ugh the whole gamut of queer agents within my reach .... When the circuit of all the accessible tests was completed, I ceased experimenting, and sat down like a pharmaceutical Alexander, with no more drug worlds to conquer. * * He was sixteen years old at this time. One spring morning in the early 1850s, however, apothecary Anderson greeted young Ludlow with a question: "Have you seen my new acquisitions?" Ludlow "looked toward the shelves in the direction of which he pointed, and saw, added since my last visit, a row of comely pasteboard cylinders enclosing vials of the various extracts prepared by Tilden & Co. . . . I approached the shelves, that I might take them in review." One of the Tilden products was a marijuana extract. After consulting the United States Dispensatory (quoted above) and Johnson's Chemistry of Common Life, Ludlow took ten grains of it. Nothing happened. A few days later he took fifteen grains. Again nothing happened. Gradually, by five grains at a time, I increased the dose to thirty grains, which I took one evening half an hour after tea. I had now almost come to the conclusion that I was absolutely unsusceptible of the hasheesh influence. Without any expectation that this last experiment would be more successful than the former ones, and indeed with no realization of the manner in which the drug affected those who did make the experiment successfully, I went to pass the evening at the house of an intimate friend. In music and conversation the time passed pleasantly. The clock struck ten, reminding me that three hours had elapsed since the dose was taken, and as yet not an unusual symptom had appeared. I was provoked to think that this trial was as fruitless as its predecessors. Ha! What means this sudden thrill? A shock, as of some unimagined vital force, shoots without warning through my entire frame, leaping to my fingers' ends, piercing my brain, startling me till I almost spring from my chair. I could not d...
