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MESCAL: A NEW ARTIFICIAL PARADISE
by Havelock Ellis
The Contemporary Review
January 1898
It has been known for some years that the Kiowa Indians of New Mexico are accustomed to
eat, in their religious ceremonies, a certain cactus called Anhalonium Lewinii, or mescal
button. Mescal -- which must not be confounded with the intoxicating drink of the same
name made from an agave -- is found in the Mexican Valley of the Rio Grande, the ancestral
home of the Kiowa Indians, as well as in Texas, and is a brown and brittle substance,
nauseous and bitter to the taste, composed mainly of the blunt dried leaves of the plant.
Yet, as we shall see, it has every claim to rank with hasheesh and the other famous drugs
which have procured for men the joys of an artificial paradise. Upon the Kiowa Indians,
who first discovered its rare and potent virtues, it has had so strong a fascination that
the missionaries among these Indians, finding here a rival to Christianity not yielding to
moral suasion, have appealed to the secular arm, and the buying and selling of the drug
has been prohibited by Government under severe penalties. Yet the use of mescal prevails
among the Kiowas to this day.
It has indeed spread, and the mescal rite may be said to be to-day the chief religion
of all the tribes of the southern plains of the United States. The rite usually takes
place on Saturday night; the men then sit in a circle within the tent round a large camp
fire, which is kept burning brightly all the time. After prayer the leader hands each man
four buttons, which are slowly chewed and swallowed, and altogether about ten or twelve
buttons are consumed by each man between sun-down and daybreak. Throughout the night the
men sit quietly round the fire in a state of reverie -- amid continual singing and the
beating of drums by attendants -- absorbed in the color visions and other manifestations
of mescal intoxication, and about noon on the following day, when the effects have passed
off, they get up and go about their business, without any depression or other unpleasant
aftereffect.
There are five or six allied species of cacti which the Indians also use and treat with
great reverence. Thus Mr. Carl Lumholtz has found that the Tarahumari, a tribe of Mexican
Indians, worship various cacti as gods, only to be approached with uncovered heads. When
they wish to obtain these cacti, the Tarahumari clense themselves with copal incense, and
with profound respect dig up the god, careful lest they should hurt him, while women and
children are warned from the spot. Even Christian Indians regard Hikori, the cactus god,
as coequal with their own divinity, and make the sign of the cross in its presence. At all
great festivals Hikori is made into a drink and consumed by the medicine man, or certain
selected Indians, who sing as they partake of it, invoking Hikori to grant a
"beautiful intoxication"; at the same time a rasping noise is made with sticks,
and men and women dance a fantastic and picturesque dance -- the women by themselves in
white petticoats and tunics -- before those who are under the influence of the god.
In 1891 Mr. James Mooney, of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, having frequently
observed the mescal rites of the Kiowa Indians and assisted at them, called the attention
of the Anthropological Society at Washington to the subject, and three years later he
brought to Washington a supply of mescal, which was handed over for examination to Drs.
Prentiss and Morgan. These investigators experimented on several young men, and
demonstrated, for the first time, the precise character of mescal intoxication and the
remarkable visions to which it gives rise. A little later Dr. Weir Mitchell, who, in
addition to his eminence as a physician, is a man of marked aesthetic temperament,
experimented on himself, and published a very interesting record of the brilliant visions
by which he was visited under the influence of the plant. In the spring of the past year I
was able to obtain a small sample of mescal in London, and as my first experiment with
mescal was also, apparently, the first attempt to investigate its vision-producing
properties outside America,[1] I will describe it in some
detail, in preference to drawing on the previously published descriptions of the American
observers.
