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they occurred in a toxic North American plant, the strawberry shrub. DMT was one of these.” "psychopharmacologists." Chemists began probing the barks, leaves, and seeds of plants first described as psychedelic a hundred years earlier, that DMT was a constituent of plants that produced psychedelic effects, scientists didn't know if DMT itself was psychoactive.’ 44 * THE BUILDING BLOCKS While psychedelic plants languished in natural history museum archives, Canadian chemist R. Manske, in unrelated research, synthesized a new drug called N,N-dimethyltryptamine, or DMT. As he described in a 1931 scientific article, Manske had made several compounds derived by chemi- cally modifying tryptamine. He was interested in these products because As far as anyone knows, Manske made DMT, noted its structure, and then placed his supply in some isolated corner of his laboratory, where it quietly collected dust. No one yet knew about DMT's existence in mind- altering plants, its psychedelic properties, or its presence in the human body. There was little interest in psychedelics in scientific circles until decades later, after World War II. In the early 1950s, the discoveries of LSD and serotonin rocked the staid foundations of Freudian psychiatry and laid the groundwork for the new world of neuroscience. Curiosity about psychedelic drugs was in- tense among the growing circle of scientists who called themselves seeking their active ingredients. The tryptamine family was a logical place to focus, as both serotonin and LSD are tryptamines. Success was not long in coming. In 1946, 0. Gongalves isolated DMT from a South American tree used for psychedelic snuffs and published his findings in Spanish. In 1955, M. S. Fish, N. M. Johnson, and E. C. Horning published the first English-language paper describing DMT's presence in another closely related snuff-producing tree. However, although they knew In the 1950s, Hungarian chemist and psychiatrist Stephen Szdra read about the profoundly mind-altering effects of LSD and mescaline. He or- dered some LSD from Sandoz Laboratories so he could begin his own studies into the chemistry of consciousness. Since Széra was behind the Iron Curtain, the Swiss drug company was unwilling to risk letting their