“The _normal mental condition_ is that of an exuberant enjoyance rather than the opposite, that of melancholy and depression, though the transition from the one state to the other may be as extreme as it is swift. Oftener the subject is kept revolving in a delirious whirl of hallucinatory emotions, when images the most grotesque and illusions the drollest and most fantastic crowd along, one upon another, with a celerity almost transcending thought. (Mirza Abdúl Roussac.) “_Command over the will_ is maintainable, but temporarily only. As self-control declines the mind is swayed by the mere fortuitous vagaries of the fancy; and now it is that the dominant characteristic or mental proclivity has its real apocalypsis. The outward expression may reveal itself under a show of complacency and contentment in view of things around, or suspicion, distrust, or querulousness of disposition may work to the surface, or may be, a lordly hauteur that exacts an unquestioning homage from the ‘profanum vulgus’ by virtue of an affected superiority over common mortals, is the ruling idea of the hour; or peradventure, the erotic impulses may, for the time, overshadow and disguise all others. “Amid the ever-shifting spectacular scene the _sense of personal identity_ is never perhaps entirely lost, but there does arise in very rare instances the notion of a duality of existence; not the Persian idea precisely, that of two souls occupying one and the same body in a joint stock association, as it were (the doctrine as alluded to by Xenophon, in the story of the beautiful Panthea), but rather the idea of one and the same soul in a duplication or bipartation else, and present in two bodies.” Many persons who have put themselves once or twice under the influence of this drug claim that no such pleasant effects, but rather torturing and horrible conditions are produced. The results when the drug is taken in this way, like those produced by tobacco on boys who smoke for the first time, should not be taken as a true estimate of the results obtained by the continued use of either. A curious, interesting and valuable experiment was made upon himself by Dr. H. C. Wood, of Philadelphia, who is especially qualified to undertake and record the results of such an observation. He says[104]:—