271
Does it injure the digestion or cause loss of
appetite ?
Yes.
Does it cause dysentery, bronchitis or asthma ?
There is no reliable data. Hemp drugs patients
in this asylum do not seem to suffer more than
the others from these affections.
Does it impair the moral sense or induce lazi
ness or habits of immorality or debauchery ?
Yes.
Does it deaden the intellect or produce insanity
Yes.
In cases known to you when it has produced
insanity, has it appeared to you to be merely the
exciting as distinguished from the predisposing
cause of the insanity ?
The exciting cause.
If it produces insanity, then of what type, and
is it temporary or permanent ?
The types are mania or melancholia, and they
may be both temporary and permanent.
If temporary, may the symptoms be reinduced
by the use of the drug after liberation from
restraint ?
Yes.
Are there any typical symptoms ?
Not to toxical insanity.
Do insanes who have no recorded ganja history
confess to the use of the drug.
Yes.
In such cases of the alleged connection between
insanity and the use of hemp as are known to
you, are you of opinion that the use of the drug
by persons suffering from mental anxiety or brain
disease to obtain relief has been sufficiently con
sidered in explaining that connection? And do
you think there is any evidence to indicate that
insanity may often tend to indulgence in the use
of hemp drugs by a person who is deficient in
self-control through weakened intellect ?
Answered under 45.
Yes.
Give an account under each of these points of
any cases with which you are acquainted.
A full account of each case admitted in 1892
has been supplied.
Oral evidence.
Question 1.—I have been in the service for twenty-
five years. I have passed fourteen years in Sind,
and fifteen and a half years in civil employ. I have
been five years in charge of the Lunatic Asylum,
Hyderabad. I have had no special experience in
insanity besides that, except that I was an official
visitor for five or six years of a lunatic asylum
which formerly existed at Larkana. I have been
Superintendent of the Jail at Hyderabad and
Shikarpur for a total period of eleven years.
Question 39.—A debauch is begun by drinking
bhang, and then ganja and charas follow in
succession. This is the course of an ordinary
debauch among the mawalis, a name applied to
habitual drunkards. I have known this to take
place in Hyderabad, but have no knowledge of it
elsewhere, Ganja as distinguished from bhang
and charas is in use in Hyderabad. Some take
ganja, who cannot stand charas. The debauch
described above is practised by the mawalis. In
my written answers I have been careful to dis
tinguish their habits from those of respectable
people who use the drugs. Tobacco forms a run
ning accompaniment through the whole debauch.
Some take a small pill of opium before drinking
the bhang. I have seen my own ghorawala go
through the courses I have described, and I have
seen it at the tikanas. There are very few mawa-
lis in Hyderabad. I cannot say how many.
They are mostly mendicants. The mawalis are
well-marked class by themselves recruited from
all castes and religions. They are both Hindu
and Muhammadan, and these two classes do not
amalgamate. They have fakirs among them
and bairagis and sadhus, and the bad characters
make up the complement. Men out of work are
sometimes mawalis. African Seedees are to be
found among them in considerable number. The
mawalis are known all over Sind. They are not
confined to Hyderabad. The name is a term of
reproach. A man who works hard for a week,
and then spends his wages in such debauchery as
I have described, may be called a mawali. I
might describe the mawalis as utterly abandoned
blackguards. I have seen parties of them as large
as one dozen sitting together. My ghorawala
is a Shekh, e., a Hindu converted to Muhamma
-danism, and his immediate friends are of the
same
class. The mawalis have a shabby, ill-conditioned
look. At the meetings they would sit in a circle
round a fire if it were cold weather. The chillum
passes round, and they talk , chatter and laugh,
and are amusing. After a while they become
intoxicated, their conversation becomes irrelevant,
and they all talk together. Some drop off to sleep
and some stagger away. Co-ordination of the
lower extremities is partially lost. The symptoms
are hardly distinguishable from those of
alco-
hol. There is in the earlier stages a similar
exaltation to that caused by alcohol. The state
of excitement caused by alcohol is not distin
-guishable from the same state caused by
bhang.
The remarks found in the asylum case book,
that people were under the influence of a nar
cotic, refer to the drowsy, sleepy, wandering
stage of intoxication, a state of inco-ordination
of the physical functions. That is what the symp
Question 45.— The insanes are brought to
the hospital by their relations like other pa
tients. I, as Civil Surgeon, have to collect all
information necessary for the admission of the
lunatic to the asylum, and I not only fill up
the certificate, but the whole ofthe form printed
on the back of the certificate. I get the inform -
ation from the relations and friends. Some
insanes are brought by the police without any
relations. In that case the information is got
from the police. When the police pick up an
insane in the bazar, they cannot know any
thing about him, unless they can discover his
relations in the neighbourhood. Sometimes bai
ragis and people of that class are brought up
without any information having been gathered
about them. In all other cases the relations come
to the hospital voluntarily with the insane or are
brought by the police. I think that in the major
ity of cases I get no information as to cause of
insanity. The mendicants form the great majority
of cases, and it is difficult to get any information
about them. The insanes in the asylum may be
ranged under two classes, the majority about
whom no information can be got, and the minority
about whom I have made enquiry from their
friends. In the case of any insane man about
whom there is no history, it is impossible to state
toms most resemble, and it is the best way I can