Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Fitz Hugh Ludlow, sometimes seen as "Fitzhugh Ludlow", (September 11, 1836 – September 12, 1870) was an American author, journalist, and explorer; best-known for his autobiographical book The Hasheesh Eater (1857).

New York stories

There was little in the field of literature that Ludlow did not feel qualified to attempt. He wrote stories for the magazines of his day, poetry, political commentary, art-, music-, drama-, and literary-criticism, and science and medical writing. As a newspaper writer, he also translated articles from foreign newspapers.

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Most of his stories were light-hearted romances, sprinkled with characters like "Mr. W. Dubbleyew," or "Major Highjinks," and generally concerning some semi-ridiculous obstacle that comes between the narrator and a beautiful young woman he's fallen in love with. Occasional stories break from this pattern:

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The Phial of Dread

The Phial of Dread was one of his earliest, published in October 1859. It is written as the journal of a chemist who is visited in his laboratory by the insane daughter of an acquaintance, who felt herself pursued by Death. When she got to the lab, she immediately sought out some chemical with which she could kill herself:

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:We were alone together among the strange poisons, each one of whom, with a quicker or a slower death-devil in his eye, sat in his glass or porcelain sentry-box, a living force of bale. Should it be Hemp? No, that was too slow, uncertain, painful. Morphine? Too many antidotes — too much commonness, ostentation in that. Daturin? I did not like to ask how much of that was certain…

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She finally stabs herself in the heart with a knife she finds in the lab. The author of the journal, Edgar Sands, panics, fearing that he will be blamed for the death, and attempts to destroy the body,

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:…he went calmly to work, with an awful despair in his eyes, and cut the shell of me — the husk I had left — to pieces; as a surgeon would, on a table in the laboratory. These fragments he screwed down into a large retort, and placed in the fiercest of flames, fed with pure oxygen.… I knew that all of me that had been seen on earth was reducing there to its ultimates — I was distilled there by degrees.

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Her soul becomes trapped in the vial in which he pours the last drops of this substance, and he in turn is tormented by the presence he sees as a small, tortured woman within the vial. She is, however, able to take over his body with her soul long enough to write the confession from which the above excerpts come. This saves Mr. Sands from capital punishment, but he notes that the last pages of his journal were "written… after I was discharged from Bloomingdale Insane Asylum."

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The Music Essence

The Music Essence, printed in 1861 by The Commercial Advertiser, featured a man who composes a symphony for his deaf wife by translating the musical notes into light and colors. This story was certainly inspired by the synesthesia Ludlow experienced during his hashish experiences, of which he wrote that:

Related Topics:
1861 - The Commercial Advertiser - Synesthesia

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:The soul is sometimes plainly perceived to be but one in its own sensorium, while the body is understood to be all that so variously modifies impressions as to make them in the one instance smell, in another taste, another sight, and thus on, ad finem. Thus the hasheesh-eater knows what it is to be burned by salt fire, to smell colors, to see sounds, and, much more frequently, to see feelings.

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John Heathburn's Title

John Heathburn's Title (1864) concerns an opium and alcohol addict who is cured through the patience of a concerned physician, and through a substitution therapy utilizing a cannabis extract. It represents Ludlow's first published discussion of his role as a physician treating opium addicts.

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The Household Angel

The Household Angel was published over a series of thirteen issues of Harper's Bazaar in 1868, and is a soap opera of betrayal, deceit, and the descent of a likable protagonist into alcoholism and despair.

Related Topics:
Harper's Bazaar - 1868

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Cinderella

Ludlow's sole foray into drama was an adaptation of Cinderella which he wrote for the New York Sanitary Fair in 1864, an enormous affair to benefit the National Sanitary Commission in their war-relief efforts. The play was performed by children, under the direction of the wife of General John C. Fremont (and starring their son), and included two shetland ponies.

Related Topics:
Cinderella - New York - Sanitary Fair - 1864 - National Sanitary Commission - John C. Fremont

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"E Pluribus Unum"

Among the more interesting of Ludlow's articles was "E Pluribus Unum", published in The Galaxy in November 1866. It reviews attempts by pre-relativistic physicists to unify the known forces into a single force. It is occasionally anachronistic, as when Ludlow reviews failed attempts to explain the enormous energy radiated from the sun using classical physics, eventually settling on the heat given off by incoming meteor collisions as the most likely explanation.

Related Topics:
The Galaxy - 1866

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And it is occasionally visionary, as when Ludlow, decades before Einstein would do the same, abandons the idea of the æther and muses that "e might be allowed to… assert that because our only cognitions of matter are cognitions of force, matter in the scientific sense is force." He does not elaborate, and evidently the article was altered and cut for publication substantially, so we are left to wonder how far he pursued this idea of the equivalency of matter and energy.

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Homes for the Friendless

One of the last published pieces by Ludlow was written for the New York Tribune, and published early in the year of his death. Probably prompted by his work with destitute opiate addicts, the article, "Homes for the Friendless," advocated the establishment of homeless shelters in New York City, particularly for alcoholics and other drug addicts, noting that the existing shelters served women and children only, and that there was a growing class of homeless men in need of assistance. The idea was enthusiastically endorsed in an editorial by Tribune editor Horace Greeley.

Related Topics:
New York Tribune - Horace Greeley

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