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The Origin Of Witches Riding Broomsticks: Drugs From Nature, Plus Shakespeare
Today's timely post is an updated version of a story I wrote back in 2007 at my Terra Sigillata blog on ScienceBlogs.com, modified here at Forbes on Halloween in 2012, the first month I wrote in this space, then updated further with what I've learned since. But this story is one that I have been teaching in my pharmacology classes since 1992 at the University of Colorado School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Such an image is so imprinted in our culture that few may wonder where it originated. Pharmacology, . [+] my friends. Natural products pharmacology. Image Credit: Shutterstock
Have you ever wondered, especially on Halloween, why witches are depicted as riding on brooms through the nighttime sky?
The truth lies in science -- pharmacology, actually, and natural products pharmacology at that.
Unfortunately, it's a story you may find difficult explaining to the kids.
The excerpts I'm about to give you come from a superb and accessible pharmacology text from 1992 entitled, Murder, Magic, and Medicine, by John Mann, host of the BBC Radio 4 series by the same name.
Witches
"Double, double toil and trouble
Fire burn and cauldron bubble" - Macbeth IV, i
The historical depiction of witches riding broomsticks has its origins in hallucinogenic plant pharmacology, as popularized by Shakespeare, but the indigenous knowledge predates even him.
Hallucinogenic chemicals called tropane alkaloids are made by a number of plants including Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Hyoscyamus niger (henbane), Mandragora officinarum (mandrake) and Datura stramonium (jimsonweed). During the Middle Ages, parts of these plants were used to make "brews," "oyntments" or "witches' salves" for witchcraft, sorcery and other nefarious activities.
Somewhere along the line, the observation was made that the hallucinogenic compounds, hyoscine in particular -- also known as scopolamine -- could be absorbed through sweat glands in the armpit or via the mucus membranes of the rectum or vaginal area. As compared to eating the plants or drinking their extracts, axial, rectal and vaginal routes of administration also bypassed the first cycle of rapid metabolism by the liver (and severe intestinal discomfort).
This stock image from Shutterstock carries the caption, "Cleanup housework concept. Funny cleaning . [+] lady young woman mopping floor, holding mop jumping flying on white background." Each generation has appropriated the image of a woman astride a broomstick or, in this case, a mop.
(For my front-row students who always kept me on my toes, some pharmacology texts state that rectal drug administration does expose as much as half of the absorbed drug to first pass metabolism as the superior hemorrhagic vein drains into the mesenteric circulation. So, the vulvovaginal and axial means of application detailed below are the ones that truly overcome first-pass hepatic metabolism.)
Broomsticks
Just how did the alleged witches apply said ointments? According to Mann, the earliest clue comes from a 1324 investigation of the case of Lady Alice Kyteler:
"In rifleing the closet of the ladie, they found a pipe of oyntment, wherewith she greased a staffe, upon which she ambled and galloped through thick and thin."
And from the fifteenth-century records of Jordanes de Bergamo:
"But the vulgar believe, and the witches confess, that on certain days or nights they anoint a staff and ride on it to the appointed place or anoint themselves under the arms and in other hairy places."
These passages account for why so many of the pictures of the time depict partially clothed or naked witches "astride their broomsticks," as shown in the woodcut image featured here.
Shown in Mann's book with the caption, "A seventeenth-century engraving of a witch being prepared . [+] for the Sabbat. Note the administration of the salve." Credit: Wellcome Institute Library, London
Why Flying?
But what about the issue of flying on said broomsticks?
The tropane alkaloid hallucinogens tended to cause sleep, but with dreams that involved flying, "wild rides" and "frenzied dancing." A 1966 description of tropane alkaloid intoxication was offered by the Gustav Schenk:
"My teeth were clenched, and a dizzied rage took possession of me. but I also know that I was permeated by a peculiar sense of well-being connected with the crazy sensation that my feet were growing lighter, expanding and breaking loose from my own body. Each part of my body seemed to be going off on its own, and I was seized with the fear that I was falling apart. At the same time I experienced an intoxicating sensation of flying. I soared where my hallucinations - the clouds, the lowering sky, herds of beasts, falling leaves. billowing streamers of steam and rivers of molten metal - were swirling along."
So, these psychosensory experiences of flying were associated with boiled up hallucinogenic plants applied to the vulvovaginal area with a broomstick, probably used to mix the concoction.
An aside: Legendary pharmacologist, Susan Band Horwitz, PhD, reminded me a few years ago that the same passage from Macbeth quoted above also contains a reference to the source of one of our most useful natural product anticancer drugs, paclitaxel (Taxol).
. . .Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat and slips of yew. . .
In 1979, Dr. Horwitz and her then-doctoral student, Peter Schiff, and Jane Fant, published in Nature the seminal report demonstrating that taxol acts by promoting microtubule polymerization to the point that tumor cells cannot coordinate chromosomal segregation.
It works this way in everyone, not just witches.
I was honored to work from 2002 to 2008 with the two gents who isolated Taxol from the Pacific yew and showed its anticancer activity, the late Monroe Wall, PhD, and Mansukh Wani, PhD.
I never cease to be amazed or impressed by how much of our folk history is influenced by drugs from nature -- natural products -- used in cultural or medical rituals. The fact that plants and other organisms make chemicals that affect human biology triggered my own interests in this field. Over nearly 30 years of working in pharmacology and toxicology, I spent the bulk of my time working with chemists far more talented than I trying to discern if the natural world held more anticancer drugs for us.
Did this post pique your interest? You can learn more about the colorful convergence of drugs and history -- you owe yourself the indulgence of John Mann's book.
With some melancholy, I also note that Halloween 2017 marks the shuttering of ScienceBlogs, the first major blogging network featuring scientists, launched in January 2006 by Seed Media Group. The invitation from Katherine Sharpe (and her then-boss, Christopher Mims (now at WSJ)) to bring my five-month-old blog to their second cohort in June 2007 unwittingly began my road out of the lab and science administration to write for you, Dear Reader, who I couldn't otherwise reach from the lecture hall.
The intervening decade has seen a logarithmic expansion of scientist-writers online geared to the general public. For many of us, this was a logical extension of our professional mission and personal need to share our enthusiasm with anyone who'd listen and/or read. (Of course, you can also read propaganda veiled as science. Discerning objective scientific information from that with an economic agenda has become more challenging, not less.)
But I consider myself fortunate ('blessed' as we say in the American South), to have been an early part of this science communication revolution, and with gratitude to Forbes Senior Editor Matthew Herper who, in October 2012, invited me to bring these stories to this global lecture hall.
Unfortunately, it's a story you may find difficult explaining to the kids.
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Reviews for "The Teletubbies Mascot Regalia: Exploring its Societal Impact"
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