n 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. His ideal was of a prophet who dwelt
far from men, without need of food, in constant communion with divinity.
Such an one, in the legends of the Tupis, resided on a mountain
glittering with gold and silver, near the river Uaupe, his only
companion a dog, his only occupation dreaming of the gods. When,
however, an eclipse was near, his dog would bark; and then, taking the
form of a bird, he would fly over the villages, and learn the changes
that had taken place.[274-1]

But man cannot trample with impunity on the laws of his physical life,
and the consequences of these deprivations and morbid excitements of the
brain show themselves in terrible pictures. Not unfrequently they were
carried to the pitch of raving mania, reminding one of the worst forms
of the Berserker fury of the Scandinavians, or the Bacchic rage of
Greece. The enthusiast, maddened with the fancies of a disordered
intellect, would start forth from his seclusion in an access of demoniac
frenzy. Then woe to the dog, the child, the slave, or the woman who
crossed his path; for nothing but blood could satisfy his inappeasable
craving, and they fell instant victims to his madness. But were it a
strong man, he bared his arm, and let the frenzied hermit bury his teeth
in the quivering flesh. Such is a scene at this day not uncommon on the
northwest coast, and few of the natives around Milbank Sound are without
the scars the result of this horr