R&S: Spell-bound
Harry Potter, Hermione and the Weasley family practice spells every day at Hogwarts. But it’s nothing new - witches have been doing it for years. Our chemists Rebecca and Sarah tell you how to get the most out of your man-drake.
S - You should have seen my Halloween costume for that party I went to; I even had a proper broomstick. All the boys said it wasn’t much of a leap of imagination to picture me as a witch, but it got me to thinking that maybe once upon a time as a chemist I would have been considered a witch anyway.
R - Well becoming a witch means you have mastered the blending of science and spirituality. Science being everything real and based upon reason whereas spirituality is everything unseen and mysterious. So really, a bit of belief with some serious chemical reactions and we are modern day witches!
S - Maybe not something we want to boast about, although I don’t think they drown witches anymore! It’d be cool if we could cast spells though. What would you like most about being a witch?
R - It would have to be all the accessories! Wands were used to represent fire and are the life force of a witch! Far better than a Bunsen burner.
S - You can have the witch bling and I’ll make the potions. Like the shamans and druids before them, witches amassed a body of herbal and pharmacological knowledge. Their chemical expertise took two main forms: ritual drugs (to induce unconsciousness or hallucination) and medicinal drugs. Have you heard about mandrake?
R - I’ve heard that mandrake is making a bit of a come back with pharmaceutical companies, apparently it contains some rather powerful alkaloids that could be used in the treatment of HIV or even cancer!
S -
That’s right, the mandrake root looks like a carrot, but often resembles a human-like form. Folklore says it screams and bleeds when it is pulled from the ground and shouldn’t be touched when dug-up - the shriek is meant to be able to madden, deafen or even kill an unprotected human. Therefore, dogs were often used for this purpose. The root was used in love potions and has long been considered mysterious and magical.
R - Did they use it in any other ways?
S - Well revoltingly, witches would harvest the roots of plants from beneath gallow trees where unrepentant criminals had died and the plants had sprung up from their body drippings. They would then boil up the root into a fatty solution in a cauldron to produce an ointment that they would smeared over their body. A trance-like state would follow with the witch experiencing sensations of flying. That’s probably where the image of witches flying on broomsticks came from.
R - A bit like ergot, the winter sage, then! That may also have been used in flying potions because it contains several alkaloids, most of which are derivatives of lysergic acid. No wonder they thought they were flying! In fact many plants were seen as tools of witches - predominantly poisons admittedly! In Macbeth’s witches brew they used hemlock, a poisonous cousin of parsley that was believed to make men impotent. Also belladonna (deadly nightshade) was used by those who wished to foresee the future, but really it’s a source of the highly poisonous drug atropine, another alkaloid, which is now used widely as a muscle relaxant and mydriatic (to dilate the pupil) in the medical world.
S - I reckon we have lots to thank witches for. After all, what began as a search for ritual hallucinogens eventually turned into medicine, early forms of anaesthesia and even antidepressants.
R - Just a pity with all their magical powers they couldn’t cast a spell to get rid of all those warts and boils they had!
