Part 1
AN ESSAY ON HASHEESH
INCLUDING
OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS
BY VICTOR ROBINSON
_Contributing Editor, Medical Review of Reviews_, _Pharmaceutical Chemist, Columbia University_, _Member of the American Chemical Society_, _Author of_ “_Pathfinders in Medicine_.”
MEDICAL REVIEW OF REVIEWS TWO HUNDRED AND SIX BROADWAY NEW YORK 1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912 BY MEDICAL REVIEW OF REVIEWS
“What is left for us modern men? We cannot be Greek now. The cypress of knowledge springs, and withers when it comes in sight of Troy; the cypress of pleasure likewise, if it has not died already at the root of cankering Calvinism; the cypress of religion is tottering. What is left? Science, for those who are scientific. Art for artists; and all literary men are artists in a way. But science falls not to the lot of all. Art is hardly worth pursuing now. What is left? Hasheesh, I think: Hasheesh of one form or another. We can dull the pangs of the present by living the past again in reveries or learned studies, by illusions of the fancy and a life of self-indulgent dreaming. Take down the perfumed scrolls; open, unroll, peruse, digest, intoxicate your spirit with the flavor. Behold, here is the Athens of Plato in your narcotic visions; Buddha and his anchorites appear; the raptures of St. Francis and the fire-oblations of St. Dominic; the phantasms of mythologies; the birth-throes of religion, the neurotism of chivalry, the passion of past poems; all pass before you in your Maya world of hasheesh, which is criticism.”--JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS.
An Essay on Hasheesh
INCLUDING OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS.
By VICTOR ROBINSON.
“And now, borne far thru the steaming air floats an odor, balsamic, startling; the odor of those plumes and stalks and blossoms from which is exuding freely the narcotic resin of the great nettle. The nostril expands quickly, the lungs swell out deeply to draw it in: fragrance once known in childhood, ever in the memory afterward, and able to bring back to the wanderer homesick thoughts of midsummer days in the shadowy, many-toned woods, over into which is blown the smell of the hemp-fields.”
ALLEN: _The Reign of Law_.
“At the mere vestibule of the temple I could have sat and drunk in ecstasy forever, but lo! I am yet more blessed. On silent hinges the doors swing open, and I pass in.”
LUDLOW: _The Hasheesh Eater_.
Ailing man has ransacked the world to find balms to ease him of his pains. And this is only natural, for what doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his digestion? Let the tiniest nerve be but inflamed, and it will bend the proudest spirit: humble is a hero with a toothache! It is doubtful if Buddha himself could have maintained his equanimity with a bit of dust on his conjunctiva. Cæsar had a fever--and the eye that awed the world did lose its lustre, and the tongue that bade the Romans write his speeches in their books cried like a sick girl. Our flesh is heir to many ills, and alas when the heritage falls due. Even pride and prejudice are then forgotten, and Irishmen in need of purgatives are willing to use rhubarb grown on English soil, while the Foreign Colombo gathered by the feral natives in the untamed forests of Quilimani is consumed by ladies who never saw anything wilder than a Fabian Socialist.
The modern descendant of Hippocrates draws his Materia Medica from the uttermost ends of the earth: linseed from busy Holland and floretted marigold from the exotic Levant; cuckoo’s cap from little Helvetia, and pepper-elder from ample Brazil; biting cubebs from spicy Borneo and fringed lichens from raw-winded Iceland; sweet flag from the ponds of Burmah, coto bark from the thickets of Bolivia, sleeping nightshade from the woods of Algeria, brownish rhatany from the sands of Peru, purple crocus from the pastures of Greece, aromatic vanilla from the groves of Mexico, golden seal from the retreats of Canada, knotty aleppo from the plains of Kirghiz, fever-tree from the hills of Tasmania, white saunders from the mountains of Macassar. Idols are broken boldly nowadays, but the daughter of Æsculapius does not fear, for Hygeia knows she will always have a frenzied world of worshippers to kneel at her every shrine in every land.
