THE PHARMACOLOGY OF ZOMBIES

The anthropological and popular literature on Haiti is replete with references to

zombies. According to these accounts, zombies are the living dead: innocent
victims raised from their graves in a comatose trance by malevolent voodoo priests
(bOCOTS) and forced to toil indefinitely as slaves. Most authors have rather
uncritically assumed the phenomenon to be folklore. Nevertheless, virtually all
writers acknowledge that the majority of the Haitian population believes in the
physical reality of zombies. As long ago as 1938, Zora Hurston, a student of Franz
Boas at Columbia University, suggested that there could be a material basis for the
zombie phenomenon. Having visited what she believed to be a zombie in a
hospital near Gonaive, in north-central Haiti, she concluded that" it is not a case of
awakening the dead, but a matter of the semblance of death induced by some drug
known to a few: some secret probably brought from Africa and handed down from
generation to generation. The bOCOTS know the effect of the drug and the
antidote. It is evident that it destroys that part of the brain which governs speech
and willpower. The victim can move and act but cannot formulate thought."
Scientific interest in the zombie poison was rekindled recently by reported cases of
zombies under the care of Haitian psychiatrist Lamarque Douyon. In one case it
was suggested that the patient had been made a zombie by a bocor who had used
a poison. Physicians close to the case recognized that the correct dosage of the
proper drug could lower the metabolic rate of an individual to the point where he
would appear to be dead. Cognizant of the profound medical potential of such a
drug, they asked me in 1982 to investigate the composition of zombie poison in
Haiti.

During the course of three expeditions, the complete preparation of five poisons
used to make zombies was documented at four widely separated villages in Haiti.
Although a number of lizards, tarantulas, nonvenomous snakes, and millipedes are
added to the various preparations, there are five constant animal ingredients:
burned and ground-up human remains, a small tree frog, a polychaete worm, a
large New World toad, and one or more species of puffer fish. The most potent
ingredients are the puffer fish, which contain deadly nerve toxins known
astetrodotoxin. The effects of tetrodotoxin poisoning have been well documented.
The most famous source of puffer poisoning is the Japanese fugu fish. The
Japanese accept the risks of eating these fish because they enjoy the exhilarating
physiological aftereffects, which include sensations of warmth, flushing of the skin,
mild paresthesias of the tongue and lips, and euphoria.

The poisons I collected during my first two expeditions are currently being
analyzed. Preliminary experiments with rats and rhesus monkeys have been most
promising. Twenty minutes after a topical application ofthe poison to a monkey's
abdomen, the animal's typical aggressive behavior diminished and it assumed a
catatonic posture. It remained in a single position for nine hours. Recovery was
complete. These preliminary laboratory results, together with the biomedical
literature and data gathered in the field, indicate that there is an
ethnopharmacological basis for the zombie phenomenon. The toxins contained in
the puffer fish are capable of pharmacologically inducing physical states similar to
those characterized in Haiti as zombification.

From ethnopharmacological investigations, we know that the poison lowers the

metabolic rate of the victim almost to the point of death. Pronounced dead by
attending physicians who check only forsuperficial vital signs, and considered dead
by family members and by the zombie maker, the victim is buried alive.

The widespread belief in the existence of zombies in Haiti, however, is based on

those instances where the victim receives the correct dosage of the poison, wakes
up in the coffin, and is dragged out of the grave by the zombie maker. The victim,
affected by the drug and traumatized by the situation, is immediately beaten by the
zombie maker's assistants. He is then bound and led before a crossto be baptized
with a new zombie name. After the baptism, he ismade to eat a paste containing a
strong dose of a potent psychoactive drug (Datura Stramonium), known in Haiti as
"zombie cucumbers," which brings on a state of psychosis. During that intoxication,
the zombie is carried off.

Bibliography:

[Scientific Paper] THE PHARMACOLOGY OF ZOMBIES Excerpted from an article by E. Wade Davis in
the November 1983 issue of the Journal ot Ethnopharmacology. Davis is an ethnobotanist with the
Botanical Museum of Harvard University. A fuller account of the search for the Haitian zombie
poison will appear in his forthcoming book ,The Serpent and the Rainbow, to be published by
Simon & Schuster.