THE INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER.

THE translation of a note by M. S. de Luca, on Haschisch, which appeared in the December number of the INTELLECTUAL OBSERVER (page 346), recalled to my memory some experiences of my own in the use of Haschisch. These experiences might not be worth recording were it not a matter of some interest to the medical profession whether or not Haschisch can be exhibited as a therapeutic agent, a matter to be determined very much by a comparison of its effects on persons of various habit and constitution. It may be right to preface these remarks by stating that I am of middling height, spare habit, sanguine-nervous temperament, not robust, but have always enjoyed sound health, have great powers of endurance, and possess altogether a vigorous constitution.

The publication, in 1845, of a work on Haschisch, by Dr. Moreau,[1] occasioned between myself and a friend, who was then preparing for the medical profession, some conversations on this and other narcotics, the result of which was that we several times smoked and swallowed opium, and resolved also to possess ourselves of some Haschisch. We made application to Messrs. Battley and Watts, the druggists, of Fore Street, without success, and, after other fruitless efforts, gave up the hope of ever tasting the fascinating compound of Cannabis Indica. In 1849 my friend was sent to Paris, and he soon after wrote to me to say that the students at the Medical Schools were all indulging in the intoxication of Haschisch, and by the next post he would forward me a sample. In due time I received a small brown slab, resembling a refined sample of Cavendish tobacco, and with it instructions to take not more than one drachm at a time. I was so eager to make acquaintance with it that I could have taken the whole at once. It weighed about half an ounce; it emitted an agreeable odour when broken, and felt sticky between the fingers. I trembled with joy as I turned it over and over in my hand, and I thought the odour affected me so as to produce a sense of inward satisfaction, like that of the first few whiffs of a good cigar. I retired to my study, it was then growing dusk, the season July, and I had been up two nights in succession reading Jacob Behmen. I remember feeling quite fatigued and low, yet in perfect health, and in the mood for any wild freak which might promise a sensation agreeable to the imagination. I sat down at the window, broke off a piece of the cake as near a drachm as I could guess, and swallowed it. I put away the remainder, that I might not be tempted to take a second dose, and waited anxiously to feel its effects.

I soon became conscious of a sense of disappointment. I said “That was not Haschisch, but some preparation of chocolate.” I took my pen to write an indignant letter to my friend, that he might know I had not become an easy dupe to his plan for deceiving me. I was at a loss how to begin the letter, though otherwise always ready at writing, even when fatigued. For a moment I paused, considering, and then the parietal bones of my head expanded widely, as if parting at the sutures, and again collapsed with a sort of shuffling sound. I said, “This is the result of fatigue; I have read too hard, I will go to bed.” As I rose from my table I became conscious of an agreeable state of warmth and lightness; I felt as if I had taken Scotch whisky. The room seemed larger than usual, and getting larger and larger still; some skulls of animals on the walls acquired colossal proportions, and the conviction entered my mind that I had realized an old dream of living in the midst of the monsters of the Oolitic period, and that I had been awe-struck for years, immoveable, paralyzed, and with every faculty benumbed, except the faculty of wonder. I caught sight of my watch hanging in front of some papers on the wall, it at once dispelled the illusion. I calmly looked at it, and found it was just twenty minutes since I swallowed the Haschisch. Immediately the watch expanded to vast dimensions, and its ticking sounded through my head like the pulsation of a world. I knew now for the first time that I was under the influence of the drug, and began to make a few notes in pencil. Suddenly my limbs seemed benumbed, my toes shrunk within my slippers, my fingers became like the long legs of a convulsed spider, I dropped the pencil, and walked to the window. The landscape was so sublime that I forgot the cause of the illusion in my admiration of the magical scene. The horizon was removed to an infinite distance, but was still discernible, and the sunset had marked it out with myriads of fiery circles all revolving, mingling together, expanding and then changing to an aurora, which shot up to the zenith, and fell down in sparks and splashes among the trees, which at once became illuminated, and the whole scene was grand beyond description, with fires of every conceivable colour.

All this time the landscape continued to expand, everything grew as I looked on to greater and greater proportions. Trees shot up higher and higher; their branches overspread the sky; they met together, and became a confused mass; the lights, which just before had glowed on every hand, changed to a general purple haze, a sense of twitching in every limb, coupled with a feeling of weariness and depression, caused me to turn aside and sit down. The twitching changed to a sharp pricking sensation, most violent in the extremities, and for a moment the thought crossed my mind that I had been poisoned by strychnine. I opened a drawer to find an emetic, but the drawer had gone, and in its place sat one of my antediluvian monsters grinning at me – a real icthyosaurus, with a red cap on its head, and with drum and pandean pipes. For about six weeks – so at the time I determined the period – it played a monotonous tune, while I sat on the ground laughing and enjoying the idea of my toes and fingers being elongated int claws, when suddenly the thought seized me that I would destroy the illusion by an effort. I dashed at the monster, and my hand fell on the handle of the drawer. The dream was dissolved, and I could clearly understand that the ticking of my watch and the singing of a bird in the garden, were the real sounds which my fancy had changed to the drum and pipes of my Oolitic companion. I once more looked at my watch, and though years seemed to have elapsed since the spell began, I found the real period to be but twenty-five minutes.