All the reservoirs of nature have been tapped to yield medicines for man. From the mineral kingdom we take the alkali metals, the nitrogen group, the compounds of oxygen, the healing waters, the halogens, the nitrate of silver, the sulphate of copper, the carbonate of sodium, the chloride of mercury, the hydroxide of potassium, the acetate of lead, the citrate of lithium, the oxide of calcium, and the similar salts of half a hundred elements from Aluminium to Zincum.
From the vegetable kingdom we extract the potent alkaloid; all things that blossom and bloom, we knead them as we list: the broad rhizome of iris, the wrinkled root of lappa, the inspissated juice of aloes, the flower-heads of anthemis, the outer rind of orange, the inner bark of cinnamon, the thin arillode of macis, the dense sclerotium of ergot, the ovoid kernel of nutmeg, the pitted seed of rapa, the pale spores of club-moss, the spongy pith of sassafras, the bitter wood of quassia, the smoothish bark of juglans, the unripe fruit of hemlock, the fleshy bulb of scilla, the brittle leaves of senna, the velvet thallus of agaric, the balsamic resin of benzoin, the scaly strobiles of hops, the styles and stigmas of zea.
The animal kingdom has likewise been forced to bring tribute to its highest brother: we use in medicine the blood-sucking leech, the natural emulsion from the mammary glands of the cow, the internal fat from the abdomen of the hog, the coppery-green Spanish fly, the globular excrements of the leaping antelope, the fixed oil from the livers of the cod, the fresh bile of the stolid ox, the vitellus of the hen’s egg, the fatty substance from the huge head of the sperm-whale, the odorous secretion of the musk-deer, the swimming-bladder of regal fish, the inner layer of the oyster-shell, the branched skeleton of the red polyp, the dried follicles of the boring beaver, the bony horns of the crimson deer, the thyreoid glands of the simple sheep, the coagulated serum from the blood of the horse, the wax and the honey from the hive of the busy bee, and even the disgusting cockroaches that infest the kitchen-shelves and climb all over the washtubs are used as a diuretic and for dropsy.
Little it matters by whom the healing agent was ushered in, for mankind in its frantic search for health asks not the creed or color of its medical savior: Pipsissewa was introduced into medicine by the redskins, buchu by the hottentots, quassia by a negro slave, zinc valerianate by a French prince, krameria by a Spanish refugee, ipecac by the Brazilian aborigines, guaiac by a syphilitic warrior, aspidium by a Swiss widow.
“Medicine,” wrote the greatest of literary physicians, “appropriates everything from every source that can be of the slightest use to anybody who is ailing in any way, or like to be ailing from any cause. It learned from a monk how to use antimony, from a Jesuit how to cure agues, from a friar how to cut for stone, from a soldier how to treat gout, from a sailor how to keep off scurvy, from a postmaster how to sound the Eustachian tube, from a dairy-maid how to prevent small-pox, and from an old market-woman how to catch the itch-insect. It borrowed acupuncture and the moxa from the Japanese heathen, and was taught the use of lobelia by the American savage.”
And all these substances are daily being powdered, sifted, granulated, desiccated, percolated, macerated, distilled, sublimed, comminuted, dissolved, precipitated, filtered, strained, expressed, clarified, crystallized, ignited, fused, calcined, torrified and deflagrated into powders, pills, wafers, capsules, ampoules, extracts, tinctures, infusions, decoctions, syrups, cordials, essences, magmas, suppositories, tablets, troches, ointments, plasters, abstracts, liniments, collodions, cataplasms and so on and so on.
And all these finished preparations have a most laudable object in view--the eradication of disease and the alleviation of pain. Ah, this is indeed a quest worth the striving for! To accomplish the quadrature of the circle, or ferret out the secret of perpetual motion, may be highly interesting, tho of problematical value only; but when a clammy sweat bathes the brow, and the delicate nerves twitch till the tortured human frame shakes in anguish, how important is it to be able to lift the veil from a condition like this! He who conquers disease is greater than the builder of cities or the creator of empires. His value is above the poets, statesmen cannot be compared unto him, educators equal him not in worth. A careful economist like John Stuart Mill tells us it is doubtful if all the labor-saving machinery ever invented has lessened for a single day the work of a single human being,--but when a discovery is made in medicine it becomes a sun which sheds its beneficence on all who suffer. The sick pauper of to-day lying in a charity hospital receives better medical treatment than the sick potentate of yesterday lying in his costly palace.
