John Raleigh Briggs
John Raleigh Briggs | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1851[3][4][5] |
| Died | 1907[3][4][5] |
| Other name | J. R. Briggs |
| Alma mater | Nashville Medical College; Missouri Medical College[1] |
| Occupations | Physician and businessman |
| Known for | First Westerner to try and describe the effects of peyote, founding of the Briggs Sanitorium |
John Raleigh Briggs (1851–1907) was an American physician and businessman based in Dallas, Texas.[3][4][6][7] He was the first Westerner known to have tried and described the effects of peyote, which contains the psychedelic drug mescaline.[3][6][7] Briggs learned of peyote from his brother, who had spent years among Native Americans and Mexicans and had observed their entheogenic use of the cactus, describing it as producing "beautiful visions" and allowing them to journey to the "spirit world".[2][7][8]
Briggs obtained peyote and tried a very low dose of it in June 1886, subsequently publishing his experience with it in an article titled "Muscale Buttons"—Physiological Effects—Personal Experience" in the Medical Register in May 1887.[3][7][8] Briggs ate only one-third of a single peyote button, whereas a typical dose for hallucinogenic effects used by Native Americans was said to be 6 to 10 buttons (an 18- to 30-fold higher dose).[3][7][8] Despite the low dose, he developed a variety of severe symptoms, including dramatically increased heart rate, rapid breathing, shortness of breath, feeling intoxicated, brief loss of consciousness, and feeling as if he were near death.[3][6][7][8] Briggs concluded that the drug was a "poison" and was the most "violent" of all substances known to him.[3][7][8] However, a modern interpretation is that Briggs was very apprehensive about peyote and simply had an extreme panic attack in response to the drug.[3][7][9][10] As such, Briggs's experience is said to have also been the first psychedelic "bad trip" to have been published.[3] Relatedly, Briggs held strong negative preconceptions about peyote, believing it be dangerous and easily lethal.[1][3][7][8] As examples, he claimed that the drug induced total unconsciousness in Native Americans for 2 or 3 days, that it had once killed 30 Native Americans in a single ceremony, and that he believed that a mere 2 peyote buttons would surely kill a white man like himself.[1][3][7][8]
Briggs's publication on his experience with peyote was read by George Davis, of Parke, Davis and Company, who proceeded to write Briggs and obtain peyote buttons from him in June 1887.[3][6][7] Based on Briggs's experience, Parke-Davis attempted to market peyote as a cardiac stimulant and for other uses, but these efforts met with little success.[6][7] The German pharmacologist Louis Lewin obtained peyote buttons from Parke-Davis during a trip to the United States in 1887 and began studying them and sharing his findings.[7][11] These developments eventually led to the first published reports of the hallucinogenic effects of peyote by various authors starting in 1895[7][3][1][12][13][14] and the isolation of mescaline from peyote by the German pharmacologist Arthur Heffter in 1897 and publication of these findings in 1898.[3][6][11][15][16] As such, although the entheogenic use of peyote had already been observed and described by Spanish colonialists in the 1500s[7] and the cactus was already botanically known since the 1840s, Briggs is credited with introducing peyote to the Western world.[1][2][3][7][17]
Aside from his work with peyote, Briggs is known for founding the Briggs Sanitorium in Dallas, Texas in 1896.[4] In addition, he established and was the editor of the Texas Health Journal for many years.[1][2] Briggs was also involved in local Dallas politics.[1][2] He died in 1907 at the age 56.[4][5]
See also
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Bruhn, Jan G.; Holmstedt, Bo (1973). "Early peyote research an interdisciplinary study". Economic Botany. 28 (4): 353–390. doi:10.1007/BF02862854. ISSN 0013-0001.
