Cannabis Indica

(Hashish)

THIS drug is said to be botanically identical with Cannabis saliva, " the difference in soil and climate being responsible for the difference in their properties ". Indeed, many writers " lump " them together, as if there were no differences ! — but it is Cannabis indica which provides such an extraordinary wealth of mental symptoms, and which is so astonishingly curative wherever these provide the indications.

Our writers seem to have given up Cannabis ind. in despair, probably because of the redundancy of its mental aberrations : but Allen (Encyclopedia) devotes twenty-seven long pages to its 275 mental symptoms ; while of the rest, Hughes (Pharmacodynamics) is the most illuminating. We will quote, before going on to others, and, to " Allen " :

Hughes says : "Some provings of the Indian hemp, made upon seven persons with the tincture and lower attenuations, were published by the American Provers' Union in 1839. Since then scores of persons have tested its curious effects upon themselves ; and the experiences of hashish-eating have been put on record — by one writer with a descriptive power and gorgeousness of diction hardly inferior to that of the English opium-eater. Of the results thus obtained Dr. Allen has made an exhaustive collection ; and 918 symptoms of the drug, including the mental phenomena described at full length, stand in his Encyclopedia.

"To possess yourselves of the characters of the hashish intoxication, it is necessary that you 'should study it thus in detail. No outline can adequately present it. It is a condition of intense exaltation, in which all perceptions and conceptions, all sensations and emotions, are exaggerated to the utmost degree. Distances seem infinite and time endless : pleasure is paradise itself, and any painful thought or feeling plunges at once into the depths of misery.

Hallucinations of the senses are common ; and the least suggestion will set going a train of vivid mental illusions. All the time a dual consciousness is present ; the experimenter feels ever and anon that he is distinct from the subject of the hashish dream, and can think rationally. The bodily sensations accompanying these phenomena are not many. Headache, sense of dryness of the mouth and throat, and anesthesia of the surface, are not uncommon.

The headache is very commonly a sensation as of the brain boiling over, and lifting the cranial arch like the lid of a tea-kettle. The anesthesia may be preceded by sensations over the body like those produced by slight electric sparks. In the motor sphere there is experienced at times the peculiar condition known as cataleptic.

Dr. O'Shaughnessy thus describes the effect of the resin on a native of India : ' At 8 p.m. we found him insensible, but breathing with perfect regularity, his pulse and skin natural. and the pupils freely contractile at the approach of light. Happening by chance to lift up the patient's right arm, the professional reader will judge of my astonishment, when I found that it remained in the posture in which I had placed it. It required but a very brief examination of the limbs to find that the patient had by the influence of this narcotic been thrown into that most strange and most extraordinary of all nervous conditions — into that state which so few have seen, and the existence of which so many still discredit — the genuine catalepsy of the nosologist. . . .

" Dr. Ringer and others recommend it in headache, the former esteeming it the most useful medicine we possess for diminishing the frequency of the paroxysms of migraine. . . .

" It should be remembered if we ever come across a case of catalepsy. I myself had a patient in whom attacks, probably hysterical at bottom, assumed a cataleptiform character, and here Cannabis indica proved rapidly curative. . . .

" The effects of Cannabis indica on the brain may be advantageously compared with those of Agaricus, Belladonna, Camphor, Crocus, Hyoscyamus, Opium and Stramonium. In its power of causing catalepsy its only rival is the chloride of tin.

KENT has a vivid little description of the action of Cannabis indica, in the 2nd edition of his Lectures on Materia Medica (omitted with some other good things from his third edition, where he evidently wanted room for new drugs). We will quote from it :

" A strange ecstatic sensation pervades the body and senses. The limbs and parts seem enlarged. A thrill of beatitude passes over the limbs. The limbs tremble.

Great weakness spreads over the body. The symptoms resemble catalepsy. Anesthesia and loss of muscular sense. Complaints ameliorated by rest.

Exaltation of spirits with mirthfulness. Wonderful imaginations and hallucinations. Wonderful exaggerations of time and space. He seems to be transported through space.

He seems to have two existences, or to be conscious of two states, or to exist in two spheres. Delusions. Incoherent speech. Laughs at serious remarks.

Laughs and weeps. Fear of death ; of insanity ; of the dark.

Anguish and sadness. Mental symptoms ameliorated by walking in the open air. An opposite phase prevails with his weakness. He loses his senses and falls.

Passes from the rational to the irrational in rapid succession, back and forth. Forgets words and ideas. Unable to finish his sentences. Thoughts crowding upon each other in such confusion prevent rational speech.

His mind is full of unfinished ideas and phantoms. Wonderful theories constantly form in the mind. Loquacity. He cannot control the mind to reason rationally upon any subject.

Any effort to reason is interrupted by flights of wild imagination and theory. Vision upon vision passes before the perception. Hears voices, bells, music in ecstatic confusion."

" Epilepsy, with exaltation of all powers of mind and body before the fit."

