[HARPERS] Tales From Siberia
Posted: Thu Oct 03, 2019 8:05 am
https://harpers.org/archive/2013/08/gab ... b9se1Cp1wE
Paragraph of interest: In 1755 the naturalist Stepan Krasheninnikov observed the Amanita muscaria mushroom’s effects on Russian soldiers in Siberia ingesting it for the first time. Claiming to have been seized by an invisible power, the men submitted to the mushroom’s strange and often violent commands. A servant strangled his master. A soldier found himself ordered to his knees and confessed his sins before God. Krasheninnikov’s interpreter drank some mushroom liquor and “went into such a frenzy that he slashed open his abdomen, on the command . . . of mukhomor, the mushroom.” One soldier who ate this mukhomor found a certain dose reduced his fatigue while marching, but after eating more of the mushroom he “gripped his testicles and died.”
Paragraph of interest: In 1755 the naturalist Stepan Krasheninnikov observed the Amanita muscaria mushroom’s effects on Russian soldiers in Siberia ingesting it for the first time. Claiming to have been seized by an invisible power, the men submitted to the mushroom’s strange and often violent commands. A servant strangled his master. A soldier found himself ordered to his knees and confessed his sins before God. Krasheninnikov’s interpreter drank some mushroom liquor and “went into such a frenzy that he slashed open his abdomen, on the command . . . of mukhomor, the mushroom.” One soldier who ate this mukhomor found a certain dose reduced his fatigue while marching, but after eating more of the mushroom he “gripped his testicles and died.”