Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844 - 1900)
German philosopher
"If one seeks relief from unbearable pressure one is to eat hashish "
HASHISH PARALYSIS:
The Nietzsche legend as created by Elisabeth (his sister) had no place for syphilis (the disease that killed him), so it is ironic that word of his disease might never have reached the public if she had not attempted to cover it up. Her first blunder was to allow access to Nietzsche’s medical records at Basel and Jena to the respected Leipzig neurologist and psychiatrist P.J. Möbius. If Elisabeth had hoped for a sympathetic portrait of the last illness from Möbius, she was sadly deceived. In 1902 he published On the Pathological in Nietzsche in which he not only revealed the diagnosis, though by innuendo rather than by name, but far worse, he suggested that the first indications of mental instability, caused by syphilis, appeared as early as 1881 with the “lightning” inspiration for Thus Spake Zarathustra
... Indefatigable Elisabeth also attempted to explain away Nietzsche’s paralysis as an effect of drugs. A “Javanese soporific,” thought to be liquid hashish, was given to him in the summer of 1881 by a Dutchman who told him never to take more than a few drops in a glass of water. Elisabeth tried it and it had an exhilarating effect, but she came to dislike the feeling and implored her brother to be moderate in its use. In 1885 Nietzsche admitted he had taken a few drops too many and had flung himself to the ground, exhilaration passing over into a spasmodic laughter. According to Elisabeth, Professor Wille at Basel told her that Nietzsche was experimenting with soporifics not yet tried by science. All of this was revealed only after Möbius’s book was used by Elisabeth to promote the theory that Nietzsche’s paralysis was a “hashish paralysis.” She also suggested that the sleeping medication Nietzsche took left him excited in the morning.
Despite Elisabeth’s best efforts, the diagnosis would not disappear.
source: Pox History
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