THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HASHISH
Ludlow’s wonderful introspection seemed to me to fortify this
suggestion.
“Well, then, let me see whether by first exalting myself
mystically and continuing my invocations while the drug
dissolved the matrix of the diamond Soul, that diamond
might not manifest limpid and sparkling, a radiance ‘not of
the Sun, nor of the Moon, nor of the Stars’;” and then, of
course, I remembered that this ceremonial intoxication con-
stitutes the supreme ritual of all religions.
First, however, it was necessary to determine the normal
action of the drug upon my particular organisation. There
are various preparations of Cannabis indica, all alike in this,
that their action is so uncertain as to be not easily or surely
standardised. It is not even a question of reasonable limits:
of two samples apparently alike one may be fifty times
stronger than the other. A sample may apparently degene-
rate 50 percent. in strength withina fewdays. Some samples
may be totally inert.
This fact has led to the almost total abandonment of the
use of the drug in medicine.
Further, the personal equation counts for much. Allan
Bennett in Chancery Lane had on one occasion taken suffi-
cient Conium (hemlock) to kill forty men without the smallest
result of any kind.
In KandyI had (for the first time in my life) taken two
hundred and twenty-five drops of Laudanum in five hours,
also with no more result than would have been produced by
ten drops upon the average man.
Our equation was therefore composed exclusively of
variables, and wide variables at that! Nothing for it, then,
39