But so far medical science has only unhorsed, not overthrown, its ancient antagonist. In spite of all the remedies, in spite of all the research, mankind as yet possesses no satisfactory antidote for suffering; it knows no drug which can give pain its _congé_ for more than a transient period.
But altho the time of relief be limited, the simple fact that there are substances which do have some power over pain is sufficient to make the study of narcotism highly important. And of all the narcotics--a narcotic being roughly defined as a substance which relieves pain and produces excitability followed by sleep--none is more alluring to the imagination than the intoxicating hemp-plant, scientifically known as _Cannabis sativa_ and popularly famed as Hasheesh--those strange flowering-tops that appeal to a pot-bellied bushman of Australia who smokes it in a pipe of animal tusks, and to so hyper-esoteric a _littérateur_ as Charles Baudelaire of the Celestial City of Art.
The habitat of the hemp-plant is extensive: not by the hand of man were the seeds sown that gave it birth near the Caspian Sea, where it wildly flourishes on the banks of the immense Volga--that mighty mass of liquid ever stupendously rolling thru a limitless continent; it climbs the Altai range and thrives where the Himalaya rears its stony head ten thousand feet on high; it extends to Persia, and China knows it; the Congo river and the hot Zambesi bathe it in Africa, it is not a stranger in sunny France, and how well it thrives in Kentucky the numerous readers of the _Reign of Law_ will ever remember.
In the seventeenth century Rumphius noticed that there were differences between the hemp grown in India and the hemp grown in Europe. In the nineteenth century Lamarck accepted these distinctions, and believing the Indian hemp to be a separate species, agreed in calling it _Cannabis indica_ as a distinction from the _Cannabis sativa_ of Linnæus and Willdenow. But it is now conceded that from a botanical standpoint the variations are by no means certain or important enough to warrant the maintenance of Indian hemp as a species distinct from common hemp. And as the greater includes the lesser, in botany as well as in geometry, its botanical name is _Cannabis sativa_, with _Cannabis indica_ as one variety, just as _Cannabis americana_ is another variety.
The hemp grown in Russia is of a fibrous quality, and is largely used for the gallows--to hang the opponents of despotism. In England many a bold highwayman has been embraced by it the last moment of his roving life, and has thus philanthropically given his mother-tongue a chance to enrich herself. For instance, a hempie means a rascal for whom the hemp grows; a hempen collar means the hangman’s noose; a hempen widow means one whose husband has been hanged; to sow hemp means to live in a manner likely to lead to the gallows. Rope, however, is not the only use to which the fibers can be put; they are extensively employed in clothing, and in the manufacture of paper.
The plant is also cultivated for its seeds, which contain a large quantity of oil, and is therefore used in pharmacy for emulsions, and in the domestic arts because of its drying properties. But the seeds are chiefly used as a favorite food for birds. In fact, some birds consume them to excess, which should lead us to suspect that these seeds, tho they cannot intoxicate us, have a narcotic effect on the feathered creatures, making them dream of a happy birdland where there are no gilded cages, and where the men are gunless and the women hatless. The seeds also contain sugar and considerable albumin,--making them very nutritious; rabbits eat them readily. They are consumed also by some human beings, but are not as good as the sunflower seeds which Marianka ceaselessly and carelessly crunched, while Olenine looked upon her moving lips with a lover’s despair.