This last act of observing the time threw me again off my balance. I said, “Twenty-five minutes, twenty-five days, twenty-five months, twenty-five years, twenty-five centuries, twenty-five eons. Now I know it all; I am the alchemist who discovered the elixir of life in the dark ages, and I shall live for ever; what is time to me? Yes, that was the elixir I took twenty-five minutes ago to experience a sensation, and there it goes round the room.” It made me giddy to see it whirl like a wheel of which I was the centre. There was a bust of Milton on the shelf which had changed to the face of Jacob Behmen, and it sat on one of the spokes of the wheel, and smiled upon me with such a smile of peace and satisfaction that I shouted “Ha, ha!” The wheel revolved; it became brilliant with fiery corruscations, and by degrees the centre where I sat became the circumference, and I was whirled with it, my head opening and shutting, so that I could feel the cold air upon my brain; my breath getting short and difficult, my chest falling in as if crushed by a weight, and my stomach gnawed by rats. This went on for ages, yet I knew all the while where I was, and how the whole thing had happened; and actually got up, rang the bell, and ordered some coffee, though not for an instant did the illusion cease, nor, so far as I ever learnt, did the servant who answered me discover any signs of my aberration. I thought of the coffee as likely to relieve the sense of oppression and disorder, which was now fast dispelling the illusion by its reality. I felt my pulse, and tried to count it; I knew afterwards that it was full and rapid, but at the time the throbs were like the heaving of mountains, and the numbers would multiply themselves; so that as I counted “one, two three,” they became “one, two, three years, centuries, ages,” and I literally shrieked with the overpowering thought that I had lived from all eternity, and should live to all eternity in a palace of coloured stalactites, supported by shafts of emerald, resting on a sea of liquid gold, for this was now the appearance of things; and the gnawing at my stomach suggested the idea that I should be starved to death and yet live, the deformed wreck of a deluded man.

At this moment there was a tap at the door, and the servant entered with the coffee. It was in a huge tankard chased all over with dragons that extended all round the world, and I saw the odour of it play round her in circles of light, and for at least an hour she stood smiling and hesitating where to place it, because my table was covered with papers. I very calmly removed a few of the papers, and heaved a sigh that dissipated the dragons, made the odours fall in a shower of rain, and she put down the tray with a crash that made every bone in my body vibrate as if struck by ten thousand hammers. I know not whether she was alarmed at my appearance, but she stood apparently aghast, and her rosy face expanded to the size of a balloon, and away she went with the rapidity of lightning, with Mr. Green in the car, and I stood applauding in the midst of thousands of lamps, which I had time to note – as the scene continued during a period which seemed indefinite – were all glow-worms, which I could touch, and they communicated to my fingers phosphorescent sparks, as if they had been rubbed with lucifer matches.[2] But I knew this was unreal; and I drank the coffee with the most perfect composure, though I felt it difficult to pour it out without spilling it, and the cup came to my lips as if it were the rim of a cauldron seething with a stew of spices and nepenthe, and amid the steam I could see the fierceness and tartness and prima materia of Jacob Behmen, all displayed, so that there was an end of the mystery, and I could see into his brain, as he now seemed to be looking into mine.

The moment I sipped the coffee it darted through me, and caused sensations of insupportable heat. The gnawing sensation of the stomach and contraction of the chest gave way to a sense of pricking, most violent in my fingers and toes, and yet, though painful, this was all pleasant; and though I could now collectedly observe the objects around me, yet they would transport themselves to immeasurable distances, and keep continually dilating in size; and though I looked at my watch, and saw that only forty minutes had elapsed, yet there was a secret persuasion in my mind that a period of at least forty centuries had gone by since I broke off a fragment of the cake, and committed myself to this dream.

