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|| issue #5 ?/96 (fuck time, eh?) ||
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\ || / BELOW: GREAT ARTICLE CONCERNING A DRUG CALLED SAPO \ || /
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the proceeding article is something i read many years ago and have since
dug up at the local library. i thought you people might dig it.
btw, does anyone even read this? if so, FUCKING TELL ME. you can reach
me at the bbses at the bottom of this file. ViP is the most reliable.
typed by: rapeman (who else, eh?) if there are inaccuracies it is because
i'm typing this from a lousy xerox. 99.9% is readable. i only wish i could
include the photographs.
the following is reprinted without permission from the july 1993 issue of
omni-
MAKING MAGIC
article by Peter Gorman
The night air in the backwater lowlands of the Peruvian Amazon was
thick with the incessant buzzing of insects. Overhead, bats flew, their
shapes silhouetted by a half moon rising behind the forest across the Rio
Lobo. Though the rainy season had begun the river was still near the low
point of the year, and great gnarled tree trunks, swept from the banks
during the last flood season, stood out against the water like monstrous
sculptures in the pale light. From beyond the jungle clearing of the tiny
Matses Indian puebla of San Juan came the howling of a distant band of
monkeys and the melancholy cry of the pheasant-like 'paujil'.
In the camp, a handful of Matses children played our flashlights into
the village trees, while their fathers combed the branches and nearby brush,
hunting for a 'dow-kiet!', the frog that secretes 'sapo', a vital element in
the Matses' pharmacopoeia. (Although the word 'sapo' means "toad" in
Spanish, the extract comes from a frog. The Matses' limited command of
Spanish doesn't draw a distinction between the two.) The men imitated the
frog's mating call, a low, guttural bark, as they moved, and the women nearby
giggled at the sound. I was suprised that the 'dow-kiet!'s didn't respond.
The Matses are a small, seminomadic, hunting-gathering tribe who live
in the remote jungle along the tributaries of the Rio Yavari, on the border
of Peru and Brazil. Unlike other tribes in the region, they possess only
rudimentary weaving and ceramics skills, they have no formal religion, no
ceremony or dance, and they produce nothing for trade. What they do is
hunt - with bows and arrows, spears, clubs, and occasionally shotguns when
they can get shells. Theirs is the harsh world of the lowland forests and
swamps, a world where malaria, yellow fever, and venomous snakes keep
mortality rates high. To survive, the Matses have become masters of the
natural history of the flora and fauna of the region.
They know the habits and cycles of the animals that share their land,
they've studied the plant life that surrounds them, and they've learned to
see the jungle as their ally. For the Matses, the earth is a benevolent
'ti-ta', or mother, who provides for all of their needs. Neighboring tribes
say the Matses can move like the wind and talk with the animals. They say
the Matses know the jungle's secrets. 'Sapo' is one of them.
I had come to Peru to collect 'dow-kiet!' specimens for researchers
at the American Museum of Natural History, for whom I've collected Matses
artifacts - mostly throwaway things like used leaf baskets and broken
arrows - and the Fidia Research institute for the Neurosciences in Rome. My
reports on the uses of 'sapo' had sparked interest and curiousity among
scientists who were eager to see a specimen of the frog that produces the
unusual material, in part because of the extraordinary experience it produced
it me and in part because of my description of its myriad uses. I was eager
to see the 'dow-kiet!' as well, because although I'd seen 'sapo' used and
had experienced it myself, I had never actually seen the frog that produces
it.
That Western science took an interest in 'sapo' is encouraging.
Until recently, most researchers have dismissed the natural medicines of
indigenous groups like the Matses. Fortunately, that attitude is changing,
but with the loss of an average of one tribe a year in Amazonia alone - to
acculturation, disease, or loss of their forest homes - the plant and animal
medicines of these peoples are disappearing faster than they can be studied.
The Matses are one of the tribes currently at risk. During the
eight years I've been visiting their camps, bothe missionary and military
contact have been steadily increasing, and they're quickly acculturating
to a new lifestyle. Camps that planted no more than two or three crops to
supplement their diet of game and wild foods just a few years ago now plant
a dozen or more. And where most Matses had only a handful of manufactured
things when I first met them - some clothing, a few meatl pots, a machete,
and perhaps and old shotgun - in some camps the men now work for loggers, and
the sound of chain saws fills the air. At San Juan, the most accessible camp
on the Lobo, most of the Matses not only have new Western clothing, they have
begun to refer to Matses who live deep in the jungle as 'animales'.
