| The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Wade Davis |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Zombies |
| Genre(s) | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
| Publication date | 1985 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 304 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0684839295 |
| OCLC Number | 37462868 |
The Serpent and the Rainbow is a book (1985) by ethnobotanist and researcher Wade Davis. He investigated Haitian Vodou and the process of making zombies. He studied ethnobotanical poisons, discovering their use in a reported case of a contemporary zombie, Clairvius Narcisse.
The book inspired a dramatic horror film, The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988). Davis was very vocal about his displeasure with the final result.
According to the book, there is an assortment of ingredients to Haitian zombie powder including puffer fish, matter from a corpse (specifically to Davis' adventure in Haiti, the bocor, Haitian shaman, crushed the skull of a deceased infant, that had been dead for a month or two, and added it to the poison), freshly killed blue lizards, a large dried toad (Bafus marinus) with a dried sea worm wrapped around it (prepared beforehand), "tcha-tcha" (Albizzia), and "itching pea" (pois grater, a species of Mucuna).[1]
Davis' claims were criticized for a number of scientific inaccuracies.[2] Scientists doubted his assertion that Haitian witchdoctors could keep zombies in a state of pharmacologically induced trance for many years.[3] In 1988, a response from Davis was published in the journal Science in which he reviewed the reasons for the Voodoo Science article's harsh criticism and suggested a number of reasons that its conclusions may not have applied to his findings including the variability of formulations, possible errors in the testing performed on the samples he brought back, the possibility that the tetrodotoxin-based mixture may have had ingredients that improved blood-brain barrier transmission of the tetrodotoxin, and the nature of folk medicine with respect to success rates (i.e. that very few successes are required in order to establish credibility).[4]
Davis presented the case of Clairvius Narcisse, a man who had been a zombie for 2 years, as showing that the zombification process was more likely the result of a complex interaction of tetrodotoxin, a powerful hallucinogen called Datura, and cultural forces and beliefs.[5]
In the book, Davis does not suggest that the zombie powder containing tetrodotoxin was used for maintaining "mental slaves" but for producing the initial death and resurrection that convinced the victim and those who knew them that they had become zombies. The zombies, such as Clairvius Narcisse, were kept biddable by regular doses of the poisonous zombi cucumber, Datura stramonium which produces amnesia, delirium and suggestibility.
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