Histry

According to Himalayan legend, YARSAGUMBA was discovered by Tibetan and Nepalese herders who, in springtime, noticed grazing yaks and goats acting stragely in the high mountain pasture. After eating this strange looking substance, the animals would become frisky and start chasing each other around with lustfull intent. Soon the locals were consuming YARSAGUMBA and also experiencing this added vigor.
The earliest known documantation of CATERPILLAR FUNGUS (chinese DONG CHONG XIA CIAO, japanese TOCHUKASO) is by Nyamnyi Dorje, a Tibetan physician and lama who lived from 1439–1475. His text titled "An Ocean of Afrodisiacal Qualities", describes the value of the mushroom as a sexual tonic (Daniel Winkler-Yartsa Gunbu and the Fungal Commodification of Tibetś Rural Economy). Here is first few stanzas (translated by Jacob Winkler):
"In this world sexual disires
is the most marvelous of all earthy pleasures,
the essence of the enjoyment of all the senses...

As to this medicial substance
it grows in regions of beautiful moutains,
such as remote grassland moutains."
Tibetan scholars wrote of the mysterious healing animal/plant through the 15th to 18th centuries and in 1757, the earliest objective and scientifically reliable depiction of the CATERPILLAR FUNGUS was written by Wu-Yilou in the Ben Cao Congxin (New Compilation of Materia Medica). The first Western publication came from a French Jesuit priest named Perennin Jean Baptiste du Halde (1674–1743) who recomend his experinces with this mythical healing agent while a guest at the Emperor's court in China.