This is a very different group from the first Matses I ran into in
1984. It was my second trip to Peruvian Amazonia - I'd fallen in love with
the jungle on my first trip - and I was studying food gathering and plant
identification with my guide, Moises, a former military man who specialized
in jungle survival. We had been working on a small river called the
Auchyako for about a weeks when we ran into local hunters who said they had
seen signs that a family of Matses had moved into the area. Moises, excited
by the news, said we should make an attempt to meet them.
I was easily sold on the idea; so, hoping they would make contact,
we hiked three days into the jungle and made a camp. Two days later, a
young Matses hunter carrying a bow and arrows, his mouth tatooed and his face
adorned with what looked like cat whiskers, came into our camp and borrowed
our gun.
When he returned later in the day, he was carrying two large wounded
monkeys in palm-leaf baskets he carried from his forehead with templines.
Clinging to his hair, was a baby monkey, the offspring of one of the adults.
The hunter returned our gun, left one of the monkeys and then disappeared
into the forest. We followed him back to his camp and watched from a
distance as he gave the remaining adult to a woman who began to roast it
over an open fire, oblivious to its cries. The baby monkey he brought to a
young woman who was nursing a child of her own. Without, hesitation, she
took the monkey and allowed it to nurse at her free breast.
Those dual images represented a combination of cruelty and compassion
I'd never imagined and taught me more about the reality of the jungle than
anything I had previously experienced. More than that, those images
compelled me to return to the Matses again and again.
I first met Pablo in 1986 on my third trip to the Amazon. Moises
and I had flown over the dense Peruvian jungle from Iquitos to the Rio Lobo,
borrowed a small boat, and made our way to his camp. Pablo was Moises'
closest friend among the Matses, an adept hunter who fiercely resisted
acculturation. The village, several days upriver and much more remote than
San Juan, was home to Pablo, his four wives, their 22 children, and his
brother Alberto, who had two wives and six children. Each wife had her own
hut, so there were several in the puebla. When we arrived, we were invited
to climb the steep and muddy riverbank to the puebla. There, Pablo's main
wife, Ma Shu, served us a meal of cold roast sloth and yucca.
After dinner, Pablo produced an old brown beer bottle and a hollow
reed tube. From the bottle he poured a fine green powder into his hand and
worked it into one end of the tube. Alberto put the other end of the tube to
his nose and Pablo blew the powder into his nostils. They repeated the
process several times. Moises explained that the powder was 'nu-nu' and that
Matses hunters used it to have visions of where to hunt. He said that after
the visions they would go to the place they'd seen and wait for the animals
in the vision to appear. I told Moises he was dreaming, but he insisted that
was what happened and pressed Pablo to give me some. A few minutes later,
the tube was put to my nose.
When the 'nu-nu' hit, it seeme to explode inside my face. It burnt
my nose and I began to choke up a wretched green phlegm. But the pain
quickly subsided and I closed my eyes. Out of the blackness I began to have
visions of animals - tapir, monkey, wild boar - that I saw more clearly than
my limited experience with them should have allowed. Then suddenly the boars
stampeded in front of me. As I watched them thunder past my field of vision,
several began to fall. Moments later, the visions faded, and a pleasant sort
of drunkenness washed over me.
Moises asked what I saw and whether I recognized the place where the
visions happened. I told him it looked like the place where we'd eaten lunch
earlier in the day. He asked what time it was in the vision, and I told him
that the sun was shining but mist still hung from the trees. He put the time
between 7 and 8 a.m. Despite my suspicion that I'd invented the entire ]
vision, Moises told the Matses what I'd seen.
At dawn the next morning, several of us piled into our boat and
headed toward the spot I'd described. As we neared it, I was astounded to
hear the thunderous roar of dozens of boars charging across the river in
front of us. We jumped out of the boat and chased them. Several ran into a
hollow log and Pablo and Alberto blocked the ends with thick branches while
the others made nooses out of vines. Holes were cut into the top of the log
with a machete, the nooses slipped through them, and the boars strangled. We
returned with seven boars, enough meat for the entire village for four days.
