User:MycoMutant/sandbox3

(Too much to add to biography page, better for history of mushrooms in Australia or some such and just take relevant parts for bio)

In 1973 Aberdeen returned to the Department of Primary Industries where he continued his research into plant pathology. One of his duties in this position was liaising with the Queensland Police Service in their investigations of 'offences' related to the use of psychedelic mushrooms however after retiring in 1973 he pursued his pre-existing interest into the taxonomy of these fungi which had begun decades earlier.

In 1958 Aberdeen collaborated with W.Jones to write the paper entitled  'A hallucinogenic toadstool' published in the Australian Journal of Science. They described the distribution of Psilocybe cubensis across the valleys of Queensland and New South Wales. Public interest and awareness of psychoactive mushrooms in Australia was only just starting around this period following John Burton Cleland's documentation of Psilocybe mushrooms in Australia in 1934. This was the first account of psychotropic mushrooms in Australia but during the 1940s several accounts of 'hysterical psychoses' were recorded with numerous

Panaeolus ovatus was a proposed psilocybin containing mushroom species described from Australia which was also known as the hysteria fungus after a number of accidental intoxications. At the time, little was known about psychedelic mushrooms and so the psychoactive effects consumption caused were alarming and confusing to people which resulted in something of a media circus with excessive coverage of the handful of incidents resulting in a perception of more risk than actually existed. This can be seen in the cases of serious and sometimes fatal mushroom poisonings which did occur around this period but only received summary attention.

Taxonomy
Agaricus ovatus was first described by the British mycologists Mordecai Cubitt Cooke & George Edward Massee in 1889 in their paper entitled  'New Australian Fungi'. Cooke and Massee wrote that it was found growing on manure in and around Yarra, Victoria by the amateur botanist and collector Henry Tisdall. However the classification was illegitimate as Agaricus ovatus had already been used by the Italian mycologist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli a century earlier to describe another species. In the same year the Italian mycologist Pier Andrea Saccardo classified the species with the new replacement name Panaeolus ovatus.

In early 1915 mushrooms were found growing in cow manure by a collector in Dee Why, just North of Sydney and sent to John Burton Cleland and Edwin Cheel who identified it as ''Panaeolus ovatus.  Cleland included Panaeolus ovatus in his 1934 book entitled  'Toadstools and Mushrooms and other Larger Fungi of South Australia'''.

Panaeolus or 'hysteria fungus' in Australia
Through the 1940s and early 1950s the Australian media was gripped by an apparent surge of accidental intoxication by psychoactive mushrooms for which the species responsible was thought to be Panaeolus ovatus also called the hysteria fungus, hysteria mushroom or hysteria toadstool.

Foraging for mushrooms was a relatively common thing to do during this period with newspapers regularly reporting on the subject of mushroom hunting, heavy rains leading to good yields and even people simply finding large mushrooms. Newspapers contained mushrooms recipes and children living on farms wrote in to describe their joy of hunting for mushrooms. Such stories were common during this period however knowledge about mushrooms was not. Most people were only gathering horse or field mushrooms, which were then known as Psalliota arvensis and Psalliota campestris and now considered Agaricus species. Little distinction was made between these two species or any other Agaricus and when information to distinguish them was provided it was often incorrect such as conflating Agaricus arvensis with Agaricus xanthodermus. Stories from this period routinely use 'mushroom' to refer to edible Agaricus species and 'toadstool' to refer to everything else as was the colloquial knowledge at the time.

Even as late at 1950 some were recommending folk tests like boiling the mushrooms with a silver coin to determine whether they were safe to eat. The theory was that if the silver discoloured black then they were poisonous toadstools, if not they were edible mushrooms, needless to say this test does not work and cannot be relied upon to determine whether a mushroom is safe to eat.

It is likely that this lack of knowledge and general ignorance about mushrooms helped fuel the spate of accidental intoxication and the media fervour which arose from these incidents.

"'The type with pink gills under the cup, changing to black or purplish black, were invariably safe under Western Australian conditions. The type growing under trees should be looked upon with suspicion, while those growing in cow manure were generally all right.'"

