London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1938

8vo, pp. 335. Original grey boards, lettered in red to spine. Printed dust jacket. Publisher's card laid in. Small bookseller's label (Foyles) to front pastedown, very slight spotting to preliminaries, but a near fine copy in a very good dust jacket with a little light edgewear, and a small hole to paper at head of spine, strengthened a single piece of tape to reverse.

Second edition in English, the first under this title, from the sheets of the first edition with a cancel title.

The German pharmacologist Louis Lewin [1850-1929] was the pre-eminent drug researcher of his time, beginning with his work on peyote and kola in the 1880s. Here he categorises the five main drug effects as Euphorica, Phantastica, Inebriantia, Hypnotica and Excitantia. Better known under the title Phantastica in both the original German edition (George Stilke, 1924) and the first English-language edition (Kegan Paul, 1931), this edition was presumably retitled to make clear that the author was not advocating recreational drug use.

Aldous Huxley's discovery of this book in 1931 led to his lifelong study of drugs and their effects.

Extremely scarce in this edition, especially in the dust jacket.