THE NAKED TRUTH.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18946, 21 August 1923, Page 6

THE NAKED TRUTH.

WEIRD EFFECTS OP A DRUG. Reports from San Quentin Penitentiary, California, that convicts under the influence of soopolamin are incapable of telling' an untruth are received by eminent New York physicians with good deal of scepticism, although the positive claims of definite achievements have aroused a desire to conduct experiments in the Eastern States. Dr Richard House, a Texan physician, who injected the drug into the San Quentin convicts while prison officials and criminal investigators looked on, declares that soopolamin, which is used to induce “twilight sleep” in maternity cases, removes ell mental inhibition and deprives the subjects of reasoning power, so that they are incapable of lying, while their other faculties remain intact. One convict convicted of murder who was submitted to the drug proved himscif innocent, while two others, it is claimed, revealed their guilt and confessed other crimes. When informed of the results of the experiments the warden of Sing Sing, the New York State Prison, said he was anxious to conduct experiments with the drug, which, if successful, would solve a myriad problems. Several New York medical experts, including Dr Clarence Dalton, of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, admitted that their observations, had_ convinced them that patients under the influence of the drug were reduced to a semi-hypnotio state, in which they possessed no consciousness to respond to a suggested question with anything but a truthful answer. On the other hand, Dr Sohlapo, psychiatrist of the Post-Graduate Hospital, New York, described the use of the drug as grotesque, and declared that the idea of trying to solve crime from the phantasmagoria of babble coming from a drugged person was absurd, and said that the weird information this obtained would not be accepted by any court.

An Indian spider’s web only six inches in width was found to contain over 41,500 meshes.