The Panaeolus Hysteria Period
In April of 1941 stories about the mushrooms emerged in newspapers when a number of people became accidentally intoxicated in January of that year around Murwillumbah on the far North coast of New South Wales. The cases were documented in the The Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales with patients described as becoming 'uncontrollably hilarious' and making 'foolish remarks' and the symptoms were compared to alcohol intoxication. The story received widespread coverage in papers around New South Wales during the next few weeks and also made it to the other side of the country via a Perth newspaper. In some cases vomiting was also reported however whether the patients were prescribed an emetic (as they often are in subsequent cases) is not recorded. "'Before long the patients became uncontrollably hilarious and displayed symptoms resembling acute alcoholic intoxication. There was difficulty in standing or walking and incoherent and foolish remarks were made.'"

On 1944 April 29 James Elphinston Trotter, the superintendent of Nambour hospital published  'A Report of Nine Cases of Fungus Poisoning' in the Medical Journal of Australia. The report detailed the cases of two mushroom collectors who had inadvertently fed Panaeolus ovatus mushrooms to their friends or family. The first incident occurred on 24 November 1943 when four patients were admitted to the hospital two hours after consuming mushrooms collected from a paddock in Eudlo, Queensland that was filled with large amounts of cow manure. Symptoms occurred within twenty minutes of eating the mushrooms and they developing numbness in their arms and legs, becoming 'almost hysterical' and seeing 'coloured lights'. The one male member of the party 'Mr. M.' was quoted as saying it felt like he 'had been on a bender'. Zinc sulphate was administered as an emetic and the symptoms were said to 'rapidly clear away' after vomiting. They were discharged from hospital the next day on 25 November.

Samples of the mushrooms they had collected were sent to Desmond Herbert, a lecturer in botany at the University of Queensland. Herbert identified the mushrooms as 'one of the numerous varieties of horse mushroom, Psalliota arvensis ' whilst noting that cases of mushroom intoxication had occurred due to the accidental inclusion of Panaoelus ovatus or 'hysteria fungus' amongst the edible mushrooms.

The second incident occurred on 18 December 1943 when five patients from nearby Montville developed identical symptoms after consuming mushrooms and were likewise admitted to Nambour hospital. One of the patients was briefly able to state that the symptoms were like those of alcoholic intoxication. Symptoms abated soon after an emetic was administered and the patients were discharged eight hours after being admitted.

(add media coverage stuff here)

and dr. Trotter issued a warning to mushroom hunters over the risk of confusing Panaeolus ovatus with edible Agaricus species. - not actually mentioned in journal, probably newspapers misquoting

In May, stories of the 'hysteria fungus' again started to spread based on this report with articles describing a party of four in Nambour, Queensland who accidentally consumed the mushrooms in November 1943. The group were admitted to hospital when they started 'seeing colored lights', developed numbness in their hands and feet and became 'almost hysterical' with laughter. The one male victim amongst them was quoted as saying the experience felt like 'he had been on a bender'. The mushrooms the party had consumed were sent to the University of Queenland for identification but were only labelled, incorrectly, as something belonging to the 'family of horse mushrooms'. Shortly afterwards, on December 18 five more people in the neighbouring town of Montville were admitted to hospital with symptoms similar to alcohol intoxication. dd

(October of that year - add are you sure its a mushroom bits )

1942 March 14. - Three patients. Dr. H.K. Shaw of Buderim Mountains. Same symptoms. Also emetic.

MJA:

Nambour, Queensland is the location of J.E . Trotter, presumably in the hospital in Nambour. Does not specify where the patients lived.

1943 November 24. - party of four - mushrooms collected from a heavily cow manured paddock in Eudlo - 'bender' description from only male name of Mr. M.

'Parson got drunk on toadstools' story seems to cite MJA 29th April regarding Nambour incident in November. Mr. M may have been the parson

Discharged from hospital November 25th. Mushroom samples forwarded to Desmond Herbert of the University of Queensland. Identified it as 'one of the numerous varities of horse mushroom, Psalliota arvensis.' Also said 'cases of mushroom intoxication in Northern New South Wales have been traced to the accidental inclusion of the hysteria fungus, Panoeolus ovatus, a more hemispherical type found growing in dung.'

Herbert also cited in are you sure its a mushroom with drawings.

1943 December 18. - five more patients under his care. Same symptoms. One patient was able to briefly state that the symptoms were 'those of alcoholic intoxication'. Discharged from hospital after 8 hours after administration of an emetic - though they would have just come down naturally by this point anyway.

