The Equinox (Volume I, Number I)

THE EQUINOX but rule-of-thumb! The old Chancery Lane rule: begin with half the minimum dose of the Pharmacopeeia, and if nothing happens within the expected time, double the dose. If you go on long enough, something is nearly sure to happen! IV “The Mind of the Father said Into Three! and immediately all things were so divided.”—ZOROASTER. Let my readers be good enough to remember, then, that what follows concerns myself only. This must excuse the use of the first person, highly improper in a scientific essay, were it not that the personality of the experimenter is perhaps an essential. I cannot assert that my results would be achieved by another. Yet I have the strong conviction that I have eliminated many sources of error, and that my observations may possess a more absolute value in psychology than those of Ludlow or even of my great master Baudelaire. The few on whom I have been able to test the drug have in large measure confirmed, and in no way contradicted, my results. In the first place, I make an absolute distinction between three effects of hashish, which may be, and I think probably are—so distinct they appear—due to three separate substances. Possibly a simple stimulus-curve may account for it, but I do not think so. 1. The volatile aromatic effect (a). This, the first evanescent symptom, gives the “ thrill” described by Ludlow, as of a new pulse of power pervading 40