Victor A. Reko, was an Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n teacher and scientific author who moved to Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 in 1921. He is best known for his popular book Magische Gifte: Rausch- und Betäubungsmittel der Neuen Welt ("Magic Poisons: Inebriating and Narcotic Substances of the New World"), first published in 1936. This book recorded a number of second-hand observations on New World psychoactive drug

Psychoactive drug

A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, or psychotropic is a chemical substance that crosses the blood–brain barrier and acts primarily upon the central nervous system where it affects brain function, resulting in changes in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, and behavior...

s, paraphrased from notes he took of conversations with his cousin, the eminent Mexican ethnobotanist

Ethnobotany

Ethnobotany is the scientific study of the relationships that exist between people and plants....

 Dr. Blas Pablo Reko, including the first published refutation of Dr. William Edwin Safford

William Edwin Safford

William Edwin Safford was an American botanist, ethnologist, and educator employed by the U.S. Navy and federal government....

's uncharacteristically untenable assertion that teonanácatl was not a mushroom

Mushroom

A mushroom is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground on soil or on its food source. The standard for the name "mushroom" is the cultivated white button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus; hence the word "mushroom" is most often applied to those fungi that...

, but a cactus

Cactus

A cactus is a member of the plant family Cactaceae. Their distinctive appearance is a result of adaptations to conserve water in dry and/or hot environments. In most species, the stem has evolved to become photosynthetic and succulent, while the leaves have evolved into spines...

.

Reko's book also covered the following drugs, many of which were not mentioned in the earlier book Phantastica by Louis Lewin

Louis Lewin

Louis Lewin was a German pharmacologist. In 1886, he published the first methodical analysis of the Peyote cactus, which was originally named in his honor Anhalonium lewinii.He received his education at the gymnasium and the University of Berlin...

: sinicuichi (Heimia spp.) for which he falsely claimed psychoactivity, Ololiúqui (Turbina corymbosa), peyotl

Peyote

Lophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote , is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico...

 (Lophophora williamsii), marihuana (Cannabis sativa

Cannabis sativa

Cannabis sativa is an annual herbaceous plant in the Cannabaceae family. Humans have cultivated this herb throughout recorded history as a source of industrial fibre, seed oil, food, recreation, spiritual enlightenment and medicine...

), toloachi (Datura stramonium

Datura stramonium

Datura stramonium, known by the common names Jimson weed, devil's trumpet, devil's weed, thorn apple, tolguacha, Jamestown weed, stinkweed, locoweed, datura, pricklyburr, devil's cucumber, Hell's Bells, moonflower and, in South Africa, malpitte and mad seeds, is a common weed in the...

var. tatula), ayahuasca

Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca is any of various psychoactive infusions or decoctions prepared from the Banisteriopsis spp. vine, usually mixed with the leaves of dimethyltryptamine-containing species of shrubs from the Psychotria genus...

, colorines (Erythrina

Erythrina

Erythrina is a genus of flowering plants in the pea family, Fabaceae. It contains about 130 species, which are distributed in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. They are trees, growing up to in height...

and Sophora

Sophora

Sophora is a genus of about 45 species of small trees and shrubs in the subfamily Faboideae of the pea family, Fabaceae. The species are native to southeast Europe, southern Asia, Australasia, various islands in the Pacific Ocean, western South America, the western United States, the Southern US...

species), coztic-zapote (Pouteria campechiana), xomil-xihuite (Gelsemium sempervirens), camotillo (Dioscorea composita

Dioscorea composita

Dioscorea composita is a medicinal herb used in Ayurveda . The herb belongs to the family Dioscoreaceae.The herb is native of Mexico and has been domesticated in several tropical countries including India....

), and cohombrillo (Ecballium elaterium

Ecballium elaterium

Ecballium elaterium, also called the squirting cucumber or exploding cucumber, is a plant in the cucumber family. It gets its unusual name from the fact that, when ripe, it squirts a stream of mucilaginous liquid containing its seeds, which can be seen with the naked eye...

). The second edition also contained chicalote (supposedly obtained from a cross between Argemone mexicana

Argemone mexicana

Argemone mexicana is a species of poppy found in Mexico and now widely naturalized in the United States, India and Ethiopia...

and Papaver somniferum), minapatli (Sebastiania pavoniana, Mexican jumping bean

Mexican jumping bean

A Mexican jumping bean is an occurrence native to Mexico, where it is known as Frijoles saltarines . Physically, Mexican jumping beans resemble small beans, tan to brown in colour. They are a seed pod through which the larva of a small moth has chewed. The bean "jumps" because when it gets in a...

), and herbas locas (Dioon edule

Dioon edule

Dioon edule is a cycad native to Mexico, also known as palma de la Virgen.Two subspecies are known*Dioon edule subsp. angustifolium*Dioon edule subsp. edule- Dioon Edule var. Edule :...

, Astragalus amphyoxys, and Oxytropis lambertii

Oxytropis lambertii

Oxytropis lambertii is a species of flowering plant in the legume family known by several common names, including purple locoweed, woolly locoweed, and Lambert crazyweed.-Distribution:...

).

Victor A. Reko became a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences

Mexican Academy of Sciences

The Mexican Academy of Sciences is a non-profit organization comprising over 1800 distinguished Mexican scientists, attached to various institutions in the country, as well as a number of eminent foreign colleagues, including various Nobel Prize winners...

.