This page respects the original work's rights terms and independently introduces its bibliography, abstract, main results, and limitations. It is not a full translation.
About this resource
This page was independently written from the publisher’s abstract, PubMed bibliographic information, and the range of ethnographic sources described by the author. Among the 10 resources in this collection, it is the broad review most directly adjacent to rapé. It is not, however, a modern study limited to hapé or rapé: it covers several routes of administration, tobacco species and preparations, and approximately 300 societies through the common theme of nicotine. It is neither a product analysis, a randomized trial, nor a modern systematic review.
Study design
The paper reviews approximately 1,800 sources concerning approximately 300 societies and classifies 6 principal routes, as well as several minor routes, of tobacco or nicotine use. It builds on the author’s 1987 book Tobacco and Shamanism in South America and compares ethnographic accounts with experimental and clinical literature on tobacco and nicotine.
The paper does not report a modern systematic search strategy, databases, inclusion and exclusion criteria, deduplication, or formal quality assessment. It is a narrative comparative essay and does not estimate incidence or causal effects.
Content
The review describes tobacco as embedded in magic and religion, medicine, and recreation, with many practices functionally connected to shamanism. It emphasizes the nicotine alkaloid and advances the hypothesis that multiple routes of use were shaped toward acute nicotine intoxication. “Intoxication” here is not a claim of beneficial efficacy; it denotes strong physiological exposure.
Nasal use is relevant to rapé but forms only one part of a much wider comparison. The review did not measure ash pH, total or free nicotine, tobacco-specific nitrosamines, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in products. Approximately 300 societies must not be treated as a single rapé culture: differences in names, materials, authority, and purposes remain important.
Results
The author interprets correspondences between ethnographic practices and known acute effects of nicotine and proposes that empirical observation informed shamanic healing practices and beliefs. He also argues that tobacco use in South America is more recent than shamanism: the drug did not create the religion, but an existing religious system gave meaning to its effects.
This is an important non-reductive proposal, but “corroborate” in the title does not mean that clinical efficacy was demonstrated. The clinical literature compared in the essay was not a set of treatment trials conducted in the Indigenous societies discussed.
Limitations
This is a short narrative review published in 1991, and much of its underlying ethnography is older. Colonial observer bias, translation, identification of materials, missing amounts or concentrations, and classification practices may affect the record. A corpus of approximately 1,800 sources is large, but volume alone does not ensure quality or present-day generalizability.
The proposition that Indigenous interest centered on nicotine is useful for comparison but may underweight ash, other plants, ritual, song, social relations, and cosmology. Juxtaposing ethnography with pharmacology does not establish causal evidence that a disease was treated. Modern commercial products also fall outside the study’s period and scope.
Safety
The reported pursuit of acute nicotine intoxication indicates strong exposure and possible adverse effects; it is not evidence of safety. The review provides no modern adverse-event surveillance, dependence assessment, cardiovascular evaluation, pregnancy analysis, comorbidity analysis, or long-term follow-up. Traditional use does not imply low risk.
This resource gives no guidance on routes, preparation, amount, or self-treatment. Cultural meaning, nicotine pharmacology, and the safety of modern products should be evaluated as distinct questions.
Source and rights
Original source: Wilbert J. Does pharmacology corroborate the nicotine therapy and practices of South American shamanism?. Journal of Ethnopharmacology. 1991;32(1–3):179–186. DOI: 10.1016/0378-8741(91)90115-T. PMID 1881155.
The article is under Elsevier copyright, and no license permitting free translation or adaptation was identified. This is an independent article and does not reproduce extended quotations, tables, or route-specific instructions.