Improbable as it seemed, the scene was close enough to what I'd
described that there was no denying the veracity of the vision. I later
asked how 'nu-nu' worked, and Pablo explained - in a mix of hand signals,
Matses, and pidgin Spanish - that 'nu-nu' put you in touch with the animals.
He said the animals' spirits also see the visions and know what awaits them.
The morning after the hunt, I was with Pablo, sitting on the bark
floor of Ma shu's hut, pointing to things and asking what the Matses words
for them were. I made notes, writing down the phonetic spelling of things
like bow, arrow, spear, and hammock. Pablo was utterly bored with the
exercise until I pointed to a small leaf bag that hung over a cooking fire.
"Sapo," he said, his eyes brightening.
From the bag he pulled a piece of split bamboo, roughly the size of
a doctor's tongue depressor. It was covered with what looked like a thick
coat of aging varnish. "Sapo," he repeated, scraping a little of the
materia. from the stick and mixing it with saliva. When he was finished, it
had the consistency and color of green mustard. Then he pulled a smoldering
twig from the fire, grabbed my left wrist tightly. The burn mark was about
the size of a match head. I looked at Moises. "Una nueva medicina," he
said, shaking his head, "I've never seen it."
Remembering the extraordinary experience I'd had with 'nu-nu', I let
Pablo burn my arm a second time. He scraped away the burned skin, then
dabbed a little of the 'sapo' onto the exposed areas. Instantly my body
began to heat up. In seconds I was burning from the insided and regretted
allowing him to give me a medicine I knew nothing about. I began to sweat.
My blood began to race. My heart pounded. I became acutely aware of every
vein and artery in my body and could feel them opeing to allow for the
fantastic pulse of my blood. My stomach cramped and I vomited violently. I
lost control of my bodily functions and began to urinate and defecate. I
fell to the ground. Then, unexpectedly, I found myself growling and moving
about on all fours. I felt as though animals were passing through me, trying
to express themselves through my body. It was a fantastic feeling but it
passed quickly, and I could think of nothing but the rushing of my blood, a
sensation so intense that I thought my heart would burst. The rushing got
faster and faster. I was in agony. I gasped for breath. Slowly, the
pounding became steady and rhythmic, and when it finally subsided altogether,
I was overcome with exhaustion. I slept where I was.
When I awoke a few hours later, I heard voices. But as I came to my
senses, I realized I was alone. I looked around and saw that I had been
washed off and put into my hammock. I stood and walked to the edge of the
hut's unwalled platform floor and realized that the conversation I was
overhearing was between two of Pablo's wives who were standing nearly 20
yards away. I didn't understand their dialect, of course, but I was
surprised to even hear them from that distance. I walked to the other side
of the platform and looked out into the jungle; its noises, too, were clearer
than usual.
And it wasn't just my hearing that had been improved. My vision, my
sense of smell, everything about me felt larger than life, and my body felt
immensely strong. That evening I explained what I was feeling with hand
gestures as much as lanuguage. Pablo smiled, "Bi-ram-bo sapo," he said,
"fuerte." It was good 'sapo'. Strong.
During the next few days, my feeling of strength didn't diminish; I
could go whole days without being hungry or thirsty and move through the
jungle for hours without tiring. Every sense I possessed was heightened and
in tune with the environment, as though the 'sapo' put the rhythm of the
jungle into my blood.
I aked Pablo about 'sapo''s uses and discovered there were several.
Among hunters, it was used both to sharpen the the senses and as a way to
increase stamina during long hunts when carrying food and water was
difficult. In large doses, it could make a Matses hunter "invisible" to
poor-sighted animals by temporarily eliminating their human odor. As a
medicine, 'sapo' also had multiple uses, serving as a tonic to cleanse and
strengthen the body and as a toxin purge for those with the grippe.
