Ellis’ immediate circle exemplified this hunger for visual sensation, and his enthusiasm brought into being mescaline’s first informal artistic and literary scene. Curious as to what an artist would make of mescal, he persuaded one of his acquaintances to try it. The first dose was too weak and the second far too strong, inducing, in his friend’s words, “a series of attacks or paroxysms, which I can only describe by saying that I felt as though I was dying.” Visions alternated with strange and disturbing physical sensations, and sometimes combined with them: when Ellis passed him a piece of biscuit to relieve his nausea, it “suddenly streamed out into blue flame”, an electric conflagration that spread across the right-hand side of his body. “As I placed the biscuit in my mouth it burst again into the same coloured fire and illuminated the interior of my mouth, casting a blue reflection on the roof. The light in the Blue Grotto at Capri, I am able to affirm, is not nearly as blue as seemed for a short space of time the interior of my mouth.”