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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
fact, that the inhalation of the smoke of haschisch has been a 
long-prevailing custom in the East. This is the same substance 
as the nepenthes of Homer, and the preparation of it as a luxury 
forms a distinct trade or calling. The distinguished Polli of Milan, 
who has recently investigated the action of haschisch, explains 
that the substance is sold in candle-shaped pieces, from three to 
four inches long : it smells like impure wax, is sharp to the taste, 
is easily soluble in water, and is taken either by the mouth in 
honey or coffee, or by the process of smoking. Occasionally, it is 
taken in the form of a spirituous liquid or wine. In all cases, 
the active principle of the substance is derived from the flower- 
ing extremities of the hemp, the substance said to have been 
used by Hoatho ; the active principle resides in a resin peculiar 
to the hemp-flower of the East ; this variety of hemp is called 
the Cannabis Indica , and the resin is called cannabina or 
haschischina. 
When the haschisch is smoked or swallowed, or when the 
simple flower and seed are smoked or swallowed, there is in- 
duced a peculiar inebriation, which follows rapidly under the 
inhaling process, slowly after the eating, and lasts, in each case, 
a considerable time. Polli subjected himself and two friends to 
the action of the hemp, and describes the effects with singular 
clearness and power. The most noticeable coincidence is the 
similarity of the symptoms brought out with those which are 
produced by the inhalation of nitrous oxide gas mixed with air. 
In fact, Sir Humphrey Davy’s description of his sensations under 
the influence of the gas, and Polli’s description of his sensations 
under the influence of haschisch are so alike, it could be inferred 
that the same agent was at work. The haschisch not only 
modifies ideas and conceptions of surrounding objects, and 
excites new ideas respecting time and space, but it removes 
common sensibility, so that a blow may be administered to a 
person under it without exciting either pain or anger. 
Snow notices yet another author who recommends a volatile 
anaesthetic. This author is the famous Theodoric of the thir- 
teenth century, who gives a recipe after Dominus Hugo. Domi- 
nus directs that 46 there be taken, of opium, of the juice of the 
unripe mulberry, of henbane, of the juice of hemlock, of the 
juice of the leaves of mandragora, of the juice of the woody ivy, 
of the juice of the forest mulberry, of the seeds of lettuce, of 
the seeds of the dock which has large round apples, and of the 
water hemlock, of each an ounce. These are all to be mixed in a 
brazen vessel and then in the vessel is to be placed a sponge : the 
whole is to boil so long as the sun lasts in the dog days, until 
the sponge consumes all, and all is boiled away in the sponge. 
The sponge is now to be kept, and as oft as there is need of it, 
it is to be placed in hot water for an hour and afterwards applied 