The women explained that they sometimes used 'sapo' as well. I
sparing doses applied to the inside of the wrist it could establish whether
a woman was pregnant or not. And during the later stages of pregnancy, it
was used to establish the sex and health of a fetus. Interpreting the
information relied on an investigation of the urine a woman discharged
following the application of the medicine: Cloudiness or other discoloration
of the urine and the presence or absence of specks of blood were all
evidently indicators of the fetus's condition. In cases where an unhealthy
fetus was discovered, a large dose of 'sapo' applied to the vaginal area was
used as an abortive. There was no way for me to verify what they said,
though there was no reason to doubt them.
When I asked Pablo how the Matses learned about 'sapo', he said the
'dow-kiet!' told them. Whether he meant the frog told them through their
study of its behavior and habits or whether he believed he was in
communication with it on some level, I don't know.
When I returned to New York, I was surprised to find that my
description of 'nu-nu' was old hat to the anthropologists I spoke with at the
American Museum of Natural History - several tribes evidently employed
similar snuffs for shamanic purposes. What did surprise them, however, was
my account of 'sapo'. None of them had ever heard of it, and while several
South American tribes have hunting myths about frogs, there were no records
of the Matses or any other tribe utilizing a frog's secretions in the way I
described. But while my report was considered interesting, it was also
inadequate, as I had no photographs of the frog and no sample of the
medicine.
The following year I returned to Pablo's village and discovered that
'sapo' was also used as a shamanic tool. It was spring and the lowlands were
flooded. Game had retreated deep into the forest to seasonal lagoons, so
hunting was difficult, and even 'nu-nu' failed to produce hunting visions.
When I arrived, the Matses hadn't eaten meat for several days.
Pablo explained that when the river was so high, it was trapping
season and that he was about to set a 'tem-po-te!', a tapir trap. He had
been giving himself five 'sapo' burns each morning and night for three days
in preparation for the task and would continue until the trap was successful.
Pablo explained, as well as I could understand it, that 'sapo', used in such
large doses, allowed a hunter to project his 'animas' - his spirit - to his
trap while he slept. The animas would take the form of a tapir and lure real
tapir to it.
The day after we arrived, Moises and I went into the jungle with
Pablo and Alberto. We walked for almost two hours before Pablo found a
suitable site and began to construct the trap, a simple spring device set
between two trees. Pablo called to the tapir while he worked, telling it
what a special path he was making. He called to the other animals as well,
warning them to stay away, to leave this place for his friend. When he
finished the trap, he chewed handfuls of leaves and spit them out across the
trip vine, both to cover his human scent and as a signpost so that his
'animas' could find it at night.
As we were returning to the puebla. Alberto explained that traps
were only set when there was no other way to get meat, because once a trap
was set, no other animals could be hunted. When I asked why, he explained
that animals talk to each other and that killing them provokes their spirits,
ruining the trap. Seeing that I didn't understand, Pablo added that when he
sent out his 'animas' masquerading as a tapir, the provoked spirits would
warn the prey that what they saw was not a real tapir but a Matses' 'animas'
in disguise. Exceptions to the taboo were large river turtles and sloth -
the turtle because it doesn't bother to talk to other animals and the sloth
because it speaks so slowly that by the time it says what's on its mind, the
river has fallen and trapping time is over.
During the next two days, Pablo never returned to the trap, although
he continued using massive doses of 'sapo'. But on the moring of the third
day, he awakened us before dawn and said he had a 'nu-nu' vision that the
trap was about to be sprung. He was insistent that we hurry.
The Matses moved through the forest effortlessly, almost at a jog,
and the women chided me for having to struggle to keep up. But as we neared
the trap area, everyone stopped and grew absolutely quiet. Pablo's eyes
blazed. "Petro," he whispered to me excitedly, "tian-te, tem-po-te!," A
tapir was about to be trapped.
We waited about ten minutes, then heard a sharp snap, followed by an
agonizing animal scream. Suddenly, everyone began running toward the trap.
The wounded and disoriented tapir crashed through the brush, bellowing in
pain, then fell into a stream bed. The women caught up with it, killed it,
and began to cut it up. While they did, Pablo brought me to the sprung trap
and gave me the bloody spike.
Back in camp we feasted. Afterwards, I asked Pablo for a sample of
'sapo', but he'd been using so much to prepare for the hunt that he had none
to give me. So once again I returned to the states with no hard evidence of
the existence of the 'dow-kiet!'.
