Today's sampling of my reel to reel collection features a tape containing a speech made during a gathering at Lake Forest College in Illinois, on February 22, 1967. On that date, Dr. Adrian Ostfeld, then the head of preventive medicine at the Univeristy of Illinois College of Medicine, spoke about his findings as an early researcher (at the beginning of the 1960's) into the effects of LSD.
As you will hear, he generally found the effects to be fairly limited, with the exception of a very few subjects who had quite extensive responses to the drug. Because of the many visual effects reported by those involved in the experiments, he expanded his research into those who were blind, and who had experienced the removal of their eyes, and he reports on the findings with those subjects, as well.
He goes on to discuss the vast difference between his rather banal findings and the amazing LSD experiences being reported by a variety of sources in the press and elsewhere, in those more recent days of 1966 and 1967, and speculates on some of the reasons for this, before ending with his own views on the likelihood of discovering anything worthwhile via the continued study of the drug.
This was apparently part of a larger presentation or event: the tape begins with a brief organ piece and an equally brief choral piece, before someone named Dr. Smucker introduces Dr. Ostfeld (another piece of music is beginning as the tape is shut off, after the speech). I have separated this four minute set of introductory items into a separate file, for those who might not be interested in this material, and the speech (which runs about 35 minutes) is heard in the second file, below.
Organ Prelude, Choral Piece and Dr. Smucker's Introduction (MP3) | Dr. Adrian Ostfeld - Speech Regarding LSD Research, February 22, 1967 (MP3) | Tape Box (JPG)
LSD Master is Jimi Hendrix :)
Posted by: Turistik yerler | April 29, 2012 at 12:59 PM
Am I tripping or is the audio not working? I'd love to hear this.
Posted by: Malcolm Conover | April 29, 2012 at 08:50 PM
Amazing- this doctor seems to be saying that LSD has no euphoric, psychic or visual effects on 95% of those who have taken it! All a media hype, and those who have these experiences have them through the power of suggestion! What a maroon- maybe he should have dosed himself (also, I wonder what the amount of the dosage he administered was....)
Posted by: french yak | April 30, 2012 at 02:07 PM
With a name like Smucker, it's got to be good!
Posted by: Scroint! | May 02, 2012 at 01:44 AM
Cool! As an LSD enthusiast, I always wondered what LSD would be like for the blind. Thanks for posting this. :)
Posted by: Joel | May 05, 2012 at 03:17 PM