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 offer 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 tumour 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, where, beyond the reach for mischief.
Curious!-these delusions of elephants and rhinoceri. How on earth does a drug manage to evoke these things? They remind one for the fears and delusions and dreams of snakes (Hyoscyamus and Lachesis caninum and a few others).
BLACK LETTER SYMPTOMS
Imagines he hears music;l 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 become purple and the backhand loins ache.
Anguish accompanied by great oppressions ameliorated in the open air. He was inconstant 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.
Revenues hunger.
Pain in the cardiac orifice.
Burning and scalding before, during and after urination.
Profuse colorless urine.
The urine dribbles our after the stream ceases.
On squeezing the glans penis, a white glairy mucus oozes our.
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 stop. and preventing him from walking erect.
Paralysis of he 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.
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 a air: claps hands for joy. 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 laugh’s 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 general 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 balls, clutched him: glaring at him with fiery eyes from beneath their cowls. Seemed to be walking in a vast arena encircled by tremendous, wall. Starts regarded him with pitying human aspect: the sun 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 value opened and shut. The biting of my heart was so clearly audible, i wondered it was not heard by others.”
Seems possessed of a dual existence one of which from a height watches the other as it passes through the phases of the Hashish delirium. Had a feeling of duality, one of his minds. would 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 thorough solid walls.
Extreme protraction of timed, and extent of space :-a few seconds seem ages;- the utterance of a word as long as a whole draw., 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 tone 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 wealth of the world and showers riches on all the needy around him.
Feels that he is transparent: feels the blood in his veins: “the fire in the great 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; traveling that he has no weight.
Illusion that he was a pump-long 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 counter pane : he opened and shut his brass cover, it had a hinge;shock 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 a 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 besides 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 blackouts, 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 equaled 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.
House 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 the 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 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 paralyzed, 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 hall, with roof of iron arches then demoniac forms and faces suddenly the nearest fiend thrust a pitchfork of white-hot iron into my saddened 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 story high. Ran in bitter thirst to a fountain 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 stores 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.”
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