''The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombies, and Magic'' is a 1985 book by anthropologist and researcher Wade Davis. He investigated

Haitian Vodou Haitian Vodou is an African diasporic religion that developed in Haiti between the 16th and 19th centuries. It arose through a process of syncretism between several traditional religions of West and Central Africa and Roman Catholicism. There i ...

and the process of making

zombie A zombie ( Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in w ...

s. He studied

ethnobotanical Ethnobotany is the study of a region's plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people. An ethnobotanist thus strives to document the local customs involving the practical uses of local flora for m ...

poisons, discovering their use in a reported case of a contemporary zombie,

Clairvius Narcisse Clairvius Narcisse (January 2, 1922 – 1994) was a Haitian man who claimed to have been turned into a zombie by a Haitian vodou, and forced to work as a slave. The hypothesis for Narcisse's account was that he had been administered a combinatio ...

Overview

The book presents the case of

, a man who had been a zombie for two years, arguing that the zombification process was more likely the result of a complex interaction of

tetrodotoxin Tetrodotoxin (TTX) is a potent neurotoxin. Its name derives from Tetraodontiformes, an order that includes pufferfish, porcupinefish, ocean sunfish, and triggerfish; several of these species carry the toxin. Although tetrodotoxin was discovere ...

, a powerful

hallucinogen Hallucinogens are a large, diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception as well as other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categorize ...

ic plant called ''

Datura ''Datura'' is a genus of nine species of highly poisonous, vespertine-flowering plants belonging to the nightshade family Solanaceae. They are commonly known as thornapples or jimsonweeds, but are also known as devil's trumpets (not to be co ...

'', and cultural forces and beliefs. According to the book, the assortment of ingredients in Haitian zombie powder include puffer fish, matter from a corpse (specifically to Davis' adventure in Haiti, the bokor, a Haitian

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spir ...

, crushed the skull of a deceased infant that had been dead for a month or two, and added it to the poison), freshly killed blue lizards, a large dried toad (''

Bufo marinus The cane toad (''Rhinella marina''), also known as the giant neotropical toad or marine toad, is a large, terrestrial true toad native to South and mainland Central America, but which has been introduced to various islands throughout Ocean ...

'') with a dried sea worm wrapped around it (prepared beforehand), "tcha-tcha" ('' Albizzia''), and "itching pea" (''pois grater'', a species of ''

Mucuna ''Mucuna'' is a genus of around 100 accepted species of climbing lianas (vines) and shrubs of the family Fabaceae: tribe Phaseoleae, typically found in tropical forests. The leaves are trifoliolate, alternate, or spiraled, and the flowers are pe ...

''). The book inspired the 1988 horror film, '' The Serpent and the Rainbow''.

Criticism

Davis' claims were criticized for a number of scientific inaccuracies. Some scientists found little or no tetrodotoxin in samples provided by Davis, with some accusing him of fraud. Davis argued that a number of factors may account for the negative results of some investigators and decried their unsubstantiated accusations of fraud, noting the variability of formulations, possible errors in the testing performed on the samples he brought back, the possibility that the tetrodotoxin-based mixture may have had ingredients that improved

blood–brain barrier The blood–brain barrier (BBB) is a highly selective semipermeable border of endothelial cells that prevents solutes in the circulating blood from ''non-selectively'' crossing into the extracellular fluid of the central nervous system where ne ...

transmission of the tetrodotoxin, and the nature of folk medicine with respect to success rates (i.e., that very few successes are required to establish credibility). In the book, Davis does not suggest that the zombie powder containing tetrodotoxin was used for maintaining "mental slaves", but for producing the initial death and resurrection that convinced the victims and those who knew them that they had become zombies. The zombies, such as Clairvius Narcisse, were kept biddable by regular doses of the poisonous plant, ''

Datura stramonium ''Datura stramonium'', known by the common names thorn apple, jimsonweed (jimson weed), devil's snare, or devil's trumpet, is a poisonous flowering plant of the nightshade family Solanaceae. It is a species belonging to the ''Datura'' genus a ...

'', which produces amnesia, delirium, and suggestibility.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Serpent and the Rainbow 1985 non-fiction books American non-fiction books Books about Haiti Non-fiction books adapted into films Books by Wade Davis English-language books Simon & Schuster books Voodoo texts Zombies