“There is no historical record of the deliberate use of psilocybin mushrooms in Europe before 1957”
I had to make this claim recently. There is also a shocking lack of evidence for the use of cannabis in the Greco-Roman period (apart from Herodotus discussing the Scythians—and a reference in Exodus).
I am curious. How does one investigate such a claim? I imagine general expertise in the subject is a big start, and perhaps some sort of electronic search for certain keywords in some sort of historical records database (I assume there are such things?), but beyond that, it seems challenging. And then how does one demonstrate that such a search was conducted?
