MESCAL: A STUDY OF A DIVINE PLANT. 55 



an allied Indian tribe who call it hikori and worship it as a god. This 

 account furnishes a few supplementary details to Diguet's narrative 

 of the expedition. We are told that as the Indians approach the 

 plants they display every sign of veneration, uncovering their heads. 

 Before gathering them they cense themselves with copal incense. They 

 dig out the cactus with great care, so as not to hurt it, and women and 

 boys are not allowed to approach the god. The plants are kept in jars 

 in caves, and offerings of food and drink made to them. Even Chiutian 

 Indians regard hikori as coequal with their own divinity and make 

 the sign of the cross in its presence. At all important festivals hikori 

 is made into a drink and consumed by the medicine men, and certain 

 selected Indians partake of it, singing invocations to hikori to grant a 

 'beautiful intoxication.' A rasping noise is made with sticks, while 

 men and women dance, the sexes separately, a picturesque and fantastic 

 dance, the women in white petticoats and tunics, before those who are 

 under the influence of the god. 



III. 



We have now to consider what are those special virtues which have 

 caused this insignificant little cactus, hidden away among almost 

 inaccessible rocks, to be surrounded by so splendid a halo of veneration. 



The first really scientific attempt to ascertain the nature of the 

 peculiar effects of this drug on the human organism was made by 

 Professor Prentiss and Dr. Morgan in their investigation, already men- 

 tioned,* of the mescal buttons obtained by Mr. Mooney among the 

 Kiowa Indians. These observers administered the drug, in what I 

 should consider extremely large doses (in one case as many as seven 

 buttons), to several subjects whose symptoms were noted and their color 

 visions briefly described. These investigators made no observations 

 on themselves. In the following year, however, Dr. Weir Mitchell, 

 attracted by their account of the effect of the drug, obtained some 

 of the extract from them and made an experiment on himself, taking 

 a large dose. Dr. Weir Mitchell describes himself as a good subject for 

 visions, and his vivid and elaborate account of his experiences, as read 

 before the American Neurological Society,! furnished the first really 

 full and instructive description of the artificial paradise of mescal. In 

 the early part of the next year, having been greatly interested by Dr. 

 Weir Mitchell's experience, and thinking that this drug might help to 

 throw light on various matters which I was trying to account for, I suc- 

 ceeded in obtaining a supply of mescal buttons in England and experi- 

 mented on myself. As these observations, the first made outside 

 America on the psychic effects of mescal, covered the same ground as 

 Dr. Weir Mitchell's, while at the same time revealing new classes of 



* Therapeutic Gazette, September 16, 1895. 



f Reprinted in the British Medical Journal, December 5, 1896. 



