Cannabis indica

Imagines he hears music ; shuts his eyes and is lost for some time in the most delicious thoughts and dreams. Incoherent talking. Fixed ideas. Exaltation of spirits, with excessive loquacity. Laughs immoderately. Uncontrollable laughter, till the face becomes purple and the back and loins ache. Anguish accompanied by great oppression, ameliorated in the open air. He was in constant fear he would become insane. Very absent-minded. Every few moments he would lose himself, and then wake up, as it were, to those around him. Vertigo. Frequent involuntary shaking of the head. On regaining consciousness, violent shocks pass through his brain. Fixed gaze. Injection of the vessels of the conjunctiva of both eyes. While reading, the letters run together. Throbbing and fullness in both ears. Ringing and buzzing in the ears. He looks drowsy and stupid. His lips are glued together. Dryness of the mouth and lips. White, thick, frothy, and sticky saliva. The throat is parched, accompanied by intense thirst for cold water. Increased appetite. Ravenous hunger. Pain in the cardiac orifice. Burning and scalding before, during and after urination. Stinging pain before, during and after urination. Profuse colourless urine. The urine dribbles oui after the stream ceases. On squeezing the glans penis, a white glairy mucus oozes out. Satyriasis. Rough cough, which scratches the breast under the sternum. Pulse below the natural standard, as low as 46. Pain across the shoulders and spine, forcing him to stoop, and preventing him from walking erect. Paralysis of the lower extremities and right arm. Agreeable thrilling through the arms and hands. Entire paralysis of the lower extremities. Agreeable thrilling in both limbs from the knees down, with a sensation as if a bird's daws were clasping the knees. Thoroughly exhausted from a short walk. Excessive sleepiness. Sound sleep. Profuse sticky sweat, standing out in drops on his forehead. * * * And now, since an adequate conception of the action of Can­ nabis indica can only be obtained from Allen's Encyclopedia, we will condense from his twenty-seven long pages of its mental symptoms, merely pointing out that these provings or poisonous effects are from some forty different sources, which he gives : while the same experiences and even series of sensations were detailed almost in the same words by different persons. Very excited : dancing about the room : laughing : talking nonsense, knew it, but could not stop without effort which he did not care to make. Shouts : leaps into the air : claps hands for )oy. Sings : extemporizes words and music. On becoming conscious, finds himself dancing, laughing and singing before a looking-glass. Incoherent talking. Tendency to blaspheme. While visiting patients, great difficulty to refrain from saying, or doing unusual things. . . . Must keep himself sober, or might do something foolish. Accents the last syllable in all words and laughs immoderately. Quickness of ideas and pleasant sensations : constant succes­ sion of new ideas, each of which was instantly forgotten. Mind filled with ridiculous speculative ideas : fixed ideas. Vivid thoughts in rapid succession, forgotten at their very beginning. Constantly theorizing. Reveries : delightful reveries. Had the one idea that he should soon die and be dissected. Did not know whether he himself existed : whether men gener­ ally existed; or for what purpose they existed. Possessed with the idea that he was about to die. Fancies thieves in the house : that he hears strange noises. Hunts under beds and tables : unlocks and relocks doors. Imagines men are bribed to kill him : that he can fly like birds. Said he had been transported to heaven, and his language, usually commonplace, became quite enthusiastic. All around and within, a great mystery, and terrifying. Despair : fear of being eternally lost. On hearing the name of God, cried, " Stop ! that name is terrible : I cannot bear it. I am dying.” Demoniac shapes, cloaked in inky palls, clutched at him ; glaring at him with fiery eyes from beneath their cowls. Seemed to be walking in a vast arena encircled by tremendous wall. Stars regarded him with pitying human aspect : the suir was reeling and the clouds danced round him like a chorus. ” I could trace the circulation of the blood along each inch of its progress : I knew when every valve opened and shut. The beating of my heart was so clearly audible, I wondered it was not heard by others.” Seems possessed of a dual existence', one cf which from a height watches the other as it passes through the phases of the Hashish delirium. Had a feeling of duality, one of Jiis minds would be thinking of something, while the other laughed at it. Felt as if he were a third person, looking at himself and his friend. The soul seemed to be separated from the body, to look down on it, and view all the motions of the vital processes, and to be able to pass and repass through solid walls. Extreme protraction of time, and extent of space :—a few' seconds seem ages ;—the utterance of a word as long as a whole drama, and a few rods, a distance which can never be passed, it is so