Medard, or in the excited scenes of a religious
revival in one of our own churches.
Sleeplessness and abstemiousness, carried to the utmost verge of human
endurance--seclusion, and the pertinacious fixing of the mind on one
subject--obstinate gloating on some morbid fancy, rarely failed to bring
about hallucinations with all the garb of reality. Physicians are well
aware that the more frequently these diseased conditions of the mind are
sought, the more readily they are found. Then, again, they were often
induced by intoxicating and narcotic herbs. Tobacco, the maguey, coca;
in California the chucuaco; among the Mexicans the snake plant,
ollinhiqui or coaxihuitl; and among the southern tribes of our own
country the cassine yupon and iris versicolor,[273-2] were used; and, it
is even said, were cultivated for this purpose. The seer must work
himself up to a prophetic fury, or speechless lie in apparent death
before the mind of the gods would be opened to him. Trance and ecstasy
were the two avenues he knew to divinity; fasting and seclusion the
means employed to discover them.
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