“No,” he said, shaking his head doubtfully.
He had tried to dissolve a little of the powder in some water from the glass before him, but it would not dissolve.
As he continued to look at it his eye fell on the cut-glass vinegar cruet before us. It was full of the white vinegar.
“Really acetic acid,” he remarked, pouring out a little.
The white powder dissolved.
For several minutes he continued looking at the stuff.
“That, I think,” he remarked finally, “is heroin.”
“More ‘happy dust’?” I replied with added interest now, thinking of our previous case. “Is the habit so extensive?”
“Yes,” he replied, “the habit is comparatively new, although in Paris, I believe, they call the drug fiends, ‘heroinomaniacs.’ It is, as I told you before, a derivative of morphine. Its scientific name is diacetyl-morphin. It is New York’s newest peril, one of the most dangerous drugs yet. Thousands are slaves to it, although its sale is supposedly restricted. It is rotting the heart out of the Tenderloin. Did you notice Veronica Haversham’s yellowish whiteness, her down-drawn mouth, elevated eyebrows, and contracted eyes? She may have taken it up to escape other drugs. Some people have—and have just got a new habit. It can be taken hypodermically, or in a tablet, or by powdering the tablet to a white crystalline powder and snuffing up the nose. That’s the way she takes it. It produces rhinitis of the nasal passages, which I see you observed, but did not understand. It has a more profound effect than morphine, and is ten times as powerful as codeine. And one of the worst features is that so many people start with it, thinking it is as harmless as it has been advertised. I wouldn’t be surprised if she used from seventy-five to a hundred one-twelfth grain tablets a day. Some of them do, you know.”
“And Dr. Maudsley,” I asked quickly, “do you think it is through him or in spite of him?”