A Dictionary of Hallucinations

I have to confess that when the editor first told me that there was a new reference book on hallucinations I had expected something fairly trashy. There were a lot around in the late 1960's, following up Aldous Huxley's Doors of Experience and Timothy Leary's Psychedelic Experience (supposedly based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead though I could never really see the connection). I was not wholly reassured by the front cover of this book – a reproduction of Oliva's lurid picture of The Absinthe Drinker with an elongated Alice in Wonderland and some brain scans superimposed. I was...