Mmm... turpentine...

I'm sure many of you are familiar with a quote by Sir Oliver Wendell Holmes describing his experience inhaling ether. The quote came through a "quote of the day" list that I'm on, and seemed worth repeating here:

"I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for a moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of the cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise will ponder):
`A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.'"

Of course, my first exposure to this quote was via The Monkees. In the first season of that show, the last minute or two of each episode were often given over to interview segments where the four Monkees fooled around or waxed philosophic, and in one of those segments, inexplicably, Peter Tork looked directly at the camera and pronounced, "The universe is permeated with the odor of turpentine." Undoubtedly whoever was editing the episode together just thought Tork was being a long-haired weirdo, not realizing the drug-soaked origin of that little snippet...