On Good Friday I found myself entirely alone in the quiet rooms in the Temple which I
occupy when in London, and judged the occasion a fitting one for a personal experiment. I
made a decoction (a different method from that adopted in America) of three buttons, the
full physiological dose, and drank this at intervals between 2.30 and 4.30 p.m. The first
symptom observed during the afternoon was a certain consciousness of energy and
intellectual power.[2] This passed off, and about an
hour after the final dose I felt faint and unsteady; the pulse was low, and I found it
pleasanter to lie down. I was still able to read, and I noticed that a pale violet shadow
floated over the page around the point at which my eyes were fixed. I had already noticed
that objects not in the direct line of vision, such as my hands holding the book, shows a
tendency to look obtrusive, heightened in color, almost monstrous, while, on closing my
eyes, afterimages were vivid and prolonged. The appearance of vision with closed eyes was
very gradual. At first there was merely a vague play of light and shade which suggested
pictures, but never made them. Then the pictures became more definite, but too confused
and crowded to be described, beyond saying that they were of the same character as the
images of the kaleidoscope, symmetrical groupings of spiked objects. Then, in the course
of the evening, they became distinct, but still indescribable-mostly a vast field of
golden jewels, studded with red and green stones, ever changing. This moment was, perhaps,
the most delightful of the experience, for at the same time the air around me seemed to be
flushed with vague perfume -- producing with the visions a delicious effect -- and all
discomfort had vanished, except a slight faintness and tremor of the hands, which, later
on, made it almost impossible to guide a pen as I made notes of the experiment; it was,
however, with an effort, always possible to write with a pencil. The visions never
resembled familiar objects; they were extremely definite, but yet always novel; they were
constantly approaching, and yet constantly eluding, the semblance of known things. I would
see thick, glorious fields of jewels, solitary or clustered, sometimes brilliant and
sparkling, sometimes with a dull rich glow. Then they would spring up into flower-like
shapes beneath my gaze, and then seem to turn into gorgeous butterfly forms or endless
folds of glistening, iridescent, fibrous wings of wonderful insects; while sometimes I
seemed to be gazing into a vast hollow revolving vessel, or whose polished concave
mother-of-pearl surface the hues were swiftly changing. I was surprised, not only by the
enormous profusion of the imagery presented to my gaze, but still more by its variety.
Perpetually some totally new kind of effect would appear in the field of vision; sometimes
there was swift movement, sometimes dull, somber richness of color, sometimes glitter and
sparkle, once a startling rain of gold, which seemed to approach me. Most usually there
was a combination of rich, sober color, with jewel-like points of brilliant hue. Every
color and tone conceivable to me appeared at some time or another. Sometimes all the
different varieties of one color, as of red, with scarlets, crimsons, pinks, would spring
up together, or in quick succession. But in spite of this immense profusion, there was
always a certain parsimony and æsthetic value in the colors presented. They were usually
associated with form, and never appeared in large masses, or if so, the tone was very
delicate. I was further impressed, not only by the brilliance, delicacy, and variety of
the colors, but even more by their lovely and various textures -- fibrous, woven,
polished, glowing, dull, veined, semi-transparent -- the glowing effects, as of jewels,
and the 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
associated with the mouchrabieh work of Cairo. But always the visions grew and changed
without any reference to the characteristics of those real objects of which 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 might be called living
arabesques. There was often a certain incomplete tendency to symmetry, as though 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 uniformity, jewel-like flowers were springing up and
expanding all over the field 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 perfectly 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 evidently 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
hyperæsthesia 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
expanded 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. The whole room, with its white-washed but not very white ceiling, thus
became vivid and beautiful. The difference between the room as I saw it then and the
appearance it usually presents to me was the difference one may often observe between the
picture of a room and the actual room. The shadows I saw were the shadows which the artist
puts in, but which are not visible in the actual scene under normal conditions of casual
inspection. I was reminded of the paintings of Claude Monet, and as I gazed at the scene
it occurred to me that mescal perhaps produces exactly the same conditions of visual
hyperæsthesia, or rather exhaustion, as may be produced on the artist by the influence of
prolonged visual attention. I wished to ascertain how the subdued and steady electric
light would influence vision, and passed into the next room; but here the shadows were
little marked, although walls and floor seemed tremulous and insubstantial, and the
texture of everything was heightened and enriched.
About 3.30 a. m. I felt that the phenomena were distinctly diminishing -- though the
visions, now chiefly of human figures, fantastic and Chinese in character, still continued
-- and I was able to settle myself to sleep, which proved peaceful and dreamless. I awoke
at the usual hour and experienced no sense of fatigue nor other unpleasant reminiscence of
the experience I had undergone. Only my eyes seemed unusually sensitive to color,
especially to blue and violet; I can, indeed, say that ever since this experience I have
been more æsthetically sensitive than I was before to the more delicate phenomena of
light and shade and color.
