upon their shelves, and seem to be meantime oblivious that all the virtues that it ever possessed are evaporating. By a few physicians the extractum cannabis Indice, of the British Pharmacopæia is prescribed in small doses for certain diseases of women, for rheumatism, and sometimes for one or two other maladies; but I believe I may safely say that in England it is seldom, if indeed ever, used purely as a narcotic. Yet nearly all books on Materia Medica agree that it is capable of exerting powerful and astonishing effects in that capacity. The truth is that medical men, unable in this country to procure trustworthy specimens of the drug, have been frightened by the uncertain and varying action of weak or stale samples, and have practically discarded Cannabis Indica for opium. So scarce, indeed, is real hachish in Europe that many writers upon the subject have been led to declare that the peculiar effects of the narcotic are only to be witnessed in Oriental countries, the fact being merely that the writers in question have not had opportunities of observing those effects because they have
