Gordon Wasson
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Gordon Wasson
Robert Gordon Wasson (September 22, 1898 – December 23, 1986) was an American author, ethnomycologist, and Vice President for Public Relations at J.P. Morgan & Co. In the course of work funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Wasson made contributions to the fields of ethnobotany, botany, and anthropology. Career Banking industry Wasson began his banking career at Guaranty Trust Company in 1928, and moved to J.P. Morgan & Co. in 1934. That same year, he published a book on the Hall Carbine Affair, in which he attempted to exonerate John Pierpont Morgan from guilt with respect to the incident, which had been viewed as an example of wartime profiteering. As early as 1937, Wasson had been attempting to influence historians Allan Nevins and Charles McLean Andrews regarding Morgan's role in the affair; he used Nevins' report as a reference for his own book on the topic. The matter of Morgan's responsibility for the Hall Carbine Incident remains controversial. On J ...
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Great Falls, Montana
Great Falls is the third most populous city in the U.S. state of Montana and the county seat of Cascade County. The population was 60,442 according to the 2020 census. The city covers an area of and is the principal city of the Great Falls, Montana, Metropolitan Statistical Area, which encompasses all of Cascade County. The Great Falls MSA’s population stood at 84,414 in the 2020 census. A cultural, commercial and financial center in the central part of the state, Great Falls is located just east of the Rocky Mountains and is bisected by the Missouri River. It is from the east entrance to Glacier National Park in northern Montana, and from Yellowstone National Park in southern Montana and northern Wyoming. A north–south federal highway, Interstate 15, serves the city. Great Falls is named for a series of five waterfalls located on the Missouri River north and east of the city. The Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1805–1806 was forced to portage around a stretch of t ...
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Hall Carbine Affair
During the American Civil War, John Pierpont Morgan financed the purchase of 5,000 surplus rifles at $3.50 each, which were then sold back to the government for $22 each. The incident became renowned as a scandalous example of wartime profiteering. Interest in the incident was revived in 1910 as an indictment of Morgan. /sup> The Affair The weapons, known as " Hall's Carbines", were purchased by arms dealer Arthur M. Eastman in a deal negotiated with James Wolfe Ripley, Brigadier General and head of the US Ordinance Bureau, in June 1861. Subsequently, Eastman agreed to sell the weapons to Simon Stevens for $12.50 each, if Stevens would provide financing in the amount of $20,000 to allow Eastman to complete the purchase from the government. Stevens quickly negotiated a sale to field general John C. Frémont for $22, promising to bore out the rifles to fifty-eight caliber. With the deal completed, Stevens obtained a loan of $20,000 from Morgan. The weapons were delivered to Eastm ...
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Curandera
A ''curandero'' (, healer; f. , also spelled , , f. ) is a traditional native healer or shaman found primarily in Latin America and also in the United States. A curandero is a specialist in traditional medicine whose practice can either contrast with or supplement that of a practitioner of Western medicine. A curandero is claimed to administer shamanistic and spiritistic remedies for mental, emotional, physical and "spiritual" illnesses. Some curanderos, such as Don Pedrito, the Healer of Los Olmos, make use of simple herbs, waters, or mud to allegedly affect their cures. Others add Catholic elements, such as holy water and pictures of saints; San Martin de Porres for example is heavily employed within Peruvian curanderismo. The use of Catholic prayers and other borrowings and lendings is often found alongside native religious elements. Still others, such as Maria Sabina, employ hallucinogenic media. Many curanderos emphasize their native spirituality in healing while being p ...
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Velada (Mazatec Ritual)
Velada is the name of the healing vigils carried out by Mazatec people, Mazatec ''curanderos'' (such as María Sabina). The rituals involved the use of psilocybin (magic mushrooms) or ''Salvia divinorum'' to commune with God and experience enlightenment. History In May 1957, the banker and ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson published an article in the ''Life (magazine), Life'', ''Seeking the Magic Mushroom'', describing his first experience consuming the mushroom and following the Velada of a shaman back in 1955. He claimed to be among the two first modern Western men to follow a traditional Velada ritual on psilocybin. His tale inspired a generation of «mycotourists» seeking to experience the authentic Mazatec Veladas.Paja FaudreeSinging for the Dead: The Politics of Indigenous Revival in Mexico ''Duke University Press'', 29 May 2013Wesley ThoricathaHistory of Psychedelics: How the Mazatec Tribe Brought Entheogens to the World ''Psychedelictims.com'', 28 October 2015 Wasson's curan ...