'There is little doubt that it is the hysteria fungus, Panoeolus ovatus, which caused a number of cases of poisoning in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, particularly around Murwillumbah in January, 1941.'

The response to emetics leads them to believe that this is the cure for it but realistically it is purely just the time that takes to have an effect and then recover from that. Waiting it out. etc.

Similar cases discussed:

1942 March 14. - Three patients. Dr. H.K. Shaw of Buderim Mountains. Same symptoms. Also emetic.

Sir Raphael Cilento reports from case in Murwillumbah - R.W. Cilento: 'Tropical diseases in Australasia', Second Edition, Chapter XVI, Page 410. - Brisbane, Queensland : W.R. Smith & Paterson, 1940.

1941. The Agricultural Gazette of New South Wales, 1941, Page 213.

In 1945 Professor Goddard and Dr. Herbert conducted a study in to the Diseases of Queensland Pasture Plants at the University of Queensland which included Panaeolus ovatus.

Regarding 1943 incident:

Raymond Forbes Newton Langdon and Herbert documented the November 1943 incident. Specimens of 'psalliota arvensis' the horse mushroom sent to Nambour hospital by the superintendent J.E. Trotter. Four people at Eudlo poisoned.

1943 December 12 - five patients from Montville same symptoms. These mushrooms collected at Rapids, Montville. Mr. W.H. Glanville was one of those affected. He forwarded some of the collected mushrooms and they were confirmed as Panaeolus ovatus. He described symptoms of giddiness, paralysis of the legs, stiffening of the fingers, prickly sensation over the body and a feeling of happy contentment. Specimens from Eudlo were presumed to also contain Panaeolus ovatus based on the similar symptoms from this incident. Also thought to explain some of the earlier cases of poisoning from Psalliota arvensis.

The January 1941 incident occured with a 'number of people' on the North Coast, NSW. Symptoms: drowsiness, dizziness, hilarity and in some cases vomiting. In one case reported verbally to Herbert the only effect was hilarity.

Ref to check. Content about experiments to use mushrooms to treat people being conducted but published anonymously due to prohibition.

Cross reference with to check for any other cases and compare info


 * Parson story was from NSW accordi ng to papers. Gave mushrooms to 'about ten friends and neighbours'. Citing Medical Journal of Australia but it does not mention this. Is there an issue a week after the last with more info? Does not appear to be another issue with anything pertaining to the story - must have contacted them for comment. NSW detail may be erroneous and a mistake.

Alternatively it may be referencing incident in Murwillumbah, NSW in January 1941. MJA does not mention a parson but mentions NSW in this context.

Shortly after this article was published, several newspapers reported that the unsuspecting mushroom hunter was a parson who had shared the mushrooms with about ten of his friends and neighbours.

The unsuspecting mushroom hunter was later reported to be a clergyman who had shared the mushrooms with friends and neighbours. The article ran accompanied by images of the suspected poisonous mushroom alongside an edible Agaricus mushroom and included some information on distinguishing them. The stories spread around for a few weeks and made the news again almost a year after the original incident when D.A.Herbert, a botany lecturer from Queensland University produced diagrams and information on distinguishing the mushrooms.

An earlier report that year had noted that heavy rains in January had produced the 'heaviest mushroom crop for years'. This was mentioned in relation to an unrelated mushroom poisoning case in which eight people in Murwillumbah, New South Wales were hospitalised after consuming poisonous mushrooms. The Chief Biologist at the Department of Agriculture, Dr Magee suspected the mushrooms to be Lepiota morgani (now Chlorophyllum morgani) but still used the opportunity to warn the public about the 'hysteria fungus'. The specimens were exhibited in the window of a local product merchant on the Main Street in Murwillumbah where another similar incident happened four years later when two visitors were poisoned.

Of the true 'hysteria fungus' intoxication incidents during this period which did result in hospitalisation none of the patients stayed in hospital for more than the first night with treatment typically only being the administration of an emetic. However as these incidents received more coverage than regular poisonings the fear of the 'hysteria fungus' was greater than the actual risk they posed.