It occurred to me that it would be interesting to have the experiences of an artist
under the influence of mescal, and I induced an artist friend to make a similar
experiment. Unfortunately no effects whatever were produced at the first attempt, owing,
as I have since discovered, to the fact that the buttons had only been simply infused and
their virtues not extracted. To make sure of success the experiment was repeated with four
buttons, which proved to be an excessive and unpleasant dose. There were paroxysmal
attacks of pain at the heart and a sense of imminent death, which naturally alarmed the
subject, while so great was the dread of light and dilatation of the pupils that the
eyelids had to be kept more or less closed, though it was evident that a certain amount of
vision was still possible. The symptoms came on very suddenly, and when I arrived they
were already at their height. As the experiences of this subject were in many respects
very unlike mine, I will give them in his own words: "I noticed first that as I
happened to turn my eyes away from a blue enamel kettle at which I had been unconsciously
looking, and which was standing in the fender of the fireplace, with no fire in it, it
seemed to me that I saw a spot of the same blue in the black coals of the grate, and that
this spot appeared again, farther off, a little brighter in hue. But I was in doubt
whether I had not imagined these blue spots. When, however, I lifted my eyes to the
mantelpiece, on which were scattered all sorts of odds and ends, all doubt was over. I saw
an intensely vivid blue light begin to play around every object. A square cigarette box,
violet in color, shone like an amethyst. I turned my eyes away and beheld this time, on
the back of a polished chair, a bar of color glowing like a ruby. Although I was expecting
some such manifestation as one of the first symptoms of the intoxication, I was
nevertheless somewhat alarmed when this phenomenon took place. Such a silent and sudden
illumination of all things around, where a moment before I had seen nothing uncommon,
seemed like a kind of madness beginning from outside me, and its strangeness affected me
more than its beauty. A desire to escape from it led me to the door, and the act of moving
had, I noticed, the effect of dispelling the colors. But a sudden difficulty in breathing
and a sensation of numbness at the heart brought me back to the arm-chair from which I had
risen. From this moment I had a series of attacks or paroxysms, which I can only describe
by saying that I felt as though I were dying. It was impossible to move, and it seemed
almost impossible to breathe. My speedy dissolution, I half imagined, was about to take
place, and the power of making any resistance to the violent sensations that were arising
within was going, I felt, with every second.
"The first paroxysms were the most violent. They would come on with tinglings in
the lower limbs, and with the sensation of a nauseous and suffocating gas mounting up into
my head. Two or three times this was accompanied by a color vision of the gas bursting
into flame as it passed up my throat. But I seldom had visions during the paroxysms; these
would appear in the intervals. They began with a spurting up of colors; once, of a flood
of brightly illuminated green water covering the field of vision, and effervescing in
parts, just as when fresh water with all the air bubbles is pumped into a swimming bath.
At another time my eye seemed to be turning into a vast drop of dirty water in which
millions of minute creatures resembling tadpoles were in motion. But the early visions
consisted mostly of a furious succession of colored arabesques, arising and descending or
sliding at every possible angle into the field of view. It would be as difficult as to
give a description of the whirl of water at the bottom of a waterfall as to describe the
chaos of color and design which marked this period.
"Now also began another series of extraordinary sensations. They set in with
bewildering suddenness and followed one another in rapid succession. These I now record as
they occur to my mind at haphazard: 1. My right leg became suddenly heavy and solid; it
seemed, indeed, as if the entire weight of my body had shifted into one part, about the
thigh and knee, and that the rest of my body had lost all substantiality. 2. With the
suddenness of a neuralgic pang, the back of my head seemed to open and emit streams of
bright color; this was immediately followed by the feeling as of a draft blowing like a
gale through the hair in the same region. 3. At one moment the color, green, acquired a
taste in my mouth; it was sweetish and somewhat metallic; blue again would have a taste
that seemed to recall phosphorus; these are the only colors that seemed to be connected
with taste. 4. A feeling of delightful relief and preternatural lightness about my
forehead, succeeded by a growing sensation of contraction. 5. Singing in one of my ears.
6. A sensation of burning heat in the palm of my left hand. 7. Heat about both eyes. The
last continued throughout the whole period, except for a moment when I had a sensation of
cold upon the eyelids, accompamed with a color vision of the wrinkled lid, of the skin
disappearing from the brow, of dead flesh, and finally of a skull.
"Throughout these sensations and visions my mind remained not only perfectly
clear, but enjoyed, I believe, an unusual lucidity. Certainly I was conscious of an odd
contrast in hearing myself talk rationally with H. E., who had entered the room a short
time before, and experiencing at the same moment the wild and extraordinary pranks that
were taking place in my body. My reason appeared to be the sole survivor of my being. At
times I felt that this, too, would go, but the sound of my own voice would establish again
the communication with the outer world of reality.