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Mazatec People
The Mazatec are an indigenous people of Mexico who inhabit the Sierra Mazateca in the state of Oaxaca and some communities in the adjacent states of Puebla and Veracruz. Language family The Mazatecan languages are part of the Popolocan family which, in turn, is part of the Otomanguean language family. Post-colonial period The Mazatecs' religion represents a syncretism of traditional beliefs with Christian beliefs brought by the Spanish conquistadors. Traditional religious rituals Mazatec tradition includes the cultivation of entheogens for spiritual and ritualistic use. Plants and fungi used for this purpose include psilocybin mushrooms, psychoactive morning glory seeds (from species such as ''Ipomoea tricolor'' and '' Ipomoea corymbosa''), and perhaps most significant to the Mazatecs, '' Salvia divinorum''. This latter plant is known to Mazatec shamans as ''ska María Pastora'', the name containing a reference to the Virgin Mary.Valdés ''et al.'' (1983) Notable Mazatecs *Mar ...
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Pediatrician
Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until the age of 18. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends people seek pediatric care through the age of 21, but some pediatric subspecialists continue to care for adults up to 25. Worldwide age limits of pediatrics have been trending upward year after year. A medical doctor who specializes in this area is known as a pediatrician, or paediatrician. The word ''pediatrics'' and its cognates mean "healer of children," derived from the two Greek words: (''pais'' "child") and (''iatros'' "doctor, healer"). Pediatricians work in clinics, research centers, universities, general hospitals and children's hospitals, including those who practice pediatric subspecialties (e.g. neonatology requires resources available in a NICU). History The earlie ...
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Valentina Pavlovna Wasson
Valentina Pavlovna (Guercken) Wasson (1901–1958) was a Russian-American pediatrician, ethnomycologist and author. She was involved in the introduction of psychoactive mushrooms to a wide audience in the United States. Life Born in Moscow in 1901, Valentina Pavlovna Guercken's family immigrated to the United States during the Russian Revolution. She earned a medical degree at London University in 1927, one year after she married her husband R. Gordon Wasson, a banker. She worked as a pediatrician, publishing research on sinusitus and rheumatic fever in children. While on her honeymoon in the Catskill Mountains in 1927, Valentina foraged for edible mushrooms in the woods, but her husband refused to eat them. They found that their diverging attitudes towards the plant had roots in the folkloric traditions of Europe, and theorized a deep historical divide between “mycophiles” like the Slavs and “mycophobes" like the Anglo-Saxon peoples. This led them to suspect some deep-s ...
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Catskill Mountains
The Catskill Mountains, also known as the Catskills, are a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian Mountains, located in southeastern New York. As a cultural and geographic region, the Catskills are generally defined as those areas close to or within the borders of the Catskill Park, a forest preserve protected from many forms of development under New York state law. Geologically, the Catskills are a mature dissected plateau, a flat region subsequently uplifted and eroded into sharp relief by watercourses. The Catskills form the northeastern end of the Allegheny Plateau (also known as the Appalachian Plateau). The Catskills were named by early Dutch settlers. They are well known in American society as the setting for films and works of art, including many 19th-century Hudson River School paintings, as well as for being a favored destination for vacationers from New York City in the mid-20th century. The region's many large resorts gave many young stand-up comedian ...
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Mycologia
''Mycologia'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes papers on all aspects of the fungi, including lichens. It first appeared as a bimonthly journal in January 1909, published by the New York Botanical Garden under the editorship of William Murrill. It became the official journal of the Mycological Society of America The Mycological Society of America (MSA) is a learned society that serves as the professional organization of mycologists in the U.S. and Canada. It was founded in 1932. The Society's constitution states that "The purpose of the Society is to prom ..., which still publishes it today. It was formed as a merger of the ''Journal of Mycology'' (14 volumes; 1885–1908) and the ''Mycological Bulletin'' (7 volumes; 1903–1908). The ''Mycological Bulletin'' was known as the ''Ohio Mycological Bulletin'' in its first volume. Editors The following persons have been editor-in-chief of the journal: The following persons have been managing editor of the journal: ...
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New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital media, digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as ''The Daily (podcast), The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones (publisher), George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won List of Pulitzer Prizes awarded to The New York Times, 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print it is ranked List of newspapers by circulation, 18th in the world by circulation and List of newspapers in the United States, 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is Public company, publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 189 ...
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Yale University Library
The Yale University Library is the library system of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Originating in 1701 with the gift of several dozen books to a new "Collegiate School," the library's collection now contains approximately 14.9 million volumes housed in fifteen university buildings and is the fourth-largest academic library in North America. The centerpiece of the library system is the Sterling Memorial Library, a Collegiate Gothic building constructed in 1931 and containing the main library offices, the university archives, a music library, and 3.5 million volumes. The library is also known for its major collection of rare books, housed primarily in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library as well as the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, the Lillian Goldman Law Library, and the Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut. Many schools and departments at Yale also maintain their own collections, comprising twelve on-campus facilities and an off-campus shelv ...
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