'330 THE BLACK CANDLE

vived a crisis which I know would have downed a large percentage of those witless .. 'Willies' whose idea of humor is to ridicule the crippled, maimed, and outcast."

CHAPTER XXIII. MARAHUANA-A NEW MENACE.

"My-eyes are veiled, because I drink cups of . -Afghan Song.

. . .... HIS ... drug is not really new but,. as yet., is com-T. paratively unknown in the United States and Canada, although three of the American States-Cali-fornia, Missouri and Wyoming-have legislated against its . use, the authorities and police officers generally being woefully ignorant of its nature or extraordinary menace.

At the Convention held at The Hague in 1912, Italy suggested a study of this drug, holding that its use would increase asthe opium traffic was suppressed.

Marahuana is known by chemists and physicians as cannibis indica, and more. commonly as Indian .. hemp. Sometimes it.is called hasheesh or hashish.

In Chapter 31 of The Count of Monte Cristo, Dumas gives us an account of a hashish debauch. In this chapter "Sinbad" the host, describe's the green

as nothing less than the ambrosict which Hebe served at the table of Jupiter. "Sinbad" speaks of this as "the hashish of Alexandria-the of Ab01,lr-Gor, the celebrated maker, the only man to whom there should be built a palace, inscribed with these words, 'agrateful world to a dealer happiness.' "

331

332 THE.HLACK C'ANDLE

Eminent medical doctors in India, principally at Calcutta, have experiments with C annibis Indica and have that it induces symptoms of cata-lepsy or even of trance. It is 'also claimed that the fakers of India who suffer themselves to be buried, and who are later disinterred, do so through the agency of this drug.

Some years ago, Dr. James Braid' of Edinburgh wrote a monograph on this subject entitled "Trance and Human Hybernation," which was published by John Church of Princes Street, Soho, London.

Hashish or hasheesh is the Arabic name and means literally "dried herb." It may be smoked, chewed or drunk. Our English word "assassin" comes from this word. .

The hemp resin for smoking and chewing comes in three forms- chang, ganja and charas"

This Indian hemp is used chiefly in Asia Minor, India, Persia and Egypt, but is being increasingly used on this continent, particularly by the Mexicans, who smuggle it into the United States. Last year fifty-four persons were convicted for using, or ling it in Los Angeles, California.

Charles A. Jones, the Chief of Police for the city, said in a recent letter that hashish, or Indian hemp, grows wild in Mexico but to raise this shrub in Cali-fornia constitutes a violation of the State Narcotic law. He says, "Persons: using this narcotic, smoke the dried 'leaves of the plant, which has the effect of driving them completely insane. The loses all sense of moral responsibility. to this drug,

MARAHUANA-A NEW MENACE 333

while under its influence, are immune to pain, and could be severely injured without having any realiza-tionof their condition. While in this condition . they become raving maniacs and are ,liable to kIll or indulge in any form of violence to other persons, using the most savage methods of cruelty without, as said be-fore, any sense of moral responsibility.

"When coming from under the influence of this narcotic, these victims present the most horrible con-dition imaginable. They are . dispossessed of their natural and normal will power, and their mentality is that of idiots. If this drug is indulged into any great extent, it ends in the untimely death of its addict."

Mr. Hamilton Fyfe in The Real M eJ;ico, writing of this drug-says of it, "They (the Mexicans) madden themselves with a drug called Marahuana. This. has strange and terrible effects. It appears to make those who swallow it do whatever is uppermost in their thoughts. At E1 Paso, a peon came across. the Inter-national Bridge firing a rifle at all and sundry. Much talk against the Americans and a dose of Marahuana had decided him to invade the United States by him-self. The bridge-keeper quickly put a bullet into the poor wretch."

W. H. B. Stoddart of the Bethlehem Royal Hos-pital of London, says the drug is used for the purpose of inducing pleasurable motor excitemeht and hal1u-cinations which are 'commonly sexual in character among East'ern races. . This contention is, however, denied by the Encyclopaed'ia Brittanica, which says there is no' evidence that the drug is an aphrodiside.