"Tremors were more or less constant in my lower limbs. Persistent, also, was the
feeling of nausea. This, when attended by a feeling of suffocation and a pain at the
heart, was relieved by taking brandy, coffee, or biscuit. For muscular exertion I felt
neither the wish nor the power. My hands, however, retained their full strength.
"It was painful for me to keep my eyes open above a few seconds; the light of day
seemed to fill the room with a blinding glare. Yet every object, in the brief glimpse I
caught, appeared normal in color and shape. With my eyes closed, most of the visions,
after the first chaotic display, represented parts of the whole of my body undergoing a
variety of marvelous changes, of metamorphoses or illumination. They were more often than
not comic and grotesque in character, though often beautiful in color. At one time I saw
my right leg filling up with delicate heliotrope; at another, the sleeve of my coat
changed into a dark green material, in which was worked a pattern in red braid, and the
whole bordered at the cuff with sable. Scarcely had my new sleeve taken shape than I found
myself attired in a complete costume of the same fashion, mediasval in character, but I
could not say to what precise period it belonged. I noted that a chance movement -- of my
hand, for instance -- would immediately call up a color vision of the part exerted, and
that this again would pass, by a seemingly natural transition, into another wholly
dissimilar. Thus, pressing my fingers accidentally against my temples, the fingertips
became elongated, and then grew into the ribs of a vaulting or of a dome-shaped roof. But
most of the visions were of a more personal nature. I happened once to lift a spoonful of
coffee to my lips, and as I was in the act of raising my arm for that purpose a vision
dashed before my closed (or nearly closed) eyes, in all the hues of the rainbow, of my arm
separated from my body, and serving me with coffee from out of dark and indefinite space.
On another occasion, as I was seeking to relieve slight nausea by taking a piece of
biscuit passed to me by H. E., it suddenly streamed out into blue flame. For an instant I
held the biscuit close to my leg. Immediately my trousers caught alight, and then the
whole of the right side of my body, from the foot to the shoulder, was enveloped in waving
blue dame. It was a sight of wonderful beauty. But this was not all. As I placed the
biscuit in my mouth it burst out again into the same colored fire and illuminated the
interior of my mouth, casting a blue resection on the roof. The light in the Blue Grotto
at Capri, I am able to affirm, is not nearly as blue as seemed for a short space of time
the interior of my mouth. There were many visions of which I could not trace the origin.
"There were spirals and arabesques and flowers, and sometimes objects more trivial
and prosaic in character. In one vision I saw a row of small white flowers, one against
the other like pearls of a necklace, begin to revolve in the form of a spiral. Every
flower, I observed, had the texture of porcelain. It was at a moment when I had the
sensation of my cheeks growing hot and feverish that I experienced the strangest of all
the color visions. It began with feeling that the skin of my face was becoming quite thin
and of no stouter consistency than tissue paper, and the feeling was suddenly enhanced by
a vision of my face, paper-like and semitransparent and somewhat reddish in color. To my
amazement I saw myself as though I were inside a Chinese lantern, looking out through my
cheek into the room. Not long after this I became conscious of a change in the visions.
Their tempo was more moderate, they were less frequent, and they were losing somewhat in
distinctness. At the same time the feeling of nausea and of numbness was departing. A
short period followed in which I had no visions at all, and experienced merely a sensation
of heaviness and torpor. I found that I was able to open my eyes again and keep them fixed
on any object in the room without observing the faintest blue halo or prism, or bar of
glowing color, and that, moreover, no visions appeared on closing them. It was now
twilight, but beyond the fact of not seeing light or color, either without or within, I
had a distinct feeling that the action of the drug was at an end and that my body had
become sober suddenly. I had no more visions, though I was not wholly free from abnormal
sensations, and I retired to rest. I lay awake till the morning, and with the exception of
the following night I scarcely slept for the next three days, but I can not say that I
felt any signs of fatigue, unless, perhaps, on one of the days when my eyes, I noticed,
became very susceptible to any indications of blue in an object. Of color visions, or of
any approach to color visions, there was no further trace; but all sorts of odd and
grotesque images passed in succession through my mind during part of the first night. They
might have been the dreams of a Baudelaire
or of an Aubrey Beardsley. I would see figures with prodigious limbs, or strangely dwarfed
and curtailed, or impossible combinations such as five or six fish, the color of canaries,
floating about in air in a gold wire cage. But these were purely mental images, like the
visions seen in a dream by a distempered brain.
