A whiff of the future

I was intrigued to read in the press recently, a story based on a new study published by de Boer in the journal, Geology, that in Ancient Greece, the oracle at Delphi was probably in a state of a drug induced trance when advising supplicants. Plutarch, the historian, who was also the high priest at the temple of Apollo in Delphi, describes how the high priestess who spoke the oracles inhaled “sweet smelling vapours” in her chasm under the temple. De Boer and his coworkers discovered that the walls of this chasm …