FURTHER ENQUIRIES REGARDING THE ALLEGED HEMP DRUG CASES OF 1892. 149
Even commissioned medical officers, not to mention apothecaries and medical sub-
ordinates, who send many cases, know little of insanity, and seldom realize how often mere
privation is a cause.
As to Toxic insanity, my view, founded on a good deal of practical experience at
home and in Madras, is that you might just as well talk of Financial or of Hungry
insanity. A man or woman has mania, melancholia (a form of mania), or dementia,
the result of the puerperal state, pecuniary losses, fright, alcohol, ganja, epilepsy, privation,
etc. I don't mean that chronic dementia is the direct result; mania or melancholia as
a rule intervening between the cause and the demand state. I presume that the idea
is that toxic insanity has features peculiar to itself, just as puerperal mania has, in pervert-
ed affection, homicidal or suicidal tendency and obscenity. But, after all, even this
latter (puerperal mania) is not sufficiently different from ordinary mania to deserve a
separate place.
It may be somewhat curable; so are lots of cases of acute mania. It may recur with
the puerperal state; so do lots of cases of mania on recurrence of the cause.
As for the symptoms, perverted affection, suicidal and homicidal tendencies are
common enough in cases of mania; and the obscenity, common enough in mania in both
sexes, is only remarkable as often occurring in the case of refined or religious women, who
then use language one can hardly believe they have ever heard.
Yours sincerely,
S. L. DOBIE.
6. Madula Sooryanarain did not die of cholera, but was discharged cured, July 21st,
1893.
S. L. DOBIE.
Dated Camp, Madras, 20th October 1893.
From—S. L. DOBIE, Esq., Principal Medical Storekeeper,
To—THE HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION.
In returning a list of hemp drug cases admitted into the Madras Lunatic Asylum in
1892, I have the honour to state that I am responsible for the entry of the cause—as
ganja—in the first fourteen cases. In no case have I entered it as a cause without such
evidence as led me to a reasonable belief that it was so. I have not accepted the mere
statements of ganja being a cause as entered in the admission papers any more than I
have accepted the statements made by relations to the effect that the new moon is a cause
of insanity. Cases 15, 16, 17 were admitted after I left the Asylum.
The only case which calls for comment is that of Kunji Kalappen, as I found yester-
day, in reading his case, that his servant finally acknowledged that he took ganja during
three months before his admission, and that after taking it he often laughed strangely, and
that he had none for one or two or three days before admission.
The two following are more important cases: Kunnaye Pillai (criminal), admitted
31st May 1886, cause unknown, who has often been discovered in possession of ganja in
the Asylum and Jail. In association with these discoveries the man has been noisy and
excited on a sufficient number of occasions to make it reasonable to believe that the ganja
was a cause of the excitement; and the same may be said of Ragaven (criminal), admitted
8th May 1889.
In conclusion, I have the honour to state that I have communicated to Dr. Warden
my reasons for not returning cases of insanity due to ganja under the heading of "Toxic
insanity."
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