Hofmann & Ergot
Albert Hofmann synthesised LSD-25 at Sandoz in 1938 while looking for a circulatory stimulant, decided it was useless, and shelved it. Five years later he went back to it on a hunch he never fully explained, absorbed a trace through his fingertips, and on 19 April 1943 deliberately took what he assumed was a tiny dose and cycled home through Basel. It was several times a threshold dose. The chemistry, the ergot fungus it comes from, and the man who spent the next sixty-five years watching what he made get away from him.
Part of LSD
14 moments in this segment.
- - Ergot, drawn from life. Claviceps purpurea, the rye fungus, in Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen of 1897, forty-one years before Hofmann synthesised LSD-25 from its alkaloids. This is one of the few genuinely period images the origin story has: ergot poisoning burned through medieval Europe as St Anthony's Fire, causing convulsions and hallucinations, centuries before anyone isolated why.
- - LSD (the molecule) (1943). Lysergic acid diethylamide, the most potent psychedelic known, active in millionths of a gram.
- - Ergot: the parasitic fungus. A 1958 medical film on ergot, the rye fungus LSD is derived from. Ergot poisoning, St Anthony's Fire, burned through medieval Europe causing convulsions and hallucinations centuries before anyone isolated why.
- - Lysergic Acid Diethylamide - 1960s LSD Drug Scare Film (Periscope). ) (1967).
- - An Evening with Albert Hofmann (1983), interviewed by Will Nofke
- - Hofmann interviewed, fifty years on. Albert Hofmann in 1993, half a century after the accident. He synthesised LSD-25 at Sandoz in 1938 looking for a circulatory stimulant, shelved it as useless, and came back to it five years later on a hunch he never fully explained.
- - Hofmann's Potion - Albert Hofmann LSD Documentary
- - A hundredth birthday in Basel. Hofmann's centenary symposium, attended by researchers who had spent decades unable to legally study the compound he made.
- - Albert Hofmann's 100 Years - Closing Speech in Basel
- - Albert Hofmann 100th Birthday, Basel. 1938 and, on 19 April 1943, took the first deliberate dose and rode his bicycle home into history.
- - The chemistry, actually explained. A retrosynthesis of lysergic acid. The molecule is difficult enough to make that for decades the world's supply came from a handful of people who could do it.
- - The problem child at seventy-five. Hofmann called his 1979 memoir 'LSD: My Problem Child', a chemist watching the thing he made escape into a world he did not choose for it. He died in 2008, aged 102.
- - How it is actually made. The production chain from ergot alkaloid to finished doses, the step that turned a laboratory curiosity into something that could reach millions of people.
- - Bicycle Day, reconstructed. On 19 April 1943 Hofmann deliberately took 250 micrograms, a dose he assumed was cautious and which is in fact several times a threshold dose, and cycled home through Basel with his assistant. NO FOOTAGE OR PHOTOGRAPH OF THAT DAY EXISTS: it happened in a laboratory and on a road, in wartime Switzerland, with no camera present. The only primary record is Hofmann's own written report. This is a modern reconstruction, included because the event has no images of its own.