The spark that was to ignite the "peyote boom" was not lit until 1887 when Briggs published the first study of the effects of "muscale buttons". [...] Early peyote research is closely connected with the name of Louis Lewin. However, he was not the discoverer of the drug. Credit for having brought peyote to the attention of the medical world of the 1880's must go to Dr. John Raleigh Briggs of Dallas, Texas. An instrumental role was also played by the pharmaceutical manufacturers Parke, Davis & Company of Detroit. [...] Mrs. Nickels was long considered to be the first supplier of "mescal buttons" for scientific study, but Slotkin (1955, p. 222, note 7) rejected this and pointed out that Briggs was the pioneer (cf. Bender, 1968). [...] In 1894, however, Prentiss and Morgan (1895) of the Medical Department of Columbian University in Washington obtained a large supply of mescal buttons through James Mooney, "agent among the Indians". They described six experiments in man with the crude drug. "The production of visions" was the most interesting effect found, and the authors concluded that the action of Anhalonium lewinii was not identical with that of any other drug. Except for Briggs' early (and somewhat dubious) self-experiment, these were the first reported studies of the drug in man. [...] The first person to draw the attention of the scientific world to peyote was doubtless Dr. J. R. Briggs, and not Mrs. A. B. Nickels as is often stated.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Bruhn, Jan G. (1977). "Three men and a drug: Peyote research in the 1890's". The Cactus and Succulent Journal of Great Britain. 39 (2). British Cactus and Succulent Society: 27–30. ISSN 0007-9375. JSTOR 42787226. Archived from the original on 8 June 2026. Retrieved 8 June 2026.
Though the Mexican Indians' ritual use of 'peyote' had been observed by the Spanish conquerors, their reports did not attract great attention and the drug remained obscure until the 19th century. The first botanical studies appeared in the 1840's, but the modern scientific interest in 'peyote' did not develop until forty years later, and can be traced directly to one person, Dr. John Raleigh Briggs, of Dallas, Texas. [...]
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Daniel M. Perrine (2001). "Visions of the Night Western Medicine Meets Peyote 1887-1899" (PDF). The Heffter Review of Psychedelic Research. 2: 6–52.
John Raleigh Briggs seems to be the first Ameuropean to report on the experience of consuming peyote. [...] To bring a long story to its end: it can be said with as much certainty as is given in historical matters that in June 1886 Briggs took L. williamsii, the genuine entheogenic peyote. Why did he have so violent and intense a reaction to this small amount of peyote, a response so different from that of the Indians? One can only conclude that Briggs was very, very apprehensive—I feel sure he would approve the use of italics, which he was fond of himself—and managed to work himself up into an extreme panic attack at the first onset, real or imaginary, of a drug effect. Briggs scores two for the record books: the first Ameuropean to record taking peyote and the first to have had a bad trip. Without his curiosity and courage, however, neither Parke-Davis nor Lewis Lewin would have known of peyote. And in explanation of the enormous apprehension he felt at eating peyote, one must realize that his notions of its effects (the "street mythology" of the day) were quite at variance with the facts. Most of the many fables he narrates about peyote use involved unconsciousness or death—none of the outcomes are positive. In one of many rambling letters to Parke-Davis he describes a war dance by peyote-consuming Kiowa Indians during which "about 30 died at once." In another letter, he confidently asserts "I am certain 2 buttons would kill a white man" (Bender, 1968, p. 161; Bruhn and Holmstedt, 1974, p. 358). Fear is fear, groundless or no, and it is a very powerful mind-altering (un)substance.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Stone, Rachel (15 April 2019). "Turn on, tune in and drop mescaline? One local doctor did". Oak Cliff. Retrieved 8 June 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "John Raleigh Briggs MD Obituary Part 2". Newspapers.com. 9 January 1908. Retrieved 8 June 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Dawson, Alexander S. (4 September 2018). "1887: Dr. John Briggs Eats Some Peyote" (PDF). The Peyote Effect: From the Inquisition to the War on Drugs. University of California Press. pp. 11–22. doi:10.1525/california/9780520285422.003.0002. ISBN 978-0-520-28542-2.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Jay, Mike (18 June 2019). Mescaline: A Global History of the First Psychedelic. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-23107-6.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Briggs JR (8 April 1887). ""Muscale Buttons"—Physiological Effects—Personal Experience". The Medical Register. 1: 267–268. Archived from the original on 5 April 2025.
