12 Historical Drugs Ancient Warriors Used Before Every Battle

12 Historical Drugs Ancient Warriors Used Before Every Battle Along the banks of the Nile, more than three thousand years ago, Egyptian warriors were consuming a flower that modern pharmacology has only recently begun to understand. The plant was Nymphaea caerulea, the Blue Lotus, a psychoactive water lily depicted so relentlessly across Egyptian tomb paintings that archaeologists initially assumed it was purely decorative. It was not.