34
37. Charas is a stronger intoxicant narcotic
than ganja.
38. Round, flat, and chur are mentioned in
descending degrees of effects.
39. The effects of smoking of any of these
drugs affects lungs, heart, brain and eyesight
owing to the direct effect of the smoke. Such is
not the effect of eating and drinking. In the
latter case the drug stays for a longer time in the
stomach and affects it directly and is not so much
injurious, because it is eaten or drunk generally
with, antidote.
40. The schools of native doctors are unani-
mous in attributing to them hypnotic, anodyne,
and antispasmodic properties, less certain than
opium, but involving no constipation, nausea, or
headache.
They are used in the treatment of cattle-diseases,
such as horses and oxen, for malarious fever
and rheumatism. When taken moderately these
drugs are to some extent beneficial as digestive,
bracing and preventive in malarious tracts.
41. Charas and ganja are generally used for
the above purpose by villagers of low class, and
bhang by well-to-do men. Some use it moderately
and habitually ; others moderately but occasion-
ally.
42. Answered above.
43. Moderate consumers are inoffensive to their
neighbours.
44. Moderate use of these drugs is refreshing,
intoxicant, and creative of appetite. The effect
lasts for two or three hours. Want of subsequent
gratification produces longing and uneasiness.
45. It impairs constitution in various ways.
Ganja and charas lead to unpleasant dryness in
the system, which makes a man thin and lean and
often fretful. All the senses get blunt. Sound,
distance and time are perceived indistinctly.
Both lead to chronic bronchitis and dryness in
brain. Bhang, when mixed with other antidotes,
brings fatness and gives appetite. It produces
causeless merriment, and subjects the user to
mental hallucinations. In the beginning they
help digestion and appetite, but subsequently they
act otherwise.
These things, when taken unmixed, bring about
bronchitis and asthma.
In the inception they excite passions, but
afterwards weaken the vital energy.
It is difficult to restrain one to moderate use of
these drugs, and excess naturally deadens intellect
and produces mental derangement. They have,
when taken moderately, no injurious effect on
phlegmatic constitutions, but produce mania and
cowardice on melancholy constitutions. Their
victims are subject to reverie, and as distemper is
the result of long established habits, the malady
is generally of a permanent nature.
In cases where it is temporary, reinducement of
symptoms depends on the strength of the sufferer.
They may not return if he is sufficiently strong,
otherwise relapse is more probable. There are
three typical symptoms, constant and causeless
smiling or weeping, and thirdly a dull impenetra-
ble indifference. As insanity in such cases is the
consequence of dryness of brain and want of
normal energy, such insane persons are not prone
to revert to the use of such drugs, so contrary to
iusanes from drinking.
I had no opportunity of considering as to what
happens in cases detailed further in the question.
46. In the case of excessive use the difference
is of degree.
47. The habitual moderate use leads to heredit-
ary habit and affects the children. I have had
personal experience of seeing children of those
who were habitual drinkers or opium eaters or
these drug users immediately restored to full
energy with the administration of a moderate
dose of these drugs in cases of general debility or
indisposition, while the children of parents who
are not habitual users get nausea and headache.
48. The same rule holds good in the case of
excessive habitual users in a more marked manner.
49. These drugs are used very often as aphro-
disiacs. Prostitutes of lower classes learn to use
them by dint of company, but regardless of any
effect.
Their use for this purpose is more injurious than
its use as an ordinary narcotic. In the first place,
because it brings about impotence ; in the second
place, the longer a man is busy in sexual inter-
course the more he loses in muscular strength
subsequently ; in the third place, the brain in such
a ease is subject to double heat,—one the result of
animal passions, and the other the result of
inebriation; in the fourth place, co-operation of
abnormal heat in heart and lungs generates either,
consumption, phthisis, or both.
50. The same rule holds good in the case of
excess with difference of degree and violence.
In the case of using these drugs as a simple
narcotic the evils are the result of the bare drugs,
but when they are taken as an aphrodisiac, the
evils are the result of a complicated nature.
51. The use of these drugs has nothing directly
to do with a criminal tendency. What happens
is this, that offenders, if they happen to be
users of any of these drugs, they do take a large
quantity of them to put them in full energy and
brace them up against chilling winds of night
and fatigue of hard work.
There is another aspect of the question to look
at. Habitual criminals are generally men of
strong calibre and loose character.
Their frequent company of prostitutes puts them
to the use of stimulants in the course of time,
and after a time, when they get used to it, a long-
ing for these drugs compels them to commit
crimes for the sake of obtaining means. I have
been an eye-witness to the fact that hard-labouring
men of good conduct and character have been
moderate consumers in the beginning ; but the
charm of the company of drug consumers has
drawn them away from their daily work, and a
yearning for these nasty things has made them
petty offenders, and then hardened them into
serious offenders, regardless of children and fami-
lies. Bhang has a curious peculiarity. It makes
the timid more cowardly and the brave more
daring. Gangs of thieves resort to this test
before going out on their nocturnal forays. After
this test only such daring rogues are taken in the
company as are deemed desperate and reckless of
their life as well as of those of others.
52. Excessive habitual consumers are generally
unfit for any such work, because their impaired
constitution is not capable of any sustained
energy. They generally shake in their voice and
limbs.
53. Bhang in the case of daring young men in-
cites to unpremeditated crimes and violence. I