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The Drug Abuse Council of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare sponsored this documentary, which chronicles a well-educated Peruvian folk-doctor's use of a hallucinogenic cactus in a shamanistic-seeming healing ritual. Eduardo practices his craft among the poor in a region near the city of Trujillo, and the hallucinogenic cactus is called the "San Pedro" plant. The client and the healer both ingest the substance during the ritual, which only takes place when an illness has been diagnosed to require it. The diagnoses are highly dramatic and are also shamanistic in nature.