Origin from 1962
The isolation and structural identification of the specific compounds a plant contains, given its own journal and society at the start of the 1960s. Confirms or corrects what a ritual or entheogenic plant's effect is actually chemically due to.
Facts
Subject
Subjectthe specific chemical compounds, alkaloids, glycosides and essential oils, that a ritual, medicinal or entheogenic plant actually contains and what those compounds do physiologically 2 Method
Methodisolation and structural identification of the chemical compounds a plant produces, using extraction and instrumental analysis rather than whole plant observation alone 2 Identity
Field Category Parent Field Origins
Emerged As Named Discipline Learn More
A New Journal Gives Plant Chemistry Its Own Address
Phytochemistry isolates and identifies the specific chemical compounds a plant produces, alkaloids, glycosides, terpenes and essential oils among them, using extraction and instrumental analysis to say precisely what a plant contains rather than relying on its traditional name or appearance. As postwar organic chemistry turned increasingly toward natural products, the field gained its own dedicated journal, Phytochemistry, whose first volume appeared from Pergamon Press in 1961 under the founding editorship of Tony Swain and Jeffrey Harborne, giving plant chemical research a home separate from general botany and pharmacology, alongside the founding of the Phytochemical Society itself.
Every tradition that burns, drinks, chews or offers a named plant for its effect, incense resin, a ritual infusion, an entheogenic mushroom or vine, is making an implicit chemical claim, and phytochemistry is what can confirm or correct it by identifying the actual active compound and its physiological action. The atlas relies on phytochemical findings wherever a ritual plant's effect is described, distinguishing a chemically documented action from an effect a tradition attributes to the plant on other grounds.
Connections
Branch Of
Source Frascati Manual 2015: Guidelines for Collecting and Reporting Data on Research and Experimental DevelopmentOECD
Open Questions Needing This
Source Transcultural Use of Narcotic Water Lilies in Ancient Egyptian and Maya Drug RitualWilliam A. Emboden
Sources
1. Frascati Manual 2015: Guidelines for Collecting and Reporting Data on Research and Experimental Development
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source Divinity Atlas Scholarly Discipline Register
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
Choose a year to see this entry's facts and connections as the atlas records them at that moment: what it held then, what it held instead, and what it had not yet adopted. Choose Present for the current record.