The cause-and-effect that is most obvious is rapid altered mental ability,
like drunkenness or hallucination. Even the most incurious primitive man
could link the stupor or agitation following the ingestion of alcohol or
psychedelic mushrooms.
The inkling that plants had biological powers opened the door to
hypothesizing about how the body works. The Galenic concept of disease
treatment in the 2nd century was based upon the theory of opposites. Life
was a constant balancing act—good health was evidence of good balance,
but imbalance in life was a harbinger of impending disease. Using the
foundation of Hippocratic humoral theory, if a patient was plagued with an
abundance of phlegm (one of the four main humors of the body), the
counterbalancing therapeutic move would be to apply desiccating heat.
This is evident in the life of Achilles, who by legend, was nursed on bile
(instead of milk), thus giving him a “bilious” and bellicose character.^3
Paracelsus (1493–1541), and later Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843),
proposed a completely different concept regarding the systemic balances
of the human body. For philosophers like Paracelsus, who contemplated
the inner workings of our mortal frame without the use of the microscope
and before the advent of organ physiology, our bodies were a confusing
matrix. His breakthrough concept of “similia similibus curantor,” now
appreciated as pseudoscience, held that a substance that causes the
symptoms of disease in a healthy person would cure symptoms in a sick
patient. For example, if one were suffering from diarrhea, the homeopathic
intervention would be to take a laxative, forcing even more diarrhea.
Unbelievably, there are still subscribers to this crackpot mentality.
The homeopathic mindset, and later the modern allopathic outlook,
riveted the gaze of medical sages on the effects (and side effects) of
botanical potions. Even in the epoch before modern biochemistry
illuminated the true-life molecular world, the methodical analysis of plant
and earth materials resulted in a catalogue of useful formulations. As
scientists demystified air, organized the periodic table, determined the
laws of chemical reactions, and finally laid to rest the pseudoscience of
alchemy, the potential of refined and purified drugs came into focus.
More important, an obsession with the unfathomable became a
possibility: on-command sleep—the purview of gods—and the ability to
regulate consciousness at the wave of the hand.