BETEL-NUT AND CHURRUS. 347 



Now we leave to the judgment of impartial readers to decide between the 

 betel-nut and the tobacco leaf, which is the more refined luxury of the two, bar- 

 ring the black teeth ; and here, again, we may say — de gustibus. There is 

 nothing of which it behooves us more to disabuse ourselves than of the preju- 

 dices of education, habit, and country. It is somewhere related that a man of 

 erect and athletic form being cast on the shore of an island inhabited by hump- 

 back people, was stoned to death as a monster of deformity. If anything so re- 

 pulsive as is tobacco, on being first tasted, can become an article almost of neces- 

 sity with those accustomed to use it, why may it not be changed for a more 

 compact and genteel substitute ? Not only do we see individuals, but whole na- 

 tions change in character, that is to say their manner of seeing and feeling, ef- 

 fected most frequently by changes in the form of their government, or rather, we 

 might say, by corruption and fraud in the spirit of its administration. Who 

 would believe, for example, that a Roman Emperor once said of the Parisians, 

 "I love them because their character, like mine, is austere and serious ! " 



But we are getting into a moralizing strain, and may ourselves, peradventure, 

 be considered as under the influence of some uncommon hallucination. In regard 

 to tobacco, as we have a month to back and fill upon, as to anything essential in 

 a practical view, after having given the best directions at hand for making the 

 beds, the professional and general reader may not be displeased that we take 

 room for what we find about that other drug, " Churrus," especially if the 

 Asiatic cholera should follow in the wake of the potato cholera, as it seems to 

 be doing in Europe. It may be well, too, in the way of advertisement to our 

 medical readers, who will pardon the supposition that some of them may not 

 have seen the following or a similar account of it. The positive assertion, too, 

 that it has been found effectual in cases of lockjaw is alone sufficient to commend 

 it to the notice of the humane of all classes, and to justify us in lugging it in in 

 almost any connection, without reference to its narcotic eflfects, which seem to 

 assimilate it so strongly to our weed. 



This drug was, about three years since, presented to the Veterinary Medical 

 Association, with the following note from Doctor Hoey : 



''Ml/ Dear Sir: Be pleased to accept the accompanying drug, which I have brought 

 from India. I do not know whether it is generally known in this countiy ; the Indian name 

 for it is " chunnis ; " it is a resinous exti'act obtained from tlie wild hemp. I ha\e seen 

 several cases of tetanus cured by it in India. The dose I have given is one scruple, in the 

 form of tincture, every four hours, the patient having been first copiously bled, and the 

 bowels frequently acted on by aloes. It has also been used by human surgeons for the 

 cure of cholera with great success; in tact, there are few cases but have yielded to it, when 

 taken in time. Perhaps you are already acquainted with it ; if so, pardon the liberty 1 take 

 in sending it to you, since I do so under the impression that it may not be generally known. 

 The natives of India use it to smoke in their hookas, combined with spices and tobacco, and 

 with it they perfectly stupefy themselves ; and when they recover from its effects say they 

 liave had heavenly dreams. It is much similar to opium in its narciJtic effects, but differs 

 from that drug by not producing the same amount of debility subsequently. 



" Believe me, my dear Sir, yours very truly and obliged, J. W. HOEY. 



" To Mr. Morton." 



" In India," says Professor Burnet, " hemp is cultivated as a luxury, and used 

 solely as an excitant. It possesses peculiar intoxicating powers, and produces 

 luxurious dreams and trances. The leaves are sometimes chewed andt sometimes 

 smoked as tobacco." We recollect to have once heard the late William Pink- 

 ney, unequaled as an orator at the bar, say that on the eve of a great cause he 

 could never so well concentrate his thoughts and arrange all his armor for the 

 coming conflict as when pufling his fragrant Havana in a mood of abstraction. 

 Mr. Ley, too, says, in a paper read before the Medico-Botanical Societv, London, 



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