78 AKTIFICIAL INSANITY. 



of his knowledge of the mode of action of this, or that, new 

 drug. 



In classical times and countries, priests, sybils, pytho- 

 nesses, oracles, sorcerers and witches, voluntarily and 

 artificially produced in themselves ecstasy, visions, dreams, 

 furiosity, and other morbid mental phenomena, by 



1. Eating narcotic leaves. 



2. Imbibing narcotic fumes. 



3. Swallowing narcotic draughts (Pierquin). 



It would appear that man can also produce in himself 

 some, at least, of these minor forms of mental disturbance, 

 by purely mental or moral means, or by means conjointly 

 physical and mental. Thus the New Zealand Maoris 

 are said, prior to the colonisation of that country by the 

 Europeans, to have produced in themselves a battle-fury, 1 of 

 the nature of homicidal mania, by dances, songs and recita- 

 tions. That such influences are quite as capable of giving 

 rise to insanity as those which act poisonously on the brain, 

 or nervous system, there can be 110 doubt, whether as regards 

 other animals, or man, as is fully pointed out in a special 

 chapter on ' The Moral Causes of Mental Defect and Dis- 

 order.' 



Self -stimulation by such substances as alcohol, opium, and 

 haschisch, or bhang, by savages, semi*savages, or civilised 

 people, may amount in its minor or milder degrees to, or 

 may beget, the spurious and temporary courage of the kind 

 required by the hired bravo, for his cowardly assassinations. 

 Or it may become, for instance among the Malays, a homi^ 

 cidal frenzy, or murderous mania, which can therefore as 

 readily be developed at will as the artificial courage of the 

 bravo. 



The use by man of various of the narcotic solanacece 9 

 papaveracece, umbelliferce, ranunculacece, fungi, or their pro- 

 ducts, to produce in himself mere pleasant stimulation^ 

 ecstasy, semi-stupor, or anaesthesia, is too apt to lead to the 

 unwelcome development of frequently uncontrollable, or 



1 A good illustrative plate of the Maori War Dance, and of the physiog- 

 nomy of artificially induced mania, is given in the late Dr. Arthur Thomson's 

 * Story of New Zealand,' 1859, vol. i. 