There seemed to be now only one effect of the drug remaining, and that was a sense of warmth all over the body and a tendency in my head to expand and fill the room. But my arms dropped down; I could not keep them up without great and painful effort. I finished the coffee, experienced less of the pricking sensation than at first, and then rose and went to bed. I could walk without difficulty, though my legs were immensely long, and felt as if they would presently be cramped, so that I should cry out. As I undressed myself, my clothes would fly from me far away into boundless space, and become wandering stars, the buttons of my vest glittered in the firmament like Orion, but much more vast and splendid. I did not dare to look out of the window; I endeavoured to control myself, for I began to feel a sense of dread. As I got into bed, the bed extended; as I lay down at full length I myself extended, and as soon as I shut my eyes I felt that I covered the space of the whole earth. I had a sense of indescribable pain all over me; my skin seemed to move to and fro upon my flesh, my head swelled to awful dimensions, and I parted in two from head to foot; became two persons, each throbbing, breathing hard, sighing loudly, and lost in a commixture of ethereal yet agonizing colours and sounds. These seemed to continue for ages; but I was really asleep, and I never could call to mind at what time I went to bed, or at what point of the illusion sleep came upon me, but I always supposed it to be when I felt myself parted in twain, and immersed in light and music.

The next day I was awake early, and seemingly unrefreshed. I lay some hours pondering on the strange effects the drug had produced, and found it difficult for some time to prevent the intrusion of some broken fragments of the visions from taking possession of me; but when I had dressed and breakfasted, I felt as well as usual, and experienced no sensation whatever, which I could attribute to the effects of the drug.

In a second experiment, when unaffected by fatigue, I noticed that every physical and mental power seemed intensified. The illusions were more agreeable, and more ridiculous. I was the subject of a thousand different moods in the course of a few seconds, which, as in the former cases, seemed ages, and these moods were nearly always swallowed up in some strange vision of walls receding, landscapes rolling away to an horizon they never reached; skies opening to views of boundless space, and sudden flashes before the eye of visible odours, sounds, and ideas. The most remarkable feature of this paroxysm was a feeling that my soul was too large for my body, and must expand it to suitable dimensions. This pained me. I gasped for my breath, and felt my skin stretch and crack, and my joints fly like the snapping of huge beams of timber. These illusions became instantly the foundations of others. The cracking of my skin became suddenly a display of fireworks; and the snapping of my joints, the beating of gongs. Still pleasurable sensations prevailed; old memories were revived as pictures, and in many respects the effects resembled those of opium. But with opium there is a more entire and settled acquiescence in the illusions, and the ideas are more connected and continuous. With Haschisch there is a rapid succession of new scenes and startling combinations. When there is no pain the mind is literally whirled away in a succession of ravishing delights, and is yet all the while conscious that the whole affair is a deception. This paroxysm was soon over. It ended in a joyous feeling, in which life seemed lengthened out beyond the natural term, and all around me were objects of transcendant beauty, which I had the power of resolving into realities by an effort of the will; and it seemed that by successively using this effort the spell was broken, and the effects of the drug entirely destroyed.

The third dose was the last. I took it at mid-day, when in my usual health and spirits. Thinking that at the second experiment I did not take enough, I know weighed out four scruples. I at once went out, and proceeded across Finsbury Square, in the direction of the city. It seemed that about a quarter of an hour elapsed, during which I had felt a comfortable sense of warmth, and an increasing tendency to open my mouth for air, though I was not aware of any difficulty of breathing. “Now,” said I, “this is pleasant. I shall have a glorious time of it.” Immediately a voice shouted “There he goes; he’s always inflated!” I was at once conscious that I was observed by passers-by to be expanding rapidly; and I felt myself rise from the ground, and walk above it. I halted, and by an effort of the mind collected myself, and found that the voice was that of a man selling some wares in Moorgate Street, who had not even noticed me, nor had any one else. But the thought occurred immediately, “This is a delusion, I am expanding, and cannot touch the ground.” For a moment it might be, but it seemed an indefinite period, I saw the whole of the city spread out before me as a diorama. The church bells rang joyously; the houses were illuminated; the horses had gold and silver trappings; the people were waltzing, singing, laughing, and playing with fireworks. I again exerted my will, and felt a disgust at the meanness of such a performance, so far short did it come of my own sense of sublimity; for I felt exalted, and had the utmost consciousness that I was able to separate the false from the true, though I really could not. I retraced my steps, and was accompanied home with triumphal bands of music, shouts of triumph, running footmen, carrying coloured flambeaux; and I gradually quickened my pace till I ran too, only touching the ground at intervals, but for the most part swimming through the air; yet knowing that I walked as other people, and knowing too, that the ordinary sounds and scenes of the streets were the foundations of the whole delusion.

I reached home, and went to my study with a sense of satisfaction that I was not in a safer position than in the streets under such an influence. I sat down, and began to fill a pipe with Turkey tobacco. The pipe would lengthen out so that I could not reach the bowl, yet I did reach it, and in like manner the tobacco jar seemed deep enough to serve for one of those used in “Ali Baba, or the Forty Thieves!” and it suddenly became a row of jars, and out of them leaped the forty thieves, with monkey’s faces and red jackets on.[3] I lighted my pipe, and as the cloud rose, I saw the party had all lighted their pipes, and were all proper Arabs, and I was in the midst, about to tell them a tale.