It took two more tips to Peru before I finally managed to secure a
small amount of 'sapo', and when I finally did, I gave half of the stick to
Charles Myers, the curator of the museum's Herpetology Department, who passed
it on to John Daly at the National Institutes of Health. Having finally
produced the material I'd frequently talked about, my reports began to
circulate and prompted a letter from Vittorio Erspamer, a pharmacologist who
worked with the Fidia Research Institute for the Neurosciences. He wondered
whether 'sapo' might not come from one of a number of frogs he'd randomly
collected in Amazonia several years earlier. Research done on the chemicals
found that their skin had shown that several produced peptides - proteins -
that were similar to peptides produced by humans. If it could be shown, he
wrote, that one of those frogs was already in use by humans, it would be an
important scientific breakthrough. I wrote back and offered to provide him
with a specimen if I ever managed to collect one.
A year after Erspamer's letter reached me, I traveled back to the
Lobo with Moises. We hiked across the jungle to Pablo's, discoverd his
burned camp, and moved down the river where happily we found hims at San
Juan. "Malo casadores," Moises snarled, after we'd been watching the men of
San Juan trying to find a 'dow-kiet!' for nearly an hour. "Bad hunters
Everything is changed with them. They're finished." He was still grumbling
about the state of the Matses when I heard Pablo calling me. "Petro!
Dow-kiet! Petro?" He was standing on a hill at the back of the puebla with
Pa Mi Shua and two of his children. "Bi-ram-bo, Pablo!" laughed. "Bi-ram-bo
dow-kiet!," Yes, I would would like a 'dow-kiet!'.
Pablo laughed and began to bark out the frog's mating call. The
other men in the camp stopped their hunting and watched him. Between the
guttural barking noises he was making we could hear him berating the frogs
for making the hunt so difficult. Pa Mi Shua and his children, walking
alongside him on the path toward the center of camp, roared at his antics.
Suddenly Pablo stood and stiffened. From the grasses on the side of
the path came the same sound Pablo was making. He barked again, and again
his call was returned. Then a second frog joined the first, and a third, and
suddenly the whole camp seemed to resound with the barking of 'dow-kiet!s'.
Pablo bent down and picked one up. "Mas dow-kiet!, Petro?" More, Peter? I
laughed and said yes. He bent down and picked up another. "Mas? Bastante
'sapo', Petro?" More? Did I want a lot of 'sapo'?
I told him two were enough, and he came into the camp, a frog in each
hand. He gave one of them to me. It was beautiful. A little smaller than
my palm, it had an extraordinary electric-green back, a lightly spotted white
underside, and deep black eyes. It grasped my fingers tightly, and in
seconds I could feel my blood begin to heat up as the 'sapo' it was secreting
began to seep into the small cuts that covered my hands. I quickly put it
down. Pablo giggled with delight, then broke a small branch from a tree and
placed both 'dow-kiet!s' on it, hilariously imitating my reaction.
One of the Matses men collected four sticks and stood them in the
ground, making a small square. Another pulled apart some palm leaves,
stripped out the fibers and rolled them into strings against his leg. He
handed four of them to Pablo, who tied one to each of one frog's legs, then
tied the free ends to the four posts, suspending the animal like some strange
green trampoline. Once the frog was secure, Pa Mi Shua knelt and gently
began to manipulate the frog's elongated center toe between her fingers,
stimulating it to secrete 'sapo'. It was an unexpectedly sexual iamge, and
the men joked about it. Pa Mi Shua blushed and told them to be quiet.
The man who had placed the sticks in the groung disappeared into his
hut for a moment, then returned with a piece of split bamboo. He began to
scrape the suspended frog's sides and legs, collecting 'sapo'. When the
stick was covered, he dried out the secretions over our tiny kerosene lamp
and then gave the stick to me.
That night, both frogs were tied by one leg to a low tree branch to
keep them from escaping, and in the morning, the 'sapo' from the second frog
was collected. Neither was hurt by the process, and if I hadn't been taking
the two specimens back to the States, they would have been set free.
One of the frogs died shortly after I returned home, and I gave its
skeleton along with part of the 'sapo' sample and some photographs to the
Natural History museum. The healthy 'dow-kiet!' along with a second 'sapo'
sample and similar photos was setn to Erspamer in Rome. Six months later, I
received his report. He was very excited.