The mushrooms did not resurface in the news until January of 1952 when a family in Mackay, Queensland were poisoned by mushrooms. They lacked any specific symptoms associated with the Panaeolus mushrooms and may have simply consumed another toxic mushroom since they were far away from the area in which these incidents had been reported previously, however the paper nonetheless drew a comparison to it. In March of that year hundreds of people were reportedly poisoned by mushrooms and broke into 'uncontrollable fits of laughter' with some being admitted to hospitals in Grafton, Kempsey and Maclean on the North East coast of New South Wales. The victims recovered within 6 hours whilst others were attended by family doctors. However the true number of people who mistakenly consumed Panaeolus ovatus is unclear and some of the cases of vomiting amongst them may have been due to confusion with toxic Agaricus species like Agaricus xanthodermus which are reported all across the East coast of Australia. Other articles warned of confusion with species which had an iodoform (inky or phenol) smell when cooking which would be typical of toxic Agaricus species such as this.

The real media fervour started in May of that year when a lone mushroom hunter was admitted to a hospital in Sydney after consuming the mushrooms. W.S.Sutton, a biologist at the Department of Agriculture noted that the poisonings continued occurring despite newspapers and radio broadcasts warning of misidentification and the only slight resemblance the mushrooms had with edible species. The story spread all over Australia with at least 20 articles running in papers all over the country over the next month. Most articles compared the symptoms to drunkenness and mentioned hilarity and laughter whilst some claimed they were dangerous despite noting that no one had actually died. Poisonings were noted to have occurred around the Clarence river and Richmond river which are in the Grafton and Maclean area.

After this story faded from the press it marked an end of the hysteria over the 'hysteria fungus' or Panaeolus ovatus with no further stories about poisonings or hospitalisations. The last time the mushroom was mentioned may have been in 1954 in a Melbourne newspaper which quoted from the Australian botanist James Hamlyn Willis' first edition of  'Victorian Toadstools and Mushrooms' from 1950. Willis had remarked upon the incidents near Sydney and suggested that P. ovatus may be the magic mushroom described in Alice in Wonderland. This appears to be the last time these 'very wonderful toadstools' were mentioned in Australian newspapers.

Study and reclassification
Whilst the media coverage may have been frequently wrong, inaccurate and routinely sensationalised it likely served to pique scientific interest into what these mushrooms truly were. Before the Panaeolus panic began, mushroom or 'toadstool' poisonings and deaths had often appeared in Australian newspapers where they were simply reported as incidents the same as other accidents or deaths. Even when mushroom poisoning incidents occurred at the height of the panic in towns which had seen previous Panaeolus poisonings they didn't always see much attention. It was only when strange symptoms of intoxication or hallucination were associated that it made for sensational articles which spread further outside of these regions.

In 1958 the Australian scientist and mycologist John Errol Chandos Aberdeen and W.Jones wrote a paper entitled  'A hallucinogenic toadstool' published in the Australian Journal of Science. They described the distribution of Psilocybe cubensis across the valleys of Queensland and New South Wales and speculated that this was in fact the species responsible for the incidents of intoxication rather than the Panaeolus.

This hypothesis was proposed as they considered the edible Agaricus species, which mushroom hunters were seeking, more similar in appearance to that of Psilocybe species rather than Panaeolus. During wet conditions Psilocybe species had been described as being more common in that area where they were found growing on cow manure. P. cubensis had been documented growing along the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, in the valleys around Brisbane and in cow pastures that formerly were rain forests. The species may have been introduced into the country when early settlers cut down these forests and used the land for grazing cattle. Aberdeen and Jones' paper was the first to document the existence of Psilocybe cubensis in Australia. John Burton Cleland had also documented Psilocybe mushrooms in Australia in his 1934 book which provided an identification key to 12 Psilocybe species, half of which have since been reclassified as non-psychoactive species and moved to other genera. P. cubensis was not on the list and was not classified as a Psilocybe species until 1948.

Steven Hayden Pollock's 1970 book entitled  'Psilocybian Mycetismus with Special Reference to Panaeolus' notes that the true identify of P. ovatus was still unknown.

Aberdeen and Jones were the only researchers to study the mushroom and their detailed examination concluded that it was closely related with Anellaria sepulchralis which was considered to be edible.

