MESCAL: A STUDY OF A DIVINE PLANT. 65 



to prevent himself from staggering and more than usual energy to per- 

 form even the simplest action. This may affect space-relations and one 

 of my subjects found that in lifting a cup to his lips the distance 

 traversed seemed very much more than usual; the same subject found 

 that his ideas of time seemed to be disturbed, but on testing him with 

 the watch his estimates were found to be fairly accurate. 



The positive and active manifestations of mescal are always mainly 

 if not entirely on the sensory side, and the motor weakness and sense of 

 lassitude which is often present only throw the subject of mescal 

 intoxication more absolutely at the mercy of the waves of unfamiliar 

 sensory impetus which strike him from every side. Every sense is 

 affected: apart from the various visionary influences, sounds become 

 unfamiliar and abnormally acute, the sense of smell is stimulated or 

 olfactory hallucinations may occur, the simplest food seems to possess 

 an added relish, while there are vague skin sensations, and to the sense 

 of touch the body seems as unfamiliar as everything else has become. 

 I have elsewhere remarked, in illustration of the peculiar effects of this 

 drug, that mescal seems to introduce us into the world in which 

 Wordsworth lived or sought to live. The 'trailing clouds of glory/ the 

 tendency to invest the very simplest things with an atmosphere of 

 beauty, a 'light that never was on sea or land/ the new vision of even 

 'the simplest flower that blows/ all the special traits of Wordsworth's 

 peculiar poetic vision correspond as exactly as possible to the actual and 

 effortless experiences of the subject of mescal. 



It should be added that a sense of well-being is not an essential part 

 of these sensory manifestations. In this respect mescal is entirely 

 unlike those drugs of which alcohol is the supreme type. Under the 

 influence of a moderate dose of alcohol the specific senses are not 

 obviously affected at all, but there is a vague and massive consciousness 

 of emotional well-being, a sense of satisfaction tending to a conviction 

 that 'all's well with the world.' Alcohol has a dulling influence on 

 sensory activity and on the intellectual centers; and it may indeed be 

 said that for the brain-worker whatever value the moderate use of 

 alcohol may possess chiefly lies in the fact that after brain-work is over 

 it helps to soothe undue brain-activity. Mescal, on the other hand, is 

 not mainly emotional in its effects but mainly sensory and it leaves the 

 intellect almost unimpaired even in large doses. It is true that at one 

 stage of mescal intoxication, and more especially in quite healthy 

 persons, there is a feeling of well-being, and even of beatitude, accom- 

 panied by an illusory sense of quite unusual intellectual activity; but 

 there is no stage of maudlin emotionality; on the whole there is a 

 condition of fairly unimpaired and alert intellect, untiringly absorbed 

 in the contemplation of the strange world of new sensory phenomena 



into which the subject has been introduced. 

 vol. lxi. — 5. 



