5 io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



very harmless and inactive medicine, and one day, when I was assured 

 by some familiar symptoms that my perpetual dull headache was 

 about to assume an aggravated and acute form, such as usually sent 

 me to bed for a number of days, I took, in the desperate hope of 

 forestalling the attack, a much larger quantity of hasheesh than had 

 ever been prescribed. Twenty minutes later I was seized with a 

 strange sinking or faintness, which gave my family so much alarm 

 that they telephoned at once for the doctor, who came in thirty min- 

 utes after the summons, bringing, as he had been requested, another 

 practitioner with him. 



I had just rallied from the third faint, as I call the sinking turns, 

 for want of a more descriptive name, and was rapidly relapsing into 

 another, when the doctors came. One of them asked at once if I had 

 been taking anything unusual, and a friend who had been sent for 

 remembered that I had been experimenting with hasheesh. The phy- 

 sicians asked then the size and time of the last dose, but I could not 

 answer. I heard them distinctly, but my lips were sealed. Undoubt- 

 edly my looks conveyed a desire to speak, for Dr. G , bending over 



me, asked if I had taken a much larger quantity than he ordered. 

 I was half sitting up on the bed when he asked me that question, 

 and, with all my energies bent upon giving him to understand that I 

 had taken an overdose, I bowed my head, and at once became uncon- 

 scious of everything except that bowing, which I kept up with ever- 

 increasing force for seven or eight hours, according to my computa- 

 tion of time. I felt the veins of my throat swell nearly to bursting, 

 and the cords tighten painfully, as, impelled by an irresistible force, 

 I nodded like a wooden mandarin in a tea-store. 



In the midst of it all I left my body, and quietly from the foot of 

 the bed watched my unhappy self nodding with frightful velocity. I 

 glanced indignantly at the shamefully indifferent group that did not 

 even appear to notice the frantic motions, and resumed my place in 

 my living temple of flesh in time to recover sufficiently to observe 

 one doctor lift his finger from my wrist, where he had laid it to count 

 the pulsations just as I lapsed into unconsciousness, and say to the 

 other : " I think she moved her head. She means us to understand 

 that she has taken largely of the cannabis Indica." So, in the long, 

 interminable hours I had been nodding my head off, only time enough 

 had elapsed to count my pulse, and the violent motions of my head 

 had in fact been barely noticeable. This exaggerated appreciation of 

 sight, motion, and sound is, I am told, a well-known effect of hasheesh, 

 but I was ignorant of that fact then, and, even if I had not been, 

 probably the mental torture I underwent during the time it enchained 

 my faculties would not have been lessened, as I seemed to have no 

 power to reason with myself, even in the semi-conscious intervals 

 which came between the spells. 



These intervals grew shorter, and in them I had no power to speak. 