The medicinal hemp--the hemp with the potent narcotic principles--is _Cannabis indica_. In this case we have an example of Compensation that would have made Emerson’s eyes glisten, for altho the fibrous texture of hemp disappears under a southern sun, to make up for the loss there is secreted a resin--_Churrus_. This resin is collected in a most singular manner. During the hot season, according to Dr. O’Shaughnessy, men clothed in leather run violently thru the hemp-fields and brush forcibly against the plants. The soft, sticky resin adheres to the garments, and is later scraped off and kneaded into balls. Dr. M’Kinnon informed Dr. O’Shaughnessy that in the province of Nipal the leather attire is dispensed with, and that the natives run naked thru the hemp fields, gathering the resin on their bare bodies.
When the larger leaves turn brown and fall to the ground, it is an indication of the approach of maturity. The flowering tops are then cut off, and subjected to a process of rolling and treading by trained human feet. The hemp is placed on a hard floor surrounded by a rail; the natives take hold of a revolving post, march around and around, singing the while, and press the plants in a technical manner. Whether the perspiration which drips from their unshod organs of locomotion works any chemical change in the composition of Cannabis has not yet been determined by E. M. Holmes or E. W. Dixon.
It is not surprising to learn that the dealing in Hasheesh is a Government monopoly, and that heavy punishment is meted out to those offenders who buy or sell it without permission. “The importation of it into Egypt is so strongly interdicted,” explains the _Dispensatory of the United States_, “that the mere possession of it is a penal offense; we found it, however, readily procurable. It is said to be brought into the country in pigs’ bladders, in the Indo-European steamers, and thrown out at night during the passage into the Suez canal, to be picked up by the boats of confederates.” This deplorable state of affairs is apt to remind us of our own temperance towns--where there are always some individuals who possess the faculty of obtaining whisky _ad libitum_.
_Cannabis sativa_ is a member of the _Moraceæ_ or Mulberry Family, which family was formerly an order of apetalous dicotyledenous trees or shrubs, but is now reduced to a tribe of the _Urticaceæ_ or Nettle Family which embraces 110 genera and 1500 species.
Cannabis is an annual herb, and thus endures but one year, because instead of storing away nutritious matter in underground bulbs and tubers like the industrious biennials or perennials, it exultingly expends its new-born energy in the production of beautiful blossoms and the maturation of fruit and seed. “This completed,” says Asa Gray, “the exhausted and not at all replenished individual perishes.”
Sexually, hemp is diœcious, which means that its staminate and pistillate organs are not on the same plant. When cultivated for its narcotic properties, only the flowering tops of the unfertilized female plants are used, and the male plants are eradicated with great care, as it is claimed that a single one can spoil an entire field--something like a Boccaccion gentleman in a nunnery. The process of weeding out the males is performed by an expert called a poddar, who brings to his work a conscious technical skill, and an unconscious but interesting argument in illustration of what Lester F. Ward has described as the Androcentric World View, for the poddar deliberately reverses the names of the sexes, and designates the useful females as males, and calls the rejected males the females. If we had such impudent poddars in the animal world, no doubt the valuable Miss Jane Addams would be metamorphosed into James, while the unnecessary Mr. Anthony Comstock would be adorned with a feminine appellation.
Cannabis is from 4 to 12 feet in height; its stem is angular, branching, and covered with matted hairs; its leaves are palmate and therefore roughly resemble an open hand; its leaflets are lance-shaped, possessing margins dentated with saw-like teeth; its flowers are yellow and axillary, the male cluster being a raceme and therefore pedicelled, and the female a spike and consequently sessile or stemless; the five male organs or stamens contain pendulous double-celled sacs or anthers; the two female organs or pistils have glandular stigmas, the stigma being the spot where fertilization occurs; the fruit is a gray nut or achene, each containing a single oily seed; the whole plant is covered with a scarcely visible down; the roughness of the leaves and stem is due to the silica, which is a characteristic of the plants of the _Moraceæ_.
Not much need be said of the microscopical characteristics of hemp, for altho the powder contains several histological elements, as pollen grains, glands, crystals, resin, fibres, vessels, stone cells, epidermis, parenchyma,--indicating presence of stem, leaf, flower, seed,--its characteristic hairs or trichomes with their cystolith deposits are of sufficient diagnostic value to make it readily recognizable.
