s holdings of archives and manuscripts. Sources guides on the Library website provide a route into various geographic areas, and the collection as a whole can also be searched for particular place-names or any other words via the online archives catalogue.