Toé is the name given in the Upper Amazon to various species of Brugmansia, primarily B. suaveolens and a wide variety of cultivars. Poet César Calvo calls toé “that other powerful and disconcerting hallucinogen.” Toé contains the primary tropane alkaloids hyoscyamine, atropine, and scopolamine; it may be mixed into the ayahuasca drink, ingested in the form of raw plant materials, or smoked in a cachimbo pipe. Toé is considered one of the most powerful plants, a strong but dangerous ally.

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We have talked earlier about healing by sucking out the sickness — the phlegmosity, the pathogenic object, the dart that was projected into the patient by a sorcerer. But how does the shaman know where to suck?

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Before thinking about the thorny question of how shamans heal, it is worth posing a logically prior question: do they heal? There are remarkably few data on this question. In particular, even moderately long-term follow-up is lacking. As anthropologist and medical doctor Gilbert Lewis puts it, “It is rare to find examples of anthropologists who record the frequency of therapeutic failures, do follow ups, or find out how many people do not bother to come back next time to the shaman.”

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