250 REPORT OF THE INDIAN HEMP DRUGS COMMISSION, 1893-94. [CH. XII.
The determination of
cause depends wholly upon history. The Commission
also consider it not improbable that there are no typical brain
lesions peculiar
to hemp drug insanity, though definite lesions are doubtless
present in chronic
cases, as they are in cases due to other causes.
In answering the
question, therefore, on what the evidence rests that hemp
drugs may induce mental aberration, the Commission would offer the
following
remarks: The evidence may be considered under two heads—(a)
popular; (b)
scientific. The popular idea that
the use of hemp drugs may induce insanity
can be traced back for many centuries, and the present day views on
the sub-
ject are no doubt the outcome of old popular ideas which have been
handed
down and become concrete. With non-medical witnesses the mere use
of the
drug along with the fact of insanity, as the evidence shows, has as
a rule been
accepted as cause and effect. Of the large number of medical
witnesses who
have given evidence before the Commission, probably not a single
one has ever
observed the inception of the habit and the use giving rise to
mental aberration,
and been in a position to gauge the value of other contributory
causes if present.
With practically no modern literature on the subject, with no
special knowledge
apart from the popular idea, with a very slight or no clinical
experience of insanity
in England, with the experience derived from perhaps having had
half a dozen
insanes in the course of two years under observation as Civil
Surgeons, officers
have been placed in charge of asylums, and have had to
differentiate between cases
of hemp drug insanity and ordinary mania. The careful inquiry which
has been
made by the Commission into all the alleged hemp drugs cases
admitted in one
year into asylums in British India demonstrates conclusively that
the usual mode
of differentiating between hemp drug insanity and ordinary mania
was in the
highest degree uncertain, and therefore fallacious. Even after the
inquiry which
has been conducted, it cannot be denied that in some of the cases
at least the
connection between hemp drugs and insanity has not been
conclusively estab-
lished. But taking these accepted cases as a whole, we have a
number of
instances where the hemp drug habit has been so established in
relation to the
insanity that, admitting (as we must admit) that hemp drugs as
intoxicants
cause more or less of cerebral stimulation, it may be accepted as
reasonably
proved, in the absence of evidence of other cause, that hemp drugs
do cause
insanity.
The action of hemp resin,
the active principle of all forms of the drug, when
taken internally, has formed the subject of accurate experimental
observations,
and the physiological action of the drug on the human subject and
animals is
fairly well known. When, however, the products of the destructive
distillation
of the resin are inhaled, as in ganja smoking, the precise
physiological effects
induced have not hitherto been, so far as the Commission are aware,
as fully
studied. Dr. Russell's experiments (Bengal witness No. 105) already
quoted are,
the Commission understand, the only ones instituted on man with any
pretensions
to scientific accuracy. On the other hand, Assistant Surgeon
Bocarro (Sind wit-
ness No. 20) and others refer from careful actual observations to
the general
physiological effects induced by smoking ganja and charas. With the
object
of elucidating the physiological effects of the products of the
destructive distilla-
tion of hemp resin, Dr. D. D. Cunningham, F.R.S., Professor of
Physiology,
Medical College, Calcutta, at the request of the Commission, kindly
undertook a