Unfortunately, when we come to the chemical constituents of Cannabis, certainty is at an end. As Dorvault’s _L’Officine_ says, “La composition chimique du cannabis indica est mal connue.” The conquests of man are peculiar: he lays a cable under the roaring ocean, and he flashes his messages thru limitless miles of space; beneath the surface of the earth he rides on an iron horse, and bird-like he sails thru the trackless air. But put this common drug before him and he cannot determine its chemical composition. The careful experimenters and the expert assayers are balked.
“I have extracted an alkaloid from hasheesh,” says Preobraschensky, “and it is potent.” “No, we have found the active constituent,” say T. and H. Smith; “it is the resin cannabin.” “No,” says Personne, “I have isolated the important ingredient; it is the amber-colored volatile oil, cannabene.” “Oh, no,” says Frankel, “I have discovered the active principle--it is a phenol aldehyde.” “No, indeed,” say Wood, Spivey and Easterfield, “it is we who have separated the only active ingredient--it is a red oil, cannabinol.” “Oh, not at all,” says Hamilton, “not one of these is the active constituent; in fact, the active constituent has not yet been isolated.” In such an arena, where the masters dispute, it behooves the amateur to speak with a stammering tongue.
That doubt should prevail on this subject is all the more remarkable when we consider that hemp has been known from a time whereof the mind of man runneth not to the contrary--to use a phrase which seems to delight the lawyers. In the _Odyssey_, a thousand years before the advent of the Christian era, Homer sang of the assuager of grief or Nepenthes, which is believed to have been the hemp-plant. Hemp thus comes ushered into history, held in the beautiful hand of Helen. Hesychius narrates that the Thracian women made sheets of hemp. Pliny says hemp was known to the Romans, who manufactured cordage from it. The Father of History relates that the Scythians threw the seeds of hemp on red-hot stones, and bathed themselves in the vapor, crying with exultation. Moschion records that the ship _Syracusia_, built for Hiero--kinsman of Archimedes--was rigged with hempen ropes. In the most ancient of all Hindu medical works, _Susruta_, hemp is recommended for catarrh. The Pandit Moodoosudun Gooptu found in the _Rajniguntu_ a clear account of hemp. A Sanskrit work on Materia Medica, _Rajbulubha_, alludes to the use of hemp in gonorrhea. According to Kamalakantha Vidyalanka, hemp was early forbidden to pious Brahmins. The old Arabic and Persian writers made numerous references to cannabis, and declared its narcotic properties were discovered by Haider. Haider was a rigid monk who built a monastery on the mountains between Nishabor and Ramah. For ten years he never left his hermitage, never indulged in even a fleeting moment’s pleasure. One burning summer’s day when the fiery sun glared angrily upon Mother Earth as if he wished to wither up her breasts, Haider stepped out from his cloister and walked alone to the fields. All around him lay the vegetation weary and without life, but one plant danced in the heat with joy. Haider plucked it, partook of it, and returned to the convent a happier man. The monks who saw him immediately noticed the change in their chief. He encouraged conversation, and acted boisterously. He then led his companions to the fields, and the holy men partook of the hasheesh, and were transformed from austere ascetics into jolly good fellows. At the death of Haider, in conformity with his desire, his disciples planted the hemp in an arbor around his tomb.---- In that portion of the Chinese herbal, _Rh-ya_, which was written 500 B.C., the seed and flower-bearing kinds of hemp are noticed. In the first century, Dioscorides--the most renowned of the ancient writers on Materia Medica--recommended the seeds in the form of a cataplasm to soothe inflammation. In the second century, Galen wrote that it was customary to give hemp to guests at banquets to promote hilarity and happiness. At the beginning of the third century, the physician Hoa-Thoa used hemp as an anesthetic in surgical operations. In the thirteenth century, garments of hemp became common thruout Southern Europe, and it may well be that Beatrice herself wore it when Dante first saw the maiden in her father’s house.