DIETETIC CURIOSITIES. 31 



The effect of this hemp-extract is compared to hydrophobia : its vota- 

 ries are seized with rage and restlessness, and if the paroxysm is upon 

 them seize a knife, a stone, or anything that will serve for a weapon, and 

 rush out to commit indiscriminate assaults, continuing to " run amuck," 

 as the Malays term it, till the stimulating power of the drug has spent 

 itself, or till their career is stopped by a well-aimed shot. In Batavia 

 and other cities of the Dutch Indies there used to be a standing reward 

 for the slaying of a " muck-runner," but even such a man as Ibrahim 

 Pasha was not ashamed to stimulate the courage of his soldiers by the 

 use of the detestable poison. The hasheesh-habit originated in Asia 

 Minor, but is now practiced throughout northern Africa down to the 

 Abyssinian valleys, and has spread eastward to the Malay Archipelago, 

 and even to Siam, where its further progress was arrested by the deter- 

 mined action of the Siamese Government. 



A frugal diet has this additional advantage, that simple food is in 

 less danger of adulteration, or must at least be imitated by equally 

 simple and harmless substitutes. Watered milk or lard mixed with 

 corn-meal is certainly annoying, but hardly injurious, and is a trifle 

 altogether if compared with the abominations that are half consciously 

 consumed by the lovers of imported delicacies and expensive stimulants. 

 Dr. Stenhouse, of Liverpool, analyzed a suspicious sample of tea, with 

 the following result, published in the " Planters' Price Current " of Feb- 

 ruary, 1871 : The package contained some pure congou-tea leaves, also 

 siftings of pekoe and inferior kinds, weighing together twenty-seven 

 per cent, of the whole. The remaining seventy-three per cent, were 

 composed of the following adulterants : Iron, plumbago, chalk, china- 

 clay, sand, prussian blue, turmeric, indigo, starch, gypsum, catechu, 

 gum, the leaves of the camellia, sarangua, Chlorantes officinalis, elm, 

 oak, willow, poplar, elder, beach, hawthorn, and sloe. 



There is hardly any article of food in general use which has not 

 somewhere been converted into a stimulant by the process of fermen- 

 tation. What else are whisky, rum, beer, etc., but fermented or distilled 

 bread, the bread-corn diverted from its legitimate use to produce an 

 artificial stimulant ? Potatoes, sugar, honey, as well as grapes, plums, 

 apples, cherries, and innumerable other fruits, have thus been turned 

 from a blessing into a curse. The Moors of Barbary and Tripoli distill 

 an ardent spirit from the fruit of the date-palm, the Brazilians from the 

 marrow of the sago-tree and from pineapples, and even the poor ber- 

 ries that manage to ripen on the banks of the Yukon have to furnish a 

 poison for the inhabitants of Alaska. Pulque, the national drink of 

 Mexico, is derived from a large variety of the aloe-plant, the sap of which 

 is collected and fermented in buckskin sloughs into a turbid yellowish 

 liquor of most vicious taste. 



Cheese, in fact, is nothing but coagulated milk in a more or less ad- 

 vanced state of decay. Sauerkraut is cabbage in the first stage of fer- 

 mentation, which if completed yields quass, the above-mentioned Rus- 



