Overdosing on the Amazon

Not only does he admit to using narcotics, but he says he has made special trips to the dark, uncivilized regions of the Amazon to find them.

In fact, he says, if you approach the natives in the correct way, they may even "be good enough" to offer you their hallucinogens.

If so, "you should take them. It's a good way to establish a rapport," advises Jeffrey Professor of Biology Richard E. Schultes '37.

Schultes, however, is not under indictment for illicit drug trafficking, nor has he come in for criticism of his research. On the contrary, he is widely regarded as one of the world's most prominent ethnobotanists, and has made contributions to several areas of science ranging from medicine to crop development during his eventful 45-year career.

In fact, his extensive array of accolades includes the naming of a species of Amazonian cockroach (Schultesia ramundiana) and several tropical plants in his honor.

Although working with hallucenogins comprises only one aspect of Schultes' work, it marks one of his several areas of groundbreaking experimentation.

Throughout his 35-year teaching career and during his 15-year residence in the remote regions of the Amazon jungle--including some regions which are accessible only by plane or boat--he has pioneered several areas: rubber plant studies, crop development, narcotics and orchid study. He has also identified, classified and conducted experiments with approximately 24,000 plant species. In all, he has brought back to Harvard more than 48,000 varieties of plants from areas ranging from Mexico to Afghanistan.

Schultes draws praise from his colleagues primarily for his advancements in narcotics and rubber plant studies.

"His greatest contribution has been to put ethnobiology on a solid scientific basis by being both an outstanding chemist and botanist," says Peter S. Ashton, Arnold Professor of Botany and director of the Arnold Arboretum, adding that Schultes has developed "an unusual level of capacity" to identify plants of potential economic interest. "He's demanding in the sense that he always wants the right answer, but he's also a very congenial person," says a Northeastern University professor of pharmacology, Robert Rattauf, who has worked with Schultes for the past 30 years.

His primary goal has been to discover the properties and possible applications of the plants used by the Amazon natives. And, as a result, some of his work has had revolutionary impact.

For example, after learning how the South American Indians create poisonous curare, with which they tipped their darts and arrows, Schultes and other scientists used the same plants to create, tubocuranin, a muscle relaxant now used extensively in hospitals worldwide.

Another breakthrough is rotenon, a widely used biodegradable insecticide that has replaced DDT. While the Indians used the chemical to kill fish, it is now effectively applied to the new purpose.

Schultes' work with narcotics has led to developments such as mescaline, which causes a "beautifully colored visual hallucination," he says, and psilocybin, which is extracted from a mushroom plant native to Mexico. Both drugs have been used in psychiatry.

The hallucinogenic plants, he adds, are regarded among the natives as the most important because they feel the plants allow them to "communicate with the spirits. It's their medication par excellence."

But Schultes says the narcotics "are not misused as they are in our drug culture." Because the Indians associate the narcotics with the divine, "their culture does not allow them to misuse them," he says.

By living with the Indians, he was able to win their trust, and as a result the Indians, in a gesture of friendliness, offered a tribal dance in his honor, in which Schultes was allowed to participate.

It was at one of these "parties" that Schultes first sampled yaje, a narcotic which produces visual hallucinations. He also tried coca, from which cocaine is extracted, by chewing the toasted and powdered leaves of the plant.

No Indian will go on a long hunting expedition without first preparing his daily chew of coca, and large quantities are used in tribal dances.

"I'm not interested in the experience of the hallucinogen, but in the scientific effects of the plant," Schultes says. "There are certain ones I just wouldn't take."

In the early '70s Schultes used his experiences to co-author a book on the botany and chemistry of hallucinogens, with Albert Hofmann, the discoverer of LSD.

ABC

Schultes grew up in East Boston and entered Harvard in 1932 after attending a local public school. Although he was a pre-medical student, he turned to botanical sciences in his third year after taking a botany course with Professor Oakes Ames. The course, known as Biology 104, "Plants and Human Affairs," is now taught by Schultes.

In fact, the course, taught at Harvard for over 100 years, is the University's oldest continuous annually offered course and the oldest course in the subject taught anywhere in the country.

Schultes worked in Mexico until 1940 doing research preparation for his Ph.D., which he received from Harvard in 1941.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he was hired by the U.S. government to organize South American natives and resuscitate the rubber tapping industry, to counter Japanese control over natural rubber supplies in Asia.

With two Indian guides, Schultes explored the Amazon River, locating rubber trees. He spent the 14 years after the war living with the natives in the Amazon and continuing his research of plants.

In fact, he return there annually to continue and update his research.

While Schultes says he has suffered the "usual" tropical diseases, such as malaria and beri-beri, he downplays the adventurous side of his experiences.

"There have been things such as tipping over in the rapids, out up here there are automobile accidents. Undoubtedly, I'm safer there than I am in the streets of New York or Boston at night," he says, adding. "After a while it all becomes a part of the job."

Yet he admits that his years in the jungle gave him opportunities never before available to botanists, Up to that time, trees had been studied mostly from dried specimens.

and Schultes has observed them all--in every stage of their development, in various seasons and forests.

Over the years he has become well known to some of the tribes, he says, and describes the Indians as "simple, honest, loyal people. They are very trustworthy as long as you treat them as gentlemen."

In another area of his work, he has extensively studied the "domestication of new crop plants," which means he is attempting to discover methods of growing certain plants which here particularly useful and valuable yields.

For example, he is currently attempting to convince the U.S. government to experiment with growing a palm-tree-type plant that produces a chemical oil similar to olive oil.

Currently, Schultes is devoting much of his time to writing his eighth book on botany which will deal primarily with the rubber trees. Using his drawerful of weatherbeaten notebooks, accumulated over decades of work in the tropics, he is attempting the first complete classification of the plant.

But, he says, he may never live to see the results of his experiments because it takes approximately eight years for a rubber tree to flower.

While Schultes says he plans to retire from teaching in June 1985, he adds that he will continue his research.

Moreover, he vows he will continue to take his annual journeys to the Amazon as long as he is able to walk.

"It's a wonderful place," he says.