great. The room expands : the ceiling is raised : he is in a vast hall. The sitting room seemed to be of an immense depth below him (it was really on the same floor). Time was indefinitely prolonged. Minutes seemed to be days. A friend in the same room seemed a long way off. A strange feeling of isolation, with a great sense of loneliness, though surrounded by friends. Imagines that he is possessed of infinite knowledge and power of vision : then that he is the Christ come to restore the world to perfect peace. Believes there is creative power in his own word ; that he has only to speak, and it will be done. That he possesses the weatth of the world, and showers riches on all the needy around him. Feels that lie is transparent : feels the blood in his veins : “ the fire in the grate was shining through me, to warm the marrow of my bones ”. Imagines he is gradually swelling, his body, becoming larger and larger. That he is on horseback ; hunting ; seeing blue water ; swimming ; is captain of a vessel ; travelling ; that he has no weight. Illusion that he was a pump-log, through which a stream of hot water was playing, and threatening his friend with a wetting. That he was an inkstand, and that, as he lay in bed, the ink might spill over the white counterpane : he opened and shut his brass cover, it had a hinge ; shook himself, and saw and felt the ink splash against his glass sides. Now he is a huge saw, and darts up and down while the complete planks fly off him on either side : then a bottle of soda water : then a huge hippopotamus ; then a giraffe : then a fern, surrounded by clouds and perfume. Laughs because his leg is a tin case filled with stair-rods, which rattle as he walks : then the other leg elongates till he is raised hundreds of feet in the air, and has to hop along beside his friend. All impressions extremely exaggerated. Walls of room are suddenly covered with dancing satyres and nodding mandarins. Set s numberless diabolical imps with bloody faces and immense black eyes, which terrify him ; till a cold sweat breaks out, and he is suffocating. All the events of his past life, even those long forgotten, and most trivial, were thrown in symbols from a rapidly-revolving wheel, each recognised as an act of his life, and each in its correct order of sequence. Ludicrous visions of old, wrinkled females who are found to be composed of knit yarn. Illusions of the senses : hears voices and the most sublime music ; sees visions of beauty a id glory, tally to be equalled in Paradise : landscapes of sublimtM beauty ; profusion of flowers i86 of brilliant colours : architecture of magnificent beauty and grandeur, giving a consciousness of happiness. A silent army passed him in the street : the plain suddenly expanded and was covered with a band of Tartars, who rushed by in mad haste, their caps streaming with plumes and horsehair. Houses suddenly take to nodding, bowing and dancing. When walking in street the muffled figure of a man starts from the wall : excites utmost horror,—every lineament of his face stamped with the records of a life black with damning crime. “ It glared on me with a ferocious wickedness and a stony despair. I seemed to grow blasphemous, looking at him.” Wakes to see on a bier a fearful corpse, whose livid face was distorted with the pangs of assassination. Every muscle was tense, and the nails pierced the dead man's palm by the force of his dying clench. Two tapers at the head and two at the feet made the ghastliness of the bier more luminously unearthly. A smothered laugh of derision mocked the corpse from some invisible watche*', “ then the walls began slowly to glide together, the ceiling coming down, the floor ascending : nearer and nearer I was borne towards the corpse. Tried to cry out, but speech was paralysed, the walls came closer, till my hand lay on the dead man’s forehead. I was stifled in the breathless niche, touched on all sides by the walls of the terrible press : then a crash, and 1 felt all sense blotted out in darkness. I awakened : the corpse was gone, but I had taken its place on the bier, and the room had grown into a gigantic hall, with roof of iron arches . . . then demoniac forms and faces . . . suddenly the nearest fiend thrust a pitchfork of white-hot iron into my side and hurled me into the fiery cradle,—‘ let us sing him ', said one of the fiends, ' the lullaby of hell ' ; as I lay unconsumed, tossed from side to side by the rocking of the fiery engine. . . . Presently was in a colossal square surrounded by houses a hundred storeys high. Ran in bitter thirst to a foun­ tain carved in iron, every jet of which was sculptured in mockery of water, yet as dry as the ashes of a furnace. I called for water, when every sash in all the hundred storeys of that square flew up, and a maniac stood at every window. They gnashed at me, glared, gibbered, howled, laughed, horribly hissed and cursed. I became insane at the sight, and leaping up and down, mimicked them all.” The scene became theatrical, and he, an actor, improvised his tragedy and held his immense audience entranced. Suddenly a look of suspicion came over every face ...” they knew my secret, and one maddening chorus broke from the whole theatre, ‘ Hashish ! Hashish ! he has eaten Hashish ! ’ I crept from the stage in unutterable shame. 