"Of the many sensations of which my body had been the theater during three hours,
not the least strange was the feeling I experienced on coming back into a normal
condition. The recovery did not proceed gradually, but the whole outer and inner world of
reality came back, as it were, with a bound. And for a moment it seemed strange. It was
the sensation -- only much intensified -- which everyone has known on coming out into the
light of day from an afternoon performance at a theater, where one has sat in an
artificial light of gas and lamps, the spectator of a fictitious world of action. As one
pours out with the crowd into the street, the ordinary world, by force of contrast with
the sensational scenes just witnessed, breaks in upon one with almost a sense of
unreality. The house, the aspects of the street, even the light of day appear a little
foreign for a few moments. During these moments everything strikes the mind as odd and
unfamiliar, or at least with a greater degree of objectivity. Such was my feeling with
regard to my old and habitual self. During the period of intoxication the connection
between the normal condition of my body and my intelligence had broken -- my body had
become in a manner a stranger to my reason -- so that now on reasserting itself it seemed,
with reference to my reason, which had remained perfectly sane and alert, for a moment
sufficiently unfamiliar for me to become conscious of its individual and peculiar
character. It was as if I had unexpectedly attained an objective knowledge of my own
personality. I saw, as it were, my normal state of being with the eyes of a person who
sees the street on coming out of the theater in broad day.
"This sensation also brought out the independence of the mind during the period of
intoxication. It alone appeared to have escaped the ravages of the drug; it alone remained
sane during a general delirium, vindicating, so it seemed, the majesty of its own
impersonal nature. It had reigned for a while, I now felt, as an autocrat, without
ministers and their officiousness. Henceforth I should be more or less conscious of the
interdependence of body and brain; a slight headache, a touch of indigestion, or what not,
would be able to effect what a general intoxication of my senses and nerves could not
touch."
I next made experiments on two poets, whose names are both well known. One is
interested in mystical matters, an excellent subject for visions, and very familiar with
various vision-producing drugs and processes. His heart, however, is not very strong.
While he obtained the visions, he found the effects of mescal on his breathing somewhat
unpleasant; he much prefers hasheesh, though recognizing that its effects are much more
difficult to obtain. The other enjoys admirable health, and under the influence of mescal
he experienced scarcely the slightest unpleasant reaction, but, on the contrary, a very
marked state of well being and beatitude. He took somewhat less than three buttons, so
that the results were rather less marked than in my case, but they were perfectly
definite. He writes: "I have never seen a succession of absolutely pictorial visions
with such precision and such unaccountability. It seemed as if a series of dissolving
views were carried swiftly before me, all going from right to left, none corresponding
with any seen reality. For instance, I saw the most delightful dragons, puffing out their
breath straight in front of them like rigid lines of steam, and balancing white balls at
the end of their breath! When I tried to fix my mind on real things, I could generally
call them up, but always with some inexplicable change. Thus, I called up a particular
monument in Westminster Abbey, but in front of it, to the left, knelt a figure in
Florentine costume, like someone out of a picture of Botticelli; and I could not see the
tomb without also seeing this figure. Late in the evening I went out on the Embankment and
was absolutely fascinated by an advertisement of 'Bovril,' which went and came in letters
of light on the other side of the river. I can not tell you the intense pleasure this
moving light gave me and how dazzling it seemed to me. Two girls and a man passed me,
laughing loudly, and lolling about as they walked. I realized, intellectually, their
coarseness, but visually I saw them, as they came under a tree, fall into the lines of a
delicate picture; it might have been an Albert Moore. After coming in I played the piano
with closed eyes and got waves and lines of pure color, almost always without form, though
I saw one or two appearances which might have been shields or breastplates -- pure gold,
studded with small jewels in intricate patterns. All the time I had no unpleasant feelings
whatever, except a very slight headache, which came and went. I slept soundly and without
dreams."
