133
Provinces and Oudh, including the Kumaon hills,
and for nearly two years I have been a Civil Sur-
geon in this district and at Pilibhit
Briefly,
then, let me say here at the outset that, so far as
the foregoing opportunities served to impress my
powers of observation, absolutely no question of the
use, and still less of the abuse, of hemp drug by
the people of India had arisen in my mind prior
to this enquiry.
26. The result of my ten days' (about) enquiry
among all classes of the people of this district,
including high caste Mahajans and Brahmins, re-
ligious orders, native medicine men of various
schools, residents of outlying villages (cultivators
of the soil), native druggists, and a body of 500
convicts, has led me to the opinion that, while the
use of one form or other of the drug is fairly wide-
spread, the abuse is very rare, and that, speaking
for this district, there certainly does not exist, a
hemp question anything approaching the alcohol
question, which exercises physicians, philanthro-
pists, and social reformers in Great Britain.
45. Every native one speaks to here on the sub-
ject is free to admit the abuse of the drug, but close
questioning elicits very few definite facts. There
is a general opinion that excess is harmful by
causing a deterioration of the organic functions,
but the observers, who are the source of my in-
formation, are certainly nor close nor exact reason-
ers. They do not distinguish between the gene-
ral and particular, between the three sets of causes,
as factors in the production of a definite result,
viz., the ultimate, the exciting, and the determin-
ing. They cannot affirm that the evil results they
deplore are altogether the effects of the drug, or of
the very trying environment of this Doab on
people devoid of all sense of "comfort" and of
hygienic arrangements; nor do they attempt an
estimate of the approximate proportion of reproach
which should be attached to these factors in the
final result. This is a notoriously unhealthy dis-
trict, central in the Ganges-Jumna Mesopotamia; the
death-rate is high and the standard of health excep-
tionally low; the stamp of the "malarial" cachexia
is obvious on the majority, and almost invariably
found on the lower classes. Yesterday I admitted
13 convicts into the jail, and the average weight
per man was a little over 1 maund 12 seers, or 7½
stone; only one of these men admitted that he
used hemp habitually, and his weight was consider-
ably above the average; the others denied ever
using hemp in any form, save at the Holi festival,
when it is the custom for every one to take it. I
only mention this as showing the standard of
physique generally obtaining here among a large
proportion of the population, and to show that
there are conditions of environment at work here
which so far to account for a general dyserasia,
which fulfils the conditions which a rough observer,
believing in the pernicious effects of hemp, might
be led to attribute to the use of the drug. For, as
I have said, those who most strongly aver the ill-
effects of hemp deal (when questioned for definite
facts) in generalities, suggesting a dyscrasia, loss
of functional power, impotence (sexual), chronic
rheumatism, pallor, and atrophy, and all these
results are precisely what, I am led to expect from
the malarial and splenic cachexia. Go to a village
where the soil is water-logged and the spring
(ground-water) level is very high, as it is gene-
rally in the central parts of the Doab, where irri-
gation canals are in use, and call out the male
population for inspection, as I have often done in
my tours, and you will hear a story of which the
above symptoms are a bare outline—impotence in
the men (and I believe sterility to some extent in
the women), chronic rheumatism, anæmia and
atrophy, premature age, so that frequently in a
small community one sees only feeble young
children and old men.
20. Aligarh city contains 60,000 inhabitants';
the women are said rarely, if ever, to take hemp
in any form (I exclude prostitutes, who are said
to take it in the form of charas); the children as
a rule are said not to use it, save occasionally, in
the hot weather and during festivals, in the form,
of a drink of bhang. Of the male adult popula-
tion, I gather from many enquiries that fully one-
half or two-thirds use it more or less habitually.
The higher castes, Banias, Brahmins, etc., confine
themselves almost exclusively to bhang. As a rule,
a cup morning and evening before the respective
meals and about two mashas of the bhang is
an average dose at each time of drinking. The
lower castes and bad mashes, bazar loafers, etc., use
charas (smoking), and also priests, fakirs, etc.
Ganja is almost entirely unknown here, and after
repeated attempts I have been unable to procure
it in the bazar; the few who take it bring it into the
district with them, and these are generally wander-
ing mendicants of the religious or quasi-religious
orders.
7. As far as I can find out, hemp is not culti-
vated in the district for the drug, and but in
small amount for the flax; but of this I cannot
speak from knowledge of my own. I can say
that I have never seen it.
45. A most intelligent old man, of good stand-
ing and high family connections, a mahajan, 70
years of age, told me to-day that for 40 years
(from the age of 20 to 60) he had twice daily drank
his cup of bhang before meals; he took it purely
as a food accessory and gentle stimulant. He
observed no ill-effects from its use until near his
60th year, when he began to be troubled with chronic
rheumatic pains of the joints of the legs (not an
unusual trouble for an old man living in this part
of the country), which he attributed to the bhang.
He thereupon stopped taking it, and substituted
about three grains of opium daily, which he has tak-
en to the same amount ever since, i.e., for ten years.
He is not now troubled by the rheumatism, hence
he is quite sure that the bhang caused it. The
use of bhang is extremely common among men of
his rank and class, but he avers that excess is very
rare indeed; excess, causing slight intoxication,
is generally (in his class) the result of occasional
social functions and amenities; that is to say that,
having taken the usual allowance, he might occa-
sionally be induced by the laws of hospitality to
take an extra dose or two on the arrival of a friend
or friends, and this extra allowance has, he frankly
admits, very occasionally caused in him slight
intoxication,—"swimming in the head and stupid-
ity"— which was followed by gastric disturb-
ance and depression. Indeed, in his own naive
way he described the classical effects of the "sal-
mon" at a "burra khana," to which the "heirs
of all the ages" sit down. This old gentleman
avers that he has often seen priests, jogis, and
fakirs under the influence of excess of charas,
and these "shepherds" frequently pass the pipe
round among a circle of devotees or worshippers
at the shrine, with the resultant production of a
state of somnolence or heaviness, not frenzy, he
says, though it may be remarked that there is
again a parallel for both these effects in British
shrines under British shepherds.
Beyond the papers which will be sent in here-
with containing the results of the experience and
the opinions of native practitioners of medicine of