154 



POPULAR ECONOMIC BOTANY. 



to lift up the patient^s arm, tlie professional reader will judge 

 of my astonishment^ when I found it remained in the pos- 

 ture in which I placed it. It required but a very brief exami- 

 nation of the limbs to find that the patient had, by the influ- 

 ence of this narcotic, been thrown into that strange and most 

 extraordinary of all nervous conditions — into that state 

 which so few have seen, and the existence of which so many 

 still discredit — the genuine catalepsy of the nosologist. We 

 raised him to a sitting posture, and placed his arms and 

 limbs in every imaginable attitude. A waxen figure could 

 not be more pliant or more stationary in each position, no 

 m^atter how contrary to the natural influence of gravity on 

 the part ; to all impressions he was meanwhile almost insen- 

 sible.^^ This extraordinary influence was produced upon 

 other animals as well as man; after a time it passes off 

 entirely, leaving the patient perfectly uninjured by it. 



Owing to this peculiar property in hemp grown in tropical 

 countries, it has been thought by many botanists that the 

 narcotic hemp was a distinct species, which they called 

 Cannahis Indica; this is now known to be an error, though 

 probably it is a distinct variety. 



In India, besides the cJiurruSj the herb is dried for 

 smoking under the following names: — Gunjah, the dried 



