The phytochemical study of ayahuasca lianas and potions commenced in the first decade of the twentieth century, when in 1905 a Colombian chemist, Rafael Zerda Bayon, isolated an amorphous preparation fronm a yaje potion that he called telepatina or telepathine [Zerda Bayon 1915]. Eighteen years were to pass before fellow Colombian chemist G. Fischer Cardenas, in his doctoral thesis, reported the isolation of crystalline material of Zerda Bayon's telepatina from plant material of yaje, which he believed to be a species of Aristolochia[...] [Fischer Cardenas 1923]. The following year, H. Seil and E. Putt reported the results of a "preliminary" examination of caapi, plant material they called Banisteria caapi - the isolation of three impure alkaloids [Seil & Putt 1924]. A year later, the Colombian chemist A.M. Barriga Villalba reported the isolation of two alkaloids, yaheina and yahenina from yaje plant matter he'd identified as Prestonia [Haemadictyon] amazonica, also mentioned in another doctoral dissertation published that year in Bogota, by Colombian chemist L. Albarracin [Albarracin 1925; Barriga Villalba 1925a, 1925b].
After this pioneering work in Colombia, the scene shifted to Europe, and in 1926, Europeans E. Clinquart and M. Michiels likewise reported isolation of yaheine and yahenine from plant samples identified asPrestonia amazonica [Clinquart 1926; Michiels & Clinquart 1926]. The situation clarified somewhat the following year, when E. Perrot and Raymond-Hamet reported the equivalence of telepathine and yageine, which they isolated from Banisteria caapi [Perrot & Raymond-Hamet 1927a,1927b], but was again muddied the following year when famed German chemist Louis Lewin published his isolation of banisterin from yaje material he had obtained from the Merck company and also called Banisteria caapi [Lewin 1928, 1929]. Lewin's colleagues at Merck, K. Rumpf and O. Wolfes, and Swiss chemist F. Elger began to clarify matters considerably, when they reported that Zerda Bayon's and Fischer Cardenas' telepatina, Barriga Villalba's and Albarracin's yajeina, and Lewin's banisterin were all equivalent to harmine, a conclusion seconded by three other groups the following year [Brückl & Mussgnug 1929; Dalmer 1929; Elger 1928; Keller & Gottauf 1929; Wolfes & Rumpf 1928]. As though unawrae of these advances in distant Europe, a South American thesis from Peru a decade later revived the concepts yajeina and yajenina for alkaloids isolated from B. caapi [Arispe 1938]. All these studies suffered, however, from a lack of botanical voucher specimens to back up the botanical names associated with this chemical work.
Finally, in 1939, chemists A.L. and K.K. Chen, working with botanical material collected by botanist Llewellyn Williams near Iquitos, Peru and definitively identified as Bannisteriopsis caapi, showed that telepathine, yajeine ans banisterine were in fact identical to harmine [Chen & Chen 1939; Williams 1931]. These researchers were able to isolate harmine from stems, leaves and roots of the documente B. caapi sample. Elger had already convincingly established identity of telepathine, yajeine and banisterine with harmine, by comparing crystalline harmine isolated from Banisteriopsis with synthetic harmine and harmine he isolated from Peganum harmala [Elger 1928]. This well-knowwn alkaloid had been isolated from Syrian rue, Peganum harmala, by German chemist J. Fritzsche midway through the nineteenth century [Fritzsche 1847][...]
