540 mescal: a new artificial paradise. 



various textures — fibrous, woven, polislied, glowing, dull, veined, serai- 

 transparent — the glowing effects, as of jewels, and tlie fibrous, as of 

 insects' wings, being perhaps the most prevalent. Although the effects 

 were novel, it frequently happened, as I have already mentioned, that 

 they vaguely recalled known objects. Thus, once the objects presented 

 to me seemed to be made of exquisite porcelain, again they were like 

 elaborate sweetmeats, again of a somewhat Maori style of architecture; 

 and the background of the pictures frequently recalled, both in form 

 and tone, the delicate architectural effects as of lace carved in wood, 

 which we associate with the mouchrabieh work of Cairo. But always 

 the visions grew and changed without any reference to the character- 

 istics of those real objects of wliich they vaguely reminded me, and 

 when I tried to influence their course it was with very little success. 

 On the whole, I should say that the images were most usually what 

 miglit be called living arabesques. There was often a certain incom- 

 plete tendency to symmetry, as thougli the underlying mechanism was 

 associated with a large number of polished facets. The same image 

 was in this way frequently repeated over a large part of the field; but 

 this refers more to form than to color, in respect to which there would 

 still be all sorts of delightful varieties, so that if, with a certain uni- 

 formity, jewel-like flowers were springing up and expanding all over 

 the fieki of vision, they would still show every variety of delicate tone 

 and tint. 



Weir Mitchell found that he could only see the visions with closed 

 eyes and in a jDerfectly dark room. I could see them in the dark with 

 almost equal facility, though they were not of equal brilliancy, when 

 my eyes were wide open. I saw them best, however, when my eyes 

 were closed, in a room lighted only by flickering firelight. This evi- 

 dently accords with the experience of the Indians, who keep a fire 

 burning brightly throughout their mescal rites. 



The visions continued with undiminished brilliance for many hours, 

 and as I felt somewhat faint and muscularly weak, I went to bed, as 

 *I undressed being greatly impressed by the red, scaly, bronzed, and 

 pigmented appearance of my limbs whenever I was not directly gazing 

 at them. I had not the faintest desire for sleep; there was a general 

 hypemesthesia of all the senses as well as muscular irritability, and 

 every slightest sound seemed magnified to startling dimensions, I 

 may also have been kept awake by a vague alarm at the novelty of 

 my condition, and the possibility of further developments. 



After watching the visions in the dark for some hours I became a 

 little tired of them and turned on the gas. Then I found that I was 

 able to study a new series of visual phenomena, to which previous 

 observers had made no reference. The gas jet (an ordinary flickering 

 burner) seemed to burn with great brilliance, sending out waves of 

 light, which exj^anded and contracted in an enormously exaggerated 

 manner. I was even more impressed by the shadows, which were in 

 all directions heightened by flushes of red, green, and especially violet. 