The identity of A. sepulchralis itself however is unclear

The mycologist György Mikløs Ola'h considered it to be identical to Panaeolus phalaenarum or or in the supplement Revue de mycologie. Mémoire hors-série

review of the work mentions Anellaria

It is possible that this species was collected by Aberdeen and Jones instead of P. ovatus however another possibility is that A. sepulchralis is the same species as Panaeolus antillarum

P. ovatus synonymous with P. antillarum?

Continue from

The chemical properties of Panaeolus ovatus were being studied at the time

Mushrooms in Australia

2000 Dec 20 - banned species list

mushroom pandemic

Recreational use and prohibition
The mushrooms were rediscovered in the Summer of 1969 after heavy rains in the Spring had resulted in huge flushes of mushrooms appearing along the Sunshine Coast. This time the mushrooms weren't frightening because people were accidentally consuming them and scared by the unexpected results but rather because the use was deliberate and conscious. The result was a swathe of fearmongering, misinformation and lies which quickly saw the mushrooms outlawed.

"'Detectives have found that inoccuous seeming mushroom soup can be a deadly addictive drug, with effects as devastating as those of LSD.'"

In the summer of 1969 the paranoia and misinformation about psychedelic mushrooms in the news intensified when The Canberra Times described the mushrooms as a 'deadly addictive drug'. Psilocybe cubensis was reported to have been found on the Sunshine Coast, 60 miles North of Brisbane in early June when students of the University of Queensland conducted a search for edible mushrooms. Word of the mushrooms spread to so-called 'addicts' in Brisbane and Sydney resulting in more people consuming the mushrooms. Police discovered that use of mushrooms was occurring in late June during a raid of a Brisbane flat which resulted in the arrest of three young people who had added the mushrooms to canned soup. Queensland University lecturer John Errol Chandos Aberdeen identified the mushrooms and warned that eating them would result in 'two days of hospital treatment'. He listed symptoms ranging from coloured vision, visual hallucinations, uncontrollable giggling and a sense of well-being to a dry mouth, rapid heartbeat, impairment of memory and concentration and paralysis. The mushrooms seized by police were found to have come from grazing land on the Sunshine Coast in Sippy Downs, Queensland.

With its transparent bias, fearmongering, use of the word addict more than a dozen times and phrases such as 'gipsy-gangs of hippies and drug addicts' the change in tone from 28 years ago is vast. In 1941, The Canberra Times had simply described symptoms such as 'acute alcohol intoxication', noted that no fatalities were recorded and repeated the same information from the Agricultural Gazette about how to identify them.

The popularity of psilocybe mushrooms in Brisbane reduced by the end of 1969 with attitudes reportedly changing to 'good for occasional use only' however export of the mushrooms to the South of Australia had grown by March of 1971 to the point of the mushrooms being 'readily available' in Sydney. The fear of 'psilocybin psychosis' was greater than the actual harm caused with no deaths being reported from the substance itself. The drugs used in the treatment of 'LSD psychosis' included chlorpromazine which was considered for 'treating' psilocybin intoxication however these antipsychotic medications had resulted in deaths.

On 8 May, 1971 the Queensland Governor in Council criminalised the possession Psilocybe cubensis mushrooms

By 1979 the attitudes of some had become more reasonable and grounded in reality with practical guides to the consumption of mushrooms being published in newspapers.

Other incidents
Trotter stated that he had only found two previous cases of consumption of this fungus in the literature.

(17 June 1944 issue, reader writing in to detail another but unrelated:)

One from 1865 detailed the case of a child under three years old who was taken ill with uncontrollable laughter and weakness in the limbs. The child was diagnosed with 'vegetable poisoning' and given an emetic which resulted in her throwing up a quantity of small mushrooms with 'dirty yellowish' caps. Fresh samples of the mushroom were found in the grass in which she had been playing earlier that day. The child was fully recovered the next day and the mushrooms were identified as poisonous Agaricus psittacinus.

However, these mushrooms are today known as Gliophorus psittacinus or by the common name of parrot waxcap. They may be considered edible or inedible by different sources (generally just considered not worth eating regardless) but they are not psychoactive or toxic. Either this identification was incorrect or something else caused the symptoms described.

Add along with Amanita stories from pre 1900s 'A Mushroom That Makes Men Drunk' or 'An intoxication mushroom' articles

Map
Queensland map

New South Wales map