He identified the 'dow-kiet!' as a 'phyllomedusa bicolor', a rare
arboreal tree frog. The 'sapo', he said is a sort of fantastic chemical
cocktail with potential medical applications. "No other amphibian skin can
compete with it," he wrote. "Up to seven percent of 'sapo's' weight is in
potently active peptides, easily absorbed through burned, inflamed, areas of
the skin." He explained that among the several dozen peptides found in
'sapo', seven were bioactive - which meant that each has an affinity and
selectivity for binding with receptor sites in humans. (A receptor is like
a lock that when opened with the right key - the bioactive peptides -
triggers chemical reactions in the body.) The peptide families represented
in the 'dow-kiet!' include bradykinins, tachykinins, caerulein, sauvagine,
tryptophyllins, dermorphins, and bombesins.
Based on the concentrations and functions of the peptides found in
and extracted from the 'sapo' sample I sent, Erspamer was able to account
for all the physical symptoms I described as 'sapo' intoxication. On the
peripheral effects, Erspamer reported, "Caerulein and the equiactive
phyllocaerulein display a potent action on the gastrointestinal smooth muscle
and gastric and pancreatic secretions....Side effects observed (in
volunteer patients with postoperative intestinal atony) were nausea,
vomiting, facial flush, mild tachycardia (heart palpitations), changes in
blood pressure, sweating, abdominal discomfort, and the urge for defecation."
Phyllomedusin, a new peptide of the tachykinin family, strongly
affects the salivary glands, tear ducts, intestines, and bowels, and
contributed to the violent purging I experienced. Sauvagine causes a long-
lasting fall in blood pressure, accompanied by severe tachycardia and
stimulation of the adrenal cortex, which contributed to the satiety,
heightened sensory perception, and increased stamina I described. Phylloki-
nin, a new peptide of the bradykinin family, is a potent blood-vessel dilator
and accounted for the intense rushing in my blood during the initial phase of
'sapo' intoxication.
"It may be reasonably concluded," Erspamer worte, "that the intense
peripheral cardiovascular and gastrointestinal symptoms observed in the early
phase of 'sapo' intoxication may be entirely acribed to the know bioactive
peptides occuring in large amounts in the frog material."
As to 'sapo's' central effects, he wrote, "Increase in physical
strengths, enhanced resistance to hunger and thirst, and more generally,
increase in the capacity to face stress situations may be explained by the
presence of caerulein and sauvagine in the drug." Caerulein in humans
produces "an analgesic effect....possibly related to release of beta-
endorphins....in patients suffering from renal colic, rest pain due to
peripheral vascular insufficiency (limited circulation), and even cancer
pain." Additionally, "it caused in human volunteers a significant reduction
in hunger and food intake."
The sauvagine extracted from the 'sapo' was given subcutaneously to
rats and caused "release of corticotropin (a hormone that triggers the
release of substances from the adrenal gland) from the pituitary, with
consequent activation of the pituitary-adrenal axis." This axis is the
chemical communication link between the pituitary and the adrenal glands,
which controls our flight-or-fight mechanism. The effects on the pituitary-
adrenal axis caused by the minimal doses given the laboratory rodents lasted
several hours. Erspamer noted that the volume of sauvagine found in the
large quantities of 'sapo' I described the Matses using would potentially
have a much longer effect on humans and would explain why my feelings of
strength and heightened sensory perception after 'sapo' use lasted for
several days.
But on the question of the "magical" effects I described in tapir
trapping, Erspamer says that "no hallucinations, visions, or 'magic' effects
are produced by the known peptide components of 'sapo'." He adding that
"the question remains unsolved" whether those effects - specifically, the
feeling that animals were passing through me and Pablo's description of
'animas' projection - were due to "the sniffing of other drugs having
hallucinogenic effects," particularly 'nu-nu'.
With regard to 'sapo's' uses relating to pregnancy, Erspamer did not
address any of the issues but abortion: "Abortion ascribed to 'sapo' may be
due either to direct effect of the peptide cocktail on the uterine smooth
muscle or, more likely, to the intense pelvic vasodilation and the general
violent physical reaction to the drug."