Farrington , when one gathers up the fragments scattered through his Comparative Materia Medica, has some valuable clinical hints. He says it is one of the best remedies in delirium tremens, with errors of perception as to space and as to time. . . . In delusions as to distance and time, as when a patient tells you he is hungry, and has eaten nothing for six months, when the dishes from which he has just partaken are yet by his bedside. . . . Or, on looking out of the window, he says that objects a few feet off are many yards distant. . . .

Then the urinary symptoms : " Burning, stitching, aching in kidneys ; pains when laughing. Also uraemia with sensation as if vertex were opening and shutting." And again, " Paralysis with tingling of affected part."

Nash has little to say about Cann. ind. But he gives a case which illustrates one of its phases, i.e., " Forgetfulness : begins a sentence then cannot finish it, because he forgets what he intends to speak or write."

This is the case : A lady with dropsy, consequent on valvular heart disease, after being relieved of the bloating, was suddenly unable to talk. In answer to a question she would begin a sentence, but could not finish it, because she could not remember what she intended to say. She was very impatient about it and would cry, but could not finish the sentence ; but could signify her assent if it was finished by some one else for her. This continued for several days, or until she received Cannabis indica, when she rapidly recovered her power to express herself."

One recalls two vivid experiences in regard to Cannabis indica, one curative, the other, apparently, causative.

A nice little fat, healthy-looking girl, fair haired and with rosy cheeks (before these mad days of " make-up "), arrived at " Outpatients " in great distress. We have already told the tale previously, but it will bear repeating.

She was a typist, working for a big railway company. She said, " I do not know quite how to tell you, but I have been living in a dream and I have lost my employment because of it. I Used to go home every night and tell them ' I am dead tired, because I have been all day long in the trains, working my typewriter.' It needed the hardest proofs to convince me that this was not true. I believed it.

Sometimes a rhinoceros followed me about, and into shops, and I told people so. I believed it. What am I to, do ? If, in the street, I pass a motor car, it is all I can do to prevent myself from saying to someone with me, Come, and I will take you for a drive in my car ' : and of course I have no car, and I cannot drive.

What am I to do ? " I was puzzled. I went across to the man I was working with. He suggested Cannabis ind. and she got a dose, and only came up once or twice more.

She had " forgotten all that nonsense," and was quite well.

The other concerns a luckless country parson, with an astute, unscrupulous, determined enemy, vowed, for reasons connected with religious practices, to drive him out of his parish. The monkey tricks that were played on this unhappy man were past imagination, and savoured of romance and melodrama. But we are concerned with only one of them.

One day his parish clerk (in the employ of the enemy) tempted him with some wonderful tobacco, given him by his master. The parson said he had no pipe, but the man produced a new one. The parson put the chunts into his pocket, and having business some miles away from home, set off across country on foot. At the top of a steep hill, he rested, and remembering the gift, fished it up from the bottom of his coat to which it had migrated through a hole in his pocket, and proceeded to cut it up on the top of a gate.

But with difficulty, for it was hard, and unlike any tobacco he had ever come across. Then he filled and lighted his pipe, and started to smoke it.

He began to " feel queer ". Then, almost immediately there was violent vertigo : terrifying when he attempted to move. . . And —

He must have been helpless there for several hours. before passers-by in a car befriended him, and took him home, where the local doctor was called in. But he was delirious all night — in a most alarming state : " counting elephants all night ", as he afterwards expressed it.

Two minor attacks occurred, after smoking certain cigarettes : while the rumour went round that the rector was very ill, and would have to resign and go away. But the attacks ceased when he eschewed the cigarettes of the village store, and bought his smokes elsewhere, beyond the reach of mischief.

Curious ! — these delusions of elephants and rhinoceri. How on earth does a drug manage to evoke these things ? They remind one of the fears and delusions and dreams of snakes (Hyoscyamus and Lac caninum and a few others).

BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS

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.

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 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 claws 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 Cannabis 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.

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 succession 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 generally 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.

" 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."

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.

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. Sees 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 recognized 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 and glory , only to be equalled in Paradise : landscapes of sublimest beauty ; profusion of flowers 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.

A smothered laugh of derision mocked the corpse from some invisible watcher, " 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 I 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 hail, 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. . . .

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 raillery, as I cowered in my besmeared rags."

Hears numberless bells ringing most sweetly.

For fully two weeks after, when sitting in his office, he would hear most magnificent harmony, as if some master-hand were playing an organ, and using only the softer slops.

There was this peculiarity about the hearing of the music, one must be in a state of halfreverie, then the divine strains, soft and marvellously sweet, followed 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 I 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 invisible 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 expand, 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 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 iron. 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 uncertainty."

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 : anesthesia again extended over his body and now was added an automaton-like and rapid movement 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 relax. Suddenly the mass of his brain, all except a small portion, seemed changed to marble ; (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 gesticulary 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."

All was unreal ; I myself was unreal ; even my voice did not seem my own.

" If the disembodied ever return to hover over the hearthstone 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 notion . . .

its monotonous din was changed 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."

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 annihilation, The use of it after any other stimulus will produce consequences 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. Certainly a Hashish eater should never be alone.

" Certainly it is as remarkable an instance of sympathetic clairvoyance 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 I 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."

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 !