In 1884 the New York physician Frank Dudley Beane described, in a medical journal, his experience of taking tinctures of cannabis and ergot, a rye fungus related to the source of LSD, which he took for the pain of a nervous complaint, hoping to avoid opium. His account is a very early trip report. He described losing his sense of time and his body, and the feeling that he had been fashioned out of wood. The pharmaceutical firm Parke-Davis had supplied the samples. It recalls Humphry Davy's nitrous oxide experiments and Albert Hofmann's LSD in 1943.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.