1 crouched in concealment : looked at my garments and beheld them, foul and ragged as a beggar’s : from head to foot I was the incarnation of squalidity. Children pointed at me ; loungers stood and searched me with inquisitive scorn : the multitude of man and beast all eyed me : the very stones in the street mocked me with a human railery, as I cowered in my besmeared rags.” Imagines someone calls him. Hears music of the sweetest and sublimest melody and harmony, sees venerable bards with their harps, who play as it were the music of heaven. A single tone seemed like the most divine harmony. Imagines he hears music : shuts his eyes, and is lest in the most delicious thoughts awl dreams. Hears numberless bells ringing most sweetly. For fully two weeks after, when sitting in his office, he would hear most mag­ nifie?' r harmony, as if some master-hand were playing an organ, and using only the softer stops. There was this peculiarity about the hearing of the music, one must be in a state of half­ reverie, then the divine strains, soft and marvellously sweet, fol­ lowed one another in a smoother legato than any human fingering ever accomplished. If one roused the attention and strained the ear, to be sure of catching every chord, silence came at once. Heard the noise of colours, green, red, blue and yellow sounds coming to him in perfectly distinct waves. After such experience of ecstasy, when emerging from a dense wood, heard a hissing whisper, " Kill thyself ! Kill thyself ! ” and unseen tongues repeated it on all sides, and in the air above me, ” The Most High commands thee to kill thyself.” But an invis­ ible hand struck at the knife which he was aiming at his throat, and sent it spinning into the bushes. Physical sensations of exquisite lightness and airiness, and mentally of a wonderfully keen perception of the ludicrous in simple and familiar objects. Objects by which he was surrounded assumed such strange and whimsical expression, and became so inexpressibly absurd and comical, that he was provoked into a long fit of laughter. It seemed to him as if he existed without form throughout a vast extent of space. His body seemed to expawl, and the arch of his skull to be broader than the vault of heaven. His enjoyment of the visions was complete and absolute, undisturbed by the faintest doubt of their reality ; while in some other chamber of his brain, reason sat coolly watching them and heaping the liveliest ridicule on their fantastic features. One set of nerves was thrilled with the bliss of the gods, while another was convulsed with unquenchable laughter at that very bliss. His i88 highest ecstasies could not bear down and silence the weight of his ridicule, which in turn was powerless to prevent him from running into other and more grotesque absurdities. He laughed till his eyes overflowed profusely, every drop that fell became immediately a large loaf of bread and tumbled upon the shop-board of a baker the more he laughed, the faster the loaves fell, till such a pile was raised about the baker that he could hardly see the top of his head. His throat was as hard as brass : his tongue a bar of rusty ironr Though he seized a pitcher of water and drank long and deeply, his palate and throat gave no intelligence as to his having drunk at all. . . . He tore open his vest and tried to count the pulsations of his heart, but there were two hearts, one beating at the rate of a thousand beats a minute, the other with slow dull motion. His throat was filled with blood and blood was pouring from his ears. (On recovering, after several days, there was no taste in what he ate, no refreshment in what he drank, and it required a painful effort to comprehend what was said to him or to return a coherent answer.) " The unsteadiness of gait of one who tries to keep down : for I felt as if there were springs in my knees, and was reminded of the man with the mechanical leg that walked away with him.” ” There were present real objects, as well as imaginary ones ; but at times I doubted which was which, and floated in uncer­ tainty.” A weakness of the whole body came on, his legs would not support him : his arms became heavy : he was obliged to throw himself on the sofa, his limbs became rigid, he entirely lost his sensations, becoming cataleptic : anaesthesia again extended over his body and now was added an automaton-like and rapid move­ ment of the hands, one hand placed on the breast was rubbed on the back with the palm of the other. By turns the right arm or leg, or the right half of the face, and then all these parts together would seem petrified, so that he could not move them, and would then n lax. Suddenly the nass of his brain, all except a small portion, seemed changed to r.iarble ; (his right eye, for a long time, retained the sensation of marbly hardness). Was a prey to extreme loquacity and mobility of ideas : and feared for the fate of his companions, for whom he feared the dose had been excessive and might prove poisonous. Seized