Psychonauts - Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind - Mike Jay

Psychonauts - Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind by Mike Jay / ISBN 9780300257946 / 359-page hardback from Yale University Press *** A provocative and original history of the scientists and writers, artists and philosophers who took drugs to explore the hidden regions of the mind “Jay is a leading expert on the history of Western drug use, and Psychonauts is the latest in a series of excellent studies in which he has investigated the roots of a kind of psychoactive exploration that we tend to associate with the nineteen-fifties and sixties.”—Clare Bucknell, New Yorker “Captivating. . . . A welcome reconsideration of the role drugs play in life, medicine, and science.”—Publishers Weekly Until the twentieth century, scientists investigating the effects of drugs on the mind did so by experimenting on themselves. Vivid descriptions of drug experiences sparked insights across the mind sciences, pharmacology, medicine, and philosophy. Accounts in journals and literary fiction insp