Plant Intoxicants is a pioneering study of psychoactive plants and their role in society. Initially publisched in Nuremberg in 1855, it is one of the first books to examine the cultivation, preparation, and consumption of the world's major stimulants and inhebriants. Drawing on is own travel experiences as well as the writings of his predecessors, Baron Ernst von Bibra (1806-78) devotes a full chapter to each of seventeen plants, ranging from such mildd stimulants as coffee and tea, throiugh tobacco and hashish, to powered narcotics and hallucinogens such as opium and fly agaric (Amanita muscaria). Compllementing and enhancing von Bibra's work is a full annotation by his moderne-day counterpart Jonathan Ott, an ethnobotanist.