with gesticulai y convulsions in arms and legs, and his symptoms assumed the appearance of those which characterize hydrophobia :—outbreaks of fear at the sight of bright objects, at any little breath of air, or at the approach of any one. He asked for water, but only to thrust it away without drinking, unable with the greatest effort to swallow a single draught. A sensation that tongue and throat were covered with a dry, soft body. An urgent desire to be held, guided, taken care of, lest he should get out of bed to commit some foolish act. Hands carried automatically to his head and held there, as though there were a difficulty in detaching them. Cramp in calves which made movements impossible ; or caused them to be distended, or take a sudden jump. Curious, alarming thrills. Went upstairs, seemed not to touch the steps : “ I trod the air as a swimmer treads water : my feet came near the steps but did not strike them.” “ Thought of catalepsy—I must keep my soul in my body by force of will, or perhaps it would never return, I felt it was trying to wing itself away. A feeling of loneliness overcame me. I hurled my body through a seemingly impenetrable invisible barrier. Pushing my way through a resistent atmosphere— an ethereal fluid it seemed to be, not as dense as water nor rare as air, yet it resisted. T he two parts of my being were acting separately, my will or spiritual existence was separate from my bodily exis­ tence and spurring it onward, pushing it forward, using it as an artificer uses a tool : onward it forced my body, seeming to exult in its supremacy. AH was unreal ; I myself was unreal ; even my voice did not seem my own. Being persuaded, I ate a piece of meat : to do so I had to recall the various processes and modus operandi of “ feeding ”. " First,” I reasoned, ” they put the substance in the mouth, and by moving the under jaw down and up and mixing the saliva with it by motion of the tongue; they masticate it.” This was easily accomplished. The spittle seemed to have legs and arms, I could feel it scrambling through the meat, but when it was thoroughly masticated, I could not remember, or rather date back to the time I put the meat in my mouth. Chewing seemed to have been my regular business for ages. It was time to swallow, but to get command of the muscles of my throat wholly baffled all my endeavours.” “ If the disembodied ever return to hover over the hearth­ stone which once had a seat for them, they look upon their friends as I then looked on mine. A nearness of place with an infinite distance of state—an isolation none the less perfect for seeming companionship.” ” A fitful wind had been sighing down the chimney, it grew into the steady hum of a vast wheel in accelerating motion . . . its monotonous din was cnanged for the reverberating peal of a grand cathedral organ. The ebb and flow of its inconceivable solemn tone filled'me with grief that was more than human.” " At last I was in the street. Beyond me the view stretched endlessly away—an unconverging vista whose nearest lamps seemed separated from me by leagues. A soul setting out for his flight beyond the farthest visible star, could not be more over­ whelmed with his newly-acquired conception of the sublimity of distance than I was. • I began my infinite journey. I 'dwelt in a marvellous inner world : existed by turns in different places and various stages of being. Now I swept my gondola through the moonlit lagoons of Venice : now Alp on Alp towered above my view, and the glory of the coming sun flashed purple light upon the topmost icy pinnacle. Now in primeval silence of some unexplored tropical forest I spread my feathery leaves, a giant fern, and swayed and nodded in the spice-gales over a river whose waves sent up clouds of music and perfume. My soul changed to a vegetable essence, thrilled with a strange and unimagined ecstasy.” “ My voice seemed to reverberate like thunder from every recess of the building. I was terrified at the noise I had made. (I learned in after days that this impression is only one of the many due to the intense sensibility of the sensorium as produced by Hashish.)” ” I stood in a remote chamber at the top of a collossal building and the whole fabric beneath me was steadily growing into the air. Higher—higher—on, on forever into the lonely dome of God’s infinite universe we towered ceaselessly. The years flew on ; I heard the musical rush of their wings in the abyss outside me, and from cycle to cycle, from life to life I careered, a mote in eternity and space.” “ Now through the street, with measured tread, an armed host passed by. The heavy beat of their footfalls, and the grinding of their brazen corslet-rings alone broke the silence, for among them there was no more speech nor music than in a battalion of the dead. It was the army of the ages going by into eternity. A godlike sublimity swallowed up my soul. I was overwhelmed in a fathomless barathrum of time, but I leaned on God, and was immortal through all the changes. . . . Looking at his watch he realized he had travelled through all that immeasurable chain of dreams in thirty seconds. ‘ My God,’ I