263
service. I do not think I have seen a ganja case
for twenty years. I saw some cases in the early
years of my service; but I have no notes of them.
I think that a man's memory ought not to be
trusted after twenty years. My evidence would
therefore be hardly worth recording. I have only
two cases in my mind. The one was in 1865 and
the other in 1870 or 1871. My practice since
then has not brought any case before me. My
statement before the Opium Commission, that to
turn from opium to ganja or alcohol is a very much
worse state than the first, was based on the impres-
sion that a man under the influence of the excessive
use of opium was quiet and only wished to be let
alone, while the man under the influence of the
excessive use of ganja was liable to become irritable
and, according to the great bulk of authority,
liable to become insane. As I have never had charge
of an asylum, I cannot speak of this from my own
experience; but I have lately been making inquiry
and find that in a large number of the cases in
which ganja is put down as the cause of insanity
the only evidence has been a statement by the
police that the man was addicted to ganja. The
result of my inquiry has been rather to shake my
previous belief, which was founded not on expe-
rience, but on authority, on books.
101. Evidence of SURGEON-LIEUTENANT-COLONEL C. J. W. MEADOWS, Civil
Surgeon and Superintendent, Lunatic Asylum, Berhampur.
Oral evidence.
I have had twenty-four and a half years' ser-
vice, all but two years being in civil employ. I
have been in charge of the Dacca Asylum for
four years, of the Patna Asylum for one year, and
of the Berhampur Asylum for three years. I was
on leave in 1891-92. I had no special experience
of insanity at home. I cannot say that I have
made insanity a speciality in this country. It is
very difficult for the ordinary practitioner to make
anything a speciality here. He has too much
work to do of all kinds. I have found no literature
on the subject of insanity from hemp drugs. I
searched in vain last May when writing a report.
The General Register is filled up by the Deputy
Superintendent, Mohendro Nath Rai, who has
been twenty years in this asylum in this capacity.
He has no medical qualifications. He fills it up
all in his own handwriting. There is no entry by
anyone else for twenty years. He fills it up from
the descriptive roll. Whatever is in the descrip-
tive roll is copied out accurately. There is no
deviation from the descriptive roll if that docu-
ment gives information. Only when the descrip-
tive roll is blank is any entry made in the re-
gister differing from it. He assures me that this
is his invariable practice. And no alterations are
ever made in his entries. When the descriptive
roll is blank in any particular, he is allowed to fill
in that blank when he can get information from
the lunatic or from what I have noted in the case
book. Sometimes the blank cannot be filled up
at all.
The information he gets is as a rule from the
lunatic. Sometimes it is from relations or friends
who may come to see him, but that is very rare.
Most of the lunatics have no friends, or they do
not come to see them. The friends are never kept
for me to see. We never refer to the Magistrate
for further information. The entry in column 9
("Mental disease") is copied from the case book.
That is filled in as soon as the case is diagnosed or
there are sufficient grounds to come to an opinion
about it. It is not an easy matter. That is the
only entry that is copied from the case book. The
case book is wholly written up by me, including
the abstract of the papers which is entered in
each case.
It is from the General Register that the annual
statements are prepared. Statement VII is com-
piled from column 11, "Alleged cause." This
column 11 contains the entry in the descriptive
roll if there is any such entry. If it is blank, then,
if the Deputy Superintendent can ascertain the
cause from the lunatic or his friends, he tills it in.
If not, it remains blank. The Deputy Superintend-
ent puts questions to the lunatic, such as, "Do
you smoke ganja or take bhang?" or, "What is
the cause of your insanity?" He puts such
leading questions and tries to get a history out of
him. He considers that he should fill in as much
information as he can. We do not now accept
the cause thus assigned so readily as we used to
do. Since attention has been so much attracted
to ganja during last year we are much more care-
ful. I try to ascertain, before accepting ganja as
the cause, that the type is like ganja, and that it
was indeed the probable cause. I did not do that
before my attention was thus specially drawn to
the matter of ganja: formerly I should have been
inclined to accept ganja as the cause if it was
mentioned or the use of the drug was acknow-
ledged. It seemed a reasonable cause, and there was
considerable pressure to assign cause. I believe
that it was the habit in this asylum to accept
ganja in this way without going particularly into
the matter up to last year. The Deputy Superin-
tendent assures me that this was his experience.
Up to last year the entries ragarding the cause
of insanity have depended on the descriptive
rolls and the inquiries made by the Deputy Super-
intendent, except that if a case occurred where
the entry of cause was evidently wrong, a note
would no doubt be made. I can call to mind no
such case. The Deputy Superintendent says he
remembers no case of alteration of any entry on
such grounds. No one thought these entries of
any importance, or else more care would have been
taken about them.
Now I am endeavouring to be accurate about
cause, in respect to ganja particularly. First of
all I see the type of insanity, the behaviour of the
man, etc., to see whether it is consistent with
insanity produced by ganja. Acute mania with
violence, raving, peculiar appearance of the eyes (a
wild look difficult to describe, but once seen not
easily forgotten), etc., is the usual type of hemp
drug insanity These cases usually get well in a
couple of months, often a fortnight. I think the
general appearance is more typical than anything
else—the appearance of the eyes and his excitable
irrational manner. With these symptoms I
think I should be able to tell a case as one of
hemp drug insanity, even without history of the
use of the drug. I think I should be able to tell
a case of hemp drug insanity directly I saw it,
without any difficulty. The peculiar appearance 1
have spoken of in the eyes is, I think, peculiar to
hemp drug insanity. The other symptoms might
be found in acute mania due to other causes.
But acute mania due to other causes as a rule