Pharmacotheon

For people interested in entheogens, both experts and neophytes. This is a reference book that offers complete information about the rediscovery of the main entheogens, as well as about their use in traditional cultures.

Back cover

All scholars, scholars and amateurs of what we could call entheogeny must thank Jonathan Ott for the enormous effort involved in the elaboration of Pharmacotheon. A systematic compilation such as the present one was necessary, whose future use is more likely as a solid reference book in the great classical style than as a reading text, although one thing does not detract from the other.

The scientific knowledge that we currently have about plants and other psychoactive substances, which has been elaborated by chemistry, pharmacology, anthropology and botany, was scattered in a chaos of bibliography and specialized articles. This situation is masterfully resolved with this universalist work. In my opinion, Pharmacotheon definitively establishes J. Ott as one of the most important contemporary researchers and authors in the field of ethnopharmacognosy studies, as he himself has called it. In addition, it is also necessary to highlight his precious literary style of the highest quality.

Jonathan was born in New Heaven (Connecticut). He studied organic chemistry of natural products at the University of Washington. It was there where, in 1973, Richard Evans Schultes gave a lecture that served as the initial point of contact for both researchers. Ott came to greet him and as a result of that first approach between a young interested student and a consecrated figure (and creator of modern ethnobotany), he was invited by R.E. Schultes to consult the specialized library he had at Harward, which Jonathan did as soon as he could: during the summer of 1974. We could say that a dual and long-standing relationship was born there. During this visit by Ott to Shultes, Shultes remarked that he should meet Robert Gordon Wasson personally, picked up the phone and called him from his office. He said 'there's a young man here you should meet', and passed the phone to Ott, to the astonishment of the young student....

(J.Mª Fericgla)