cried, ‘ I am in eternity.' In the presence of that first sublime revelation of the soul’s own time, arid‘her capacity for an infinite life, I stood trembling with breathless awe. Till I die, that moment of unveiling will stand in clear relief from all the rest of my existence. I hold it still in unimpaired remembrance as one of the unutterable sanctities of my being.” Then follow more and more ecstasies, with celestial music “ such as I shall never hear again out of the Great Presence Under the same circumstances, the same dose of Hashish will produce diametrically opposite effects. Or from a large dose may result a scarcely perceptible phenomenon, yet a dose of but half that quantity may cause the agonies of suffering of a martyr, or rejoicing in a perfect frenzy. But if, during the Hashish delirium another dose, however small, is taken to prolong the condition, such agony will inevitably ensue as will make the soul shudder at its own possibility of endurance without annihila­ tion. The use of it after any other stimulus will produce con­ sequences as appalling. ” I began to be lifted into that tremendous pride, so often characteristic of the fantasia. My powers became superhuman ; my knowledge covered the universe ; my scope of sight was infinite. Repeatedly I have wandered past doors and houses which in my ordinary condition were as well known as my own, and have at last given up the search for them in utter hopelessness, recognizing not the faintest familiar trace in their aspect. Cer­ tainly a Hashish eater should never be alone. Then an extraordinary case of clairvoyance is detailed. . . . Threw himself on a sofa and asked a pianist to play him some piece of music, without naming any in particular. The prelude began : and the dreamer was at once lifted into the choir of a grand cathedral. The windows of nave and transept were emblazoned, in the most gorgeous colouring, with incidents culled from saintly lives. Far off in the chancel monks were loading the air with essences that streamed from their golden censers : on the pavement of inimitable mosaic knelt a host of worshippers in silent prayer. Suddenly behind the great organ began a plaintive minor, like the murmur of some bard relieving his heart in threnody. This was joined by a gentle treble voice among the choir. The low wail rose and fell with the expression of wholly human emotion. One by one the remaining singers joined in ; and now he heard, thrilling to the very roof of the cathedral, a wondrous miserere. At the far end of the nave a great door swung open, and a bier entered supported by solemn bearers. On it lay a coffin covered by a pall, which being removed, as the bier was set down in the chancel, discovered the face of the sleeper. It was the dead Mendelssohn ! The last cadenza of the death- chant died away, the bearers with heavy tread, carried the coffin through an iron door to its place in the vault ; one by one the crowd passed out of the cathedral till the dreamer stood alone. He turned to depart and, awakened to complete consciousness, saw the pianist just resting from the keys. “ What piece have you been playing ? ” he asked. The reply was, " Mendelssohn’s Funeral March.” This piece he had never heard before. . . . “ Certainly it is as remarkable an instance of sympathetic clair­ voyance as I ever knew.” ” A colossal music filled the whole hemisphere above me, and I thrilled upwards through its environment on visionless wings. It was not song, it was not instruments, but the inexpressible spirit of sublime sound—like nothing Ï ever heard—intense ; the ideal of harmony, yet distinguishable into a multiplicity of exquisite parts. . . . Like a map the arcade of the universe lay bare before me. I saw how every created thing not only typifies but springs forth from some mighty spiritual law as its offspring, its necessary external development, not the mere clothing of the essence, but the essence incarnate.” ” From the ethereal heights I had been dropped into the midst of Acherontian fog. . . . I awaited extinction. The shapes that moved about me in the outer world seemed like galvanized corpses : the living soul of nature had gone out like the flame of a candle. The very existence of the outer world seemed a base mockery, a cruel sham of some remembered pos­ sibility which had been glorious with speechless beauty. I hated flowers, for I had seen the enamelled meads of Paradise : I cursed the rocks, because they were mute stone ; the sky, because it rang with no music ; and earth and sky seemed to throw back my curse.” * * * Truly Cannabis indica is a great medicine—for those who know how to use it for the cure of that which it can induce. Among its sensations one notices the unreality, the loneliness, the dual consciousness, the levitation, and senses its value in delirium, in delirium tremens, in the grandiose delusion of G.P.I., in hydrophobia, in catalepsy, where being” of the stuff that dreams are made of”, it should be useful for such persons as suffer terribly with frightful dreams—and that from year’s end to year’s end. One such came to Out-patients only yesterday !

Tincture and low attenuations.