452
46. The habitual and excessive use of charas
certainly produces toxic insanity.
47 and 48. Not at all.
49 and 50. I never saw any one who uses these
drugs as aphrodisiac. Several men use hemp drugs
for pleasure only. I have seen many patients for
impotency who have used these hemp drugs ex-
cessively and habitually.
56. Please see answer No. 29.
57. Only a few persons eat charas and drink
milk afterwards, as already stated in answer
No. 19.
Further paper put in by GOPAL DAS.
3. I have seen hemp plants grow in Simla
valley.
4. Bhang, sabzi and vegia.
7. In several districts, hemp is cultivated only
for use of bhang and its majun.
10. The same classes as other agricultural
cultivators.
14. Bhang and majun are prepared in several
districts of the Punjab.
16. Bhang is prepared in the field and majun by
the sweetmeat sellers in their shops.
20. Charas is smoked often by the lower classes.
24. Poor and rich all drink bhang in all pro-
vinces.
I know with my experience that the use of
charas and bhang is on increase. Ganja is not
used in the province.
43. The moderate consumers are not inoffensive
to their neighbours.
46. Evidence of DR. H. M. CLARK, Medical Missionary, Amritsar.
Oral evidence.
I am a Doctor of Medicine and Master of Sur-
gery of the University of Edinburgh. My ex-
perience of India is confined to the Central Punjab.
I have been a medical missionary in connection
with the Church Missionary Society since 1882,
with my head-quarters at Amritsar, and have done a
great deal of work in the villages of the Amritsar
and parts of the Sialkot and Gurdaspur districts.
The hemp drugs are true narcotics like alcohol
and opium. As far as my experience goes, the
effects of hemp are always and altogether bad. It
is neither a food nor a work-producer. It is a
stimulant of the worst sort. If it is smoked in
the form of charas, its effects are very much more
speedy and the ruin more complete than if it is
drunk or eaten as bhang or majum. Majum is
the least deleterious of the three, as it is eaten,
while bhang is drunk and charas smoked. I can
find no other word to describe the effects of charas
than that they are frightful. It is ruinous men-
tally, morally and physically. It produces a
peculiar emaciation which can never be forgotten
when once seen. It is largely a determining cause
of insanity in this country. The effects of the
drug, as eaten and drunk, do not appear so soon
and are not so well marked, though they are the
same in kind. All, if persisted in, produce ruin in
the man.
As regards charas, I think there can be no such
thing as moderate use, if we mean such use as will
not leave any permanent bad effect on the system.
In whatever quantity it is used it is bound to be
deleterious. My experience is probably wider
among the private life of the people than among
patients at dispensaries. The former sort of inter-
course has been principally in the villages, because
it is there that I meet fakirs and devotees, who are
the chief consumers. The peasantry do not use the
drug to any large extent.
My impressions are based both on my experience
and my medical knowledge. My experience of the
effects of charas is mainly derived from cases of
consumption by fakirs and other religious devotees.
I have not had any of these persons under pro-
longed observation, but I have observed them long
enough to form an estimate of their health. You
meet a person, talk with him for half an hour and
examine him physically, and that is quite enough
to tell what the state of his health is at the time.
Of course one cannot say what his health has been
in the past, but I have time to observe what his
health is. At the same time the symptoms of
charas are so marked that they can be detected at
a glance. I have never watched the career of a
consumer of the drug, for they are a floating
section of the population. I should say that three
years was enough to kill any consumer of the
drug; for I have seen men who could not live
more than three months and who have, in answer
to my questions, told me that they began the habit
about three years before. I never saw the begin-
ning or end of these cases, and I have no ground
for the opinion beyond the statement of the men
themselves. I have studied the circumstances of
fakirs, and I find them better off than the ordi-
nary run of the population. It is possible that
exposure, privation, and irregularities of life, which
are common among them, may accelerate the evil
effects, but the symptoms of the drug are unmis-
takeable. I have met cases of hemp-drug emacia-
tion among the other sections of the community—
quite a number of them. Cases of emaciation
from other causes are no doubt immensely more
numerous than those from charas, and are found
among all classes of society. I refer to pathological
emaciation, not mere leanness such as would be
produced by want.
The symptoms of the use of charas are: you
find a man prematurely old, with haggard and
broken-down appearance, emaciated so that all the
joints and bones stand out, hollow-cheeked, a very
peculiar glassy appearance of the eye, tremulous
muscles, very blunted muscular sense, anæsthesia of
skin, disordered disgestion, voracious appetite
usually, dilated pupils, dulling of most of the
senses, enfeebled heart and circulation, peculiar
asthmatic cough, short and very harassing. He
suffers from numberless pains and aches which
come and go, and frequently has what has been
called the salaaming mania, that is salaaming
frequently without reason; wild fits of exaltation,
alternating with a condition which borders on
catalepsy ; a gentle, pleasant delirium, a curious
confusion of the mind as to his own identity and
surroundings; various illusions and delusions;
memory and will power are much enfeebled, and
the whole morale greatly deteriorated, and there is
constant craving for the drug and frequent recourse
to it. His sleep is never dreamless. These are
the drug symptoms.
Most of these symptoms may be present indi-
vidually in persons who are not smokers in the