By some strange freak they all suddenly collapsed and became the double of myself, and yet they continued smoking. I now saw in the stomach of my double a huge cake of Haschisch, which presently shot up into his brain, and I felt a hot throbbing of the head, and the thought occurred, “Why, if he has the Haschisch, have I the burning, and how can that shadow smoke so calmly with a mass of poison in his brain?” I rose and propounded to my double a problem, “How, in the end, matter and spirit would be completely identified and made as one?” I was assured, in reply, that a sense of lightness would accomplish all, and I became light as a feather; I swayed to and fro, I was lifted up, sparks flashed in my eyes, fire was emitted from my fingers, my head, my stomach; and presently there was an awful crash, and I came to myself with the thought that I was going mad. I saw the pipe in fragments at my feet, and the burning tobacco on the hearthrug. I cooly picked it up with my hand, took another pipe, dropped the smoking tobacco into it, and saw my double again. This time he was the body and I was the shadow. I felt myself to be nothing; I was the soul, and beside me was the body. I thought I had now solved the problem of matter and spirit. I said, “They are only two forms of the same fact,” and I laughed aloud, and they all laughed with me – the umbrellas, I mean – for my umbrella hung on a hat rail, and it peopled the room with offspring, and away went the furniture and ornaments and books, all carrying umbrellas, dancing, whistling, and splashing the water from the pools upon me till I stamped my foot and smothered myself with sparks, annd planets, and auroras, and sank back with a pain in the head that literally dispelled the delusions, and created a momentary alarm. I was now beset with prickings; I seemed to swell; I had a difficulty in breathing – and yet it was a pleasant one. I put the tobacco away, inspected everything about me, and thought of trying the effects of reading aloud, and of attempting to sing; but I found my strength gone, I was spell-bound, so light I could not govern my movements, and by degrees I began to discover that the illusion was over, that it had left me tremulous, and with a low pulse, and requiring refreshment for my recovery. The first act on fairly reviewing the case was to seize the fragment of Haschisch that remained and fling it up the chimney. It went up, and did not even return again; I saw it go into the sky and become a bird, for the chimney was glass, and I could see through all its windings. I now felt that madness had really come upon me, and I began to bathe my temples and drink soda-water, and soon discovered that I had had a second paroxysm, for there lay the Haschisch among the shavings in the fire-place. I applied a match, there was a glorious blaze, and I now saw it dissolve into a grand procession of coloured lights, that died away and left me quietly and collectedly reflecting on the whole affair. This was the third paroxysm. There was yet one more, but of a trivial nature, and I had now done with Haschisch.

Having at that same period of my life frequently indulged in the use of opium, I can compare its effects with those of Haschisch, and I notice this great distinction as regards my own experiences: – With opium the mind and body become alike contented. Pain soon ceases after commencing to smoke a pipe in which a fragment of opium is mixed with the tobacco. On the other hand, Haschisch causes pain, and many unpleasant sensations are mingled with the most delightful of the visions it presents. Another distinction is that opium always causes some amount of nausea when its pleasurable effects are over. Haschisch leaves a slight depression, but the stomach does not appear to be affected; but this might be different if the use of Haschisch became habitual. Another distinction is, that the mind can pursue a train of thought logically while influenced by opium, but Haschisch causes so many alternations of feeling, that sequence is destroyed.

Some readers of this may associate the subject with with recollection of an act of discourtesy on my part. On the 12th and 19th of June, 1850, I delivered two lectures at the London Mechanics’ Institution, in the course of which I gave an account of the effects of Haschisch on myself. Something like a Haschisch society was formed there immediately afterwards, and I was requested to furnish the material for gratifying the wish of the young men to understand Haschisch at first-hand. A readiness to oblige led me astray; I consented. I obtained a large cube of Haschisch from Paris, and was about to send it on to the gentleman who had corresponded with me on the subject. I felt that I might be the author of incalculable mischief, so I destroyed the cake, and purposely sent no word of explanation or apology. I thought if I now refused they would get it by some other means; but if I remained silent, the enthusiasm for Haschisch would die out in disappointment. I know not if my discretion at last was equal to my folly at first; but if any of those persons read this, I wish them to understand that it was for their good I adopted such a method of disappointing them.

1. “Du Haschisch et de l’Alienation Mentale Etudes Psychologiques.”
2. Only a few days before I had found some glow-worms in the garden, and on handling them found my fingers tipped with a dull phosphoric glow. This probably gave rise to the illusion. In fact, I afterwards traced many of my sensations during the paroxysm to previous events, and I almost believe the illusions are the result of abnormal memory.
3. I had seen a monkey on a barrel organ during my walk, and tested my sanity by noting all its zoological features, in order to determine its species; but I lost it suddenly.