- ↑ Gurschler, Ivo (2019). "The fourfold discovery of Mescaline (1896–1919)". Monatshefte für Chemie - Chemical Monthly. 150 (5): 941–947. doi:10.1007/s00706-019-02444-0. ISSN 0026-9247.
Probably by Parke-Davis' superintendent H. A. Wetzel; for more on this 'back story', including the role of the Texas-based physician John Raleigh Briggs (1851–1907), whose horror trip caught the attention of George S. Davis, general manager of the respective company, see [4]. [...] Cf. [34, 35] and Perrine [25], who attributes Briggs, Lumholtz, and Mooney as "first psychonauts"; the term, originally coined by the German author Ernst Juenger (1895–1998), seems, however, better to fit to Ellis and Mitchell, since they made use of the cactus in their own way, as contrasted to the anthropologists, and did attain a state of mind that was more than sheer panic, as in the case of Briggs.
- ↑ Magnuson, Mary; Swan, Hannah; Richert, Lucas (1 October 2023). "The Introduction of Peyote into Pharmaceutical and Pharmacological Frameworks". History of Pharmacy and Pharmaceuticals. 65 (1): 169–177. doi:10.3368/hopp.65.1.169. ISSN 2694-3034.
This story begins with John Raleigh Briggs (1851–1907), a Texas physician, who is regarded as the first American or European to find peyote and study its effects. He published an account of his own personal experience eating one of the "Muscale buttons" as he called them, in 1887, [...] The Parke-Davis employee to whom Nickels was writing expressed concern that if people could consume the plant regularly enough to cure headaches, it must not be the same plant that Briggs had originally consumed that had caused such intense anxiety and dramatic psychoactive side effects. Nickels responded that she was sure the buttons are the same.
- 1 2 McKenna, Terence (1999). "[Chapter 14:] A Brief History of Psychedelics". Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge: a Radical History of Plants, Drugs and Human Evolution (PDF). Rider. pp. 223–245. ISBN 978-0-7126-7038-8.
- ↑ Prentiss DW, Morgan FP (16 September 1895). "Anhalonium Lewinii (Mescal Buttons). A Study of the Drug, With Especial Reference to its Physiological Action Upon Man, With Report of Experiments". Therapeutic Gazette. 19: 577–585. Archived from the original on 10 June 2026.
- ↑ Mitchell SW (December 1896). "Remarks on the Effects of Anhelonium Lewinii (the Mescal Button)". Br Med J. 2 (1875): 1625–1629. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.1875.1625. PMC 2511273. PMID 20756623.
- ↑ Havelock Ellis (January 1898). "Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise". The Contemporary Review. 73: 130–141.
- ↑ Garcia-Romeu A, Kersgaard B, Addy PH (August 2016). "Clinical applications of hallucinogens: A review". Exp Clin Psychopharmacol. 24 (4): 229–268. doi:10.1037/pha0000084. PMC 5001686. PMID 27454674.
- ↑ Heffter, A. (1898). "Ueber Pellote: Beiträge zur chemischen und pharmakologischen Kenntniss der Cacteen Zweite Mittheilung" [About Pellote: Contributions to the chemical and pharmacological knowledge of cacti, second communication] (PDF). Archiv für Experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie (in German). 40 (5–6): 385–429. doi:10.1007/BF01825267. ISSN 0028-1298. Retrieved 5 April 2025.
- ↑ Doesburg-van Kleffens M, Zimmermann-Klemd AM, Gründemann C (December 2023). "An Overview on the Hallucinogenic Peyote and Its Alkaloid Mescaline: The Importance of Context, Ceremony and Culture". Molecules. 28 (24): 7942. doi:10.3390/molecules28247942. PMC 10746114. PMID 38138432.
The history of peyote research begins with botanical studies from the 1840s and the listing of peyote in the Mexican pharmacopoeia [14]. Subsequently, in 1887, John Raleigh Briggs published the first study on the effects of mescal buttons [14]. [...]