- The Club des Haschischins
A translation of an article from the Revue des Deux Mondes, February, 1846. Théophile Gautier describes the antics of the Club des Haschischins. "No longer could I feel my body; the bonds between mind and matter were slender, I moved by simple desire into an environment which offered no resistance. It is thus, I would imagine, that spirits, from the aromatic world to which we journey after death, must act."
- NEW The Hashish
An article from the 3 February 1849 edition of Littell's Living Age discussing experiments in France by Dr. Moreau and Théophile Gautier.
- NEW Curious Drugs for Producing Hallucination
An article about hashish from the 13 April 1850 edition of Scientific American.
- The Vision of Hasheesh
First published in the April, 1854 edition of Putnam's Monthly Magazine, then included as a chapter of the book The Lands of the Saracen, this essay by Bayard Taylor describes his experiences with the drug. "[L]et me beg all who are thereby led to repeat the experiment upon themselves, that they be content to take the portion of hasheesh which is considered sufficient for one man, and not, like me, swallow enough for six."
- "The Hasheesh Eater"
Published anonymously in Putnam's Magazine, September, 1856. "My head expanded wider and wider, revolving with inconceivable rapidity, and enlarging in space with every revolution. It filled the room - the house - the city; it became a world, peopled with the shapes of men and monsters. I spun away into its great vortex, and wandered about its expanses as about a universe. I lost all perception of time and space, and knew no distinction between the realities around me, and the phantasmata which sprung in endless succession from my brain."
- "On the Haschisch or Cannabis Indica"
Written by John Bell, M.D. for The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April, 1857. At first sceptical about the effects of the legendary drug, Bell tries some, and "[t]he most trivial circumstance, the slightest noise, gave rise to trains of thought, which went bounding from subject to subject, completely emancipated from the rules which ordinarily govern the mental operations, till suddenly some other circumstance would give an entirely new direction to them, and the last series of imaginations would seem to have lasted from eternity, even while the eye was fixed upon the clock, the hand of which had not perceptibly moved."
- Hasheesh and Hasheesh Eaters
From Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1858), comes this overview of the flood of literature about cannabis intoxication, focusing primarily on Ludlow's "The Hasheesh Eater."
- NEW Hashish
An extensive review of recent hashish-related literature from the 20 February 1858 issue of Littell's Living Age.
- NEW Mother of Pearl
A short story by Fitz James O'Brien from the February 1860 issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine in which the narrator's wife goes murderously insane from addiction to hashish. "Oh, Hasheesh! demon of a new Paradise, spiritual whirlwind, I know you now!"
- "Planchette" or Spirit Rapping Made Easy (excerpts)
From The Ladies' Repository (1868), an article on seances by the Rev. A.D. Field that speculates in part that hashish intoxication may be used by unscrupulous spiritualists.
- NEW Effects of Hashish
An article about hashish from the 18 September 1869 edition of Scientific American.
- "Perilous Play"
A short story by Louisa May Alcott, published in 1869, that uses cannabis candy and stormy weather to bring two lovers together. "He stretched his hand to her with his heart in his face, and she gave him hers with a look of tender submission, as he said ardently, 'Heaven bless hashish, if its dreams end like this!'"
- The Effects of Hashish
A brief letter from Appleton's Journal (1869) by Captain E. Burton.
- The Hemp Intoxicant
Chapter seven from the Rev. J.T. Crane's 1871 book "Arts of Intoxication: The Aim, and the Results."
- Poisons of the Intelligence - Hasheesh
Written by Nobel Prize winner Charles Richet, and translated into English for the August, 1878 edition of The Popular Science Monthly. "I have taken it myself again and again in various doses, and have administered it to many of my friends."
- An Overdose of Hasheesh
Written in 1884 by Mary C. Hungerford, this note describes an inadvertant overdose of a cannabis preparation being taken for headache relief. "[I]n place of my lost senses I had a marvelously keen sixth sense or power, which I can only describe as an intense superhuman consciousness that in some way embraced all the five and went immeasurably beyond them."
- A Hashish-House in New York
Subtitled "The Curious Adventures of an Individual Who Indulged in a Few Pipefuls of the Narcotic Hemp," this journalistic account by H.H. Kane from 1888 of an opulent New York hash bar is vivid and beautiful. Puts modern-day Amsterdam to shame.
- Orgies of the Hemp Eaters
An account of a monthly hashish festival in Syria from the pages of the New York Herald of March 15, 1895.
- Cannabis Indica Poisoning
Written by J.C. O'Day for The Plexus (1899-1900). The author overdoses on a cannabis cough remedy while on the job and can no longer hold it together. "We had covered about seven miles of the road when I suddenly became aware that I had been dreaming, and that I had forgotten that the responsibility for the safety of the engine and the train rested on my shoulders. The realization of this responsibility shocked me, but did not dispel an illusion that one of my legs was larger than the top of the smoke-stack, my arms like ponderous levers and my hands capable of encircling a flour barrel."
- Two Cases of Poisoning by Cannabis Indica
Written by James Foulis, for the Edinburgh Medical Journal (1900). Two brothers take a large dose of cannabis, get paranoid, and call for a doctor. "Everything - time, objects - seemed to be rushing past me. I was nerved to the extremest limit of excitement. Would this force suddenly break itself up and play havoc with my brain, urging me to the very verge of insanity?"
- Excerpts from "An Essay on Hasheesh"
Written by Victor Robinson, from the Medical Review of Reviews (1912). Robinson describes the effects of cannabis on his brother, and what happened when he gave in to curiosity and tried it himself. "I am transported to wonderland. I walk in streets where gold is dirt, and I have no desire to gather it. I wonder whether it is worth while to explore the canals of Mars, or rock myself on the rings of Saturn, but before I can decide, a thousand other fancies enter my excited brain."
- The Physiological Activity of Cannabis Sativa
Written by H.C. Hamilton, A.W. Lescohier and R.A. Perkins for the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association in 1913. Ostensibly a series of experiments designed to test the efficacy and potency of American-grown cannabis in comparison to that imported from India, this is a marvelously straight description of three scientists getting stoned in the lab.
The Hashish Eater - or - The Apocalypse of Evil
A poem by Clark Ashton Smith, first published in 1922.
- Hallucinating Substances - Indian Hemp: Cannabis Indica
A section from Louis Lewin's Phantastica (1924).
- Excerpts from The Arabian Nights.
Includes "The Tale of The Hashish-Eater," "The Tale of Two Hashish-Eaters" and two interesting footnotes from Richard Burton's translation of The Arabian Nights.
- The Herb Dangerous
A series of writings, by E. Whineray, Aleister Crowley, Charles Baudelaire, and Fitz Hugh Ludlow, printed in the first four issues of Crowley's journal The Equinox.
- Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and Mescaline 1927-1934: Translation and Commentary
Walter Benjamin, Egon Wissing, and Fritz Fräkel; from Über Haschisch, translated from the German by Scott J. Thompson. See also Thompson's
From 'Rausch' to
Rebellion: Walter Benjamin's Uncompleted Book on Hashish.