The results of music in the case just quoted -- together with the habit of the Indians
to combine the drum with mescal rites, and my own observation that very slight jarring or
stimulation of the scalp would affect the visions -- suggested to me to test the influence
of music on myself. I therefore once more put myself under the influence of mescal (taking
a somewhat smaller dose than on the first occasion), and lay for some hours on a couch
with my head more or less in contact with the piano, and with closed eyes directed toward
a subdued light, while a friend played, making various tests, of his own devising, which
were not explained to me until afterwards. I was to watch the visions in a purely passive
manner, without seeking to direct them, nor was I to think about the music, which, so far
as possible, was unknown to me. The music stimulated the visions and added greatly to my
enjoyment of them. It seemed to harmonize with them, and, as it were, support and bear
them up. A certain persistence and monotony of character in the music was required in
order to affect the visions, which then seemed to fall into harmony with it, and any
sudden change in the character of the music would blur the visions, as though clouds
passed between them and me. The chief object of the tests was to ascertain how far a
desire on the composer's part to suggest definite imagery would affect my visions. In
about half the cases there was no resemblance, in the other half there was a distinct
resemblance, which was sometimes very remarkable. This was especially the case with
Schumann's music, for example, with his Waldscenen and Kinderscenen; thus "The
Prophet Bird" called up vividly a sense of atmosphere and of brilliant feathery
bird-like forms passing to and fro, "A Flower Piece" provoked constant and
persistent images of vegetation, while "Scheherazade" produced an effect of
floating white raiment, covered by glittering spangles and jewels. In every case my
description was, of course, given before I knew the name of the piece. I do not pretend
that this single series of experiments proves much, but it would certainly be worth while
to follow up this indication and to ascertain if any light is hereby thrown on the power
of a composer to suggest definite imagery, or the power of a listener to perceive it.
It would be out of place here to discuss the obscure question as to the underlying
mechanism by which mescal exerts its magic powers. It is clear from the foregoing
descriptions that mescal intoxication may be described as chiefly a saturnalia of the
specific senses, and, above all, an orgy of vision. It reveals an optical fairyland, where
all the senses now and again join the play, but the mind itself remains a self-possessed
spectator. Mescal intoxication thus differs from the other artificial paradises which
drugs procure. Under the influence of alcohol, for instance, as in normal dreaming, the
intellect is impaired, although there may be a consciousness of unusual brilliance;
hasheesh, again, produces an uncontrollable tendency to movement and bathes its victim in
a sea of emotion. The mescal drinker remains calm and collected amid the sensory turmoil
around him; his judgment is as clear as in the normal state; he falls into no oriental
condition of vague and voluptuous reverie. The reason why mescal is of all this class of
drugs the most purely intellectual in its appeal is evidently because it affects mainly
the most intellectual of the senses. On this ground it is not probable that its use will
easily develop into a habit. Moreover, unlike most other intoxicants, it seems to have no
special affinity for a disordered and unbalanced nervous system; on the contrary, it
demands organic soundness and good health for the complete manifestation of its virtues.[3] Further, unlike the other chief substances to which it
may be compared, mescal does not wholly carry us away from the actual world, or plunge us
into oblivion; a large part of its charm lies in the halo of beauty which it casts around
the simplest and commonest things. It is the most democratic of the plants which lead men
to an artificial paradise. If it should ever chance that the consumption of mescal becomes
a habit, the favorite poet of the mescal drinker will certainly be Wordsworth. Not only
the general attitude of Wordsworth, but many of his most memorable poems and phrases can
not -- one is almost tempted to say -- be appreciated in their full significance by one
who has never been under the influence of mescal. On all these grounds it may be claimed
that the artificial paradise of mescal, though less seductive, is safe and dignified
beyond its peers.
At the same time it must be remembered that at present we are able to
speak on a basis of but very small experience, so far as civilized men are concerned. The
few observations recorded in America and my own experiments in England do not enable us to
say anything regarding the habitual consumption of mescal in large amounts. That such
consumption would be gravely injurious I can not doubt its safeguard seems to lie in the
fact that a certain degree of robust health is required to obtain any real enjoyment from
its visionary gifts. It may at least be claimed that for a healthy person to be once or
twice admitted to the rites of mescal is not only an unforgettable delight, but an
educational influence of no mean value.
FOOTNOTES
- 1. Lewin, of Berlin, indeed,
experimented with Anhalonium Lewinii, to which he gave its name, as early as 1888, and as
he found that even a small portion produced dangerous symptoms, he classed it amongst the
extremely poisonous drugs, like strychnia. He failed to discover its vision-producing
properties, and it seems, in fact, highly probable that he was really experimenting with a
different cactus from that now known by the same name.
- 2. I pass lightly over the purely physiological symptoms
which I have described in some detail in a paper on "The phenomena of mescal
intoxication" (Lancet, June 5, 1897), which, however, contains no description of the
visions.
- 3. It is true. as many persons do not need to be reminded,
that in neurasthenia and states of overfatigue, symptoms closely resembling the slight and
earlier phenomena of mescal intoxication are not uncommon; but in such cases there is
rarely any sense of well-being and enjoyment.
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