Fromt the medical-potential point of view, Erspamer said several
aspects of 'sapo' are of interest. He suggested that two of its peptides,
phyllomedusin and phyllokinin have such a pronounced affect on the dilation
of blood vessels that they "may increase the permeability of the blood-brain
barrier, thus facilitating access to the bvrain not only of themselves, but
also of the other active peptides." Finding a key to unlocking the secret
of passing that barrrier is vital to the discovery of how to get medicines
to the brain and could one day contribute to the development of treatments
for AIDS, Alzheimer's, and other disorders that threaten the brain.
There is also medicinal potential in dermorphin and deltorphin, two
other peptides found in 'sapo'. Both are potent opioid peptides, almost
identical to the beta-endorphins the human body produced to counter pain,
and similar to the opiates found in morphine. Because they mirror beta-
endorphins, however, 'sapo's' opioid peptides could potentially function in
a more precise manner than opiates. Additionally, while dermorphin and
deltorphin are considerably stronger than morphine (18 and 39 times,
respectively), because of their similarities to the naturally produced beta-
endorphin, the development of tolerance would be considerably lower and
withdrawal less severe than to opiates.
Both phyllocaerulein and sauvagine possess medical potential as
digestive aids to assist those receiving treatment for cancer. Other areas
of potential medical interest in the peptides found in 'sapo' include their
possible use as antiinflammatories, as blood-pressure regulators, and as
stimulators of the pituitary gland.
The only report thus far on 'sapo' from John Daly's team at the
National Institutes of Health (written with seven coauthors, including
Katharine Milton, who recently discovered the use of the 'phyllomedusa
bicolor' among several tribes closely related to the Matses) was recently
published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(November 14, 1992) and concentrates exclusively on a newly discovered
peptides found in 'sapo'. One of the chemical fractions Daly's team isolated
is a 33-amino-acid-long peptide he calls adenoregulin, which may provide a
key to manipulating cellular receptors for adenosine, a fundamental component
in all human cell fuel. "Peptides that either enhance or inhibit binding of
adenosine analogs to brain adenosine receptors proved to be present in
extracts of the dried skin scretion," Daly wrote. According to and
interpretive report on the Daly paper written by Ivan Amato and published in
_Science_ (November 20, 1992), "Preliminary animal studies by researchers at
Warner-Lambert have hinted that those receptors, which are distributed
throughout the brains of mammals, could offer a target for treating
depression, stroke, seizures, and cognitive loss in ailments such as
Alzheimer's disease."
Of course, medical potential only infrequently results directly in
new medicines. Science may not be able to isolate or duplicate the peptides
found in 'sapo', or side effects may be discovered that would decrease their
value as medicines. But even if 'sapo's' components do not eventually serve
as prototypes for new drugs, 'sapo' will become an important pharmacological
tool in the study of receptors and the chemical reactions they trigger.
Certainly the study of the unique activity of 'sapo's' bioactive peptides
will advance our knowledge of the human body. Additionally, as possibly the
first zoologically derived medicine used by tribals ever investigated for
Western medical potential, 'sapo' will help open the door to a whole new
field of investigation.
Unfortunately, while science catches up to the natural medicines of
tribal peoples, time is running out. That Pablo was the only man at San Juan
still able to draw a response from the 'dow-kiet!' is an indication that most
Matses no longer rely on it. And we have no way of knowing how many other
medicines the Matses - and others - once used but have abandoned, which might
also have been valuable to us.
We know that nearly 80 percent of the world's population relies on
natural medicines for its primary healthcare. Investigations into a small
portion of them have already provided us with hundreds of durgs, from aspirin
and atropine to digitalis and quinine. Fully 70 percent of the antitumor
drugs used in the treatment of cancers are derived from traditional medicines
as well. Yet out investigations have hardly begun. Obviously, there is much
to learn from people like the Matses before acculturation strips them of
their knowledge. It remains to be seen whether the discoveries that have
begun to be made in connection with 'sapo' spark the interest of
investigators - while there is still time to learn it.
contact me at the distro sites:
vip------------------(214)494-1024
negativland----------(214)867-1914
or these other fine bbses: hacker's haven-------(303)343-4053
one jillion degrees--(817)732-3457
the nine hells-------(817)346-3370
grp_eot