334 THE BLACK CANDLE

Stoddart says further that ihasheesh causes epi-sensations, with anathesiaof the arms a.nd

legs. The acute intoxication is characterized .by sleepiness and "a certain impudent, dare ..devil de-meanor."As in intoxication. from alcohol, tne gait is staggering. The addict has delusions of persecution or of measureless grandeur. Speaking of the latter delusion, Dr. Palmer writes that in India, under its influence, your servant .is apt to make you a grand salaam instead of. a sandwich, and offer you an houri when you merely demanded .a' red herring.;

Warnock in The Journal of Mental Sciences for January, 1903, states that acute mania from hasheesh varies from "a mild, short attack of excite-ment to. a prolonged attack of furious mania, .ending in exhaustion or even death/'

He describes thehasheeshuserin the following words: "They are good-for-nothing lazy fellows who live by begging or stealing, and pester their relations for money to buy the hasheesh, often assaulting them, when they refuse the demands ..The moral degrada-tion of these cases is their ,most salient symptom; loss of social position, shamelessness, addiction to lying and theft, and a loose, irregular life makes them a curse to their families."

It. appears that in usIng this poison, the time.,.sense becomes impaired in such away that time appears to pass slowly.' One addict says Ithat on recovering from a debauch "It was1ike r(!turning home froman eternity spent in loneline!:\s among the palaces of strangers. Well may I sayan eternity," he continues,

MARAHUANA-A NEW MENACE 335 "for duringthe Whole day I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was separated from the preceding one by lanimmeasureable lapse of time."

It is also a peculiarity of hasheesh that its fantasia almost invariably takes Oriental form. "It is hasheesh which makes both the Syrian and the Saxon Oriental," quoth one 'Of its habitues.'"

Quincey tells the same of opium, but this may only have been because in normal hours his imagina ..

dallied with Eastern themes and scenes. Speak-ing' of these fantasia with their "unimaginable hor:-rors" he writes, "I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins with mummies and sphinxes in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancerous kisses, by crocodiles, and laid confounded with unutterable slimy things amongst reeds and nilotic mud."

It is believed that the Arabian' Nights were written urider the motor excitement of hasheesh. The ro-mancer under its influence travelled on a magic carpet and saw strange lands and sights.

Blown on some mystic wind conjured up by the drug, . the modem habitue, in a phrensy of . travel, passes through all latitudes in gigantic Now, with- joyous lightness, he is "on the way toMandalay," or again, in the profoundest dejection, he has come to "say good-bye." He travels through marshy jungles, over mid-earth lakes, across desert plains, over valleys of roses, or in the high air where insane faces howl at him and curse horribly.

336 THE BLACK CANDLE

Sometime about the middle of the last century, a" remarkable volume entitled The H asheesh Eater was written by Ludlow, an American author of great ability and high culture. He was born in the State of New York in 1836 and died of consumption in Switzerland in 1870. He was special correspon-d(!nt to the New York dailies; wrote much magazine literature and edited Vanity Fair from 1858 to 1860.

The effects of hasheesh, "this weed of madness," being explained to him by a druggist, he was impelled by curiosity, and by a desire to record these effects scientifically to experiment with this narcotic, not only on himself but on his fellow students. ;

There are plenty of folk who pretend to themselves. that they yield to narcotic enchantment in a desire for research and not for sensual gratification, and I that they inure their friends to its effects for the same reason,. but, however kindly in judgment, one finds these statements hard to credit, and even if credited, only demonstrates these persons as rascals-manifest. '

has described the delirium of hasheesh,,; with its. hellish agonies, as no one ever did before, or could wish to again. He told of the jubilance from the drug, and of its reactory results in physical and men- tal depression ;of the nervous waste from hasheesh

. addiction, and the necessity of again using the drug to supply the which it first occasioned.

He also tells the story of his enfranchisement from this fell and ,deadly habit till that time when he was no longer Han outcast from man's league with God."

MARAHUANA-A NEW MENACE 337

It has been pointed out that there are three ways out from the regency of this addiction:

1st-Insanity. 2nd-:-Death. 3rd-Abandonment. This is assuredly a direful trinity and one with

which the public should be cognizant in order that they may be warned of the sharp danger that lies in even curiosly tasting poisons which have been inhibited, or which are habit-forming. '

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