After this legislation they tried moralization and preaching. The misfortunes of the opium smoker were depicted in an infinite number of ways. All this propagandism had about as little success as societies against intemperance, and this state of affairs is existing to-day in the East.
There are not noticeably many opium eaters or smokers among the French. But every one knows that the people of the Orient have for their European brothers the morphine users. There is between the first and second the same difference that is found in everything pertaining to barbarous and to cultivated men. Civilization prescribes as to the manner of the poisoning.
While the Oriental eats or smokes simply the juice of the poppy almost as nature furnishes it, the European is more refined, and wishes only the active principles of opium. So he uses it prepared in such a way as to have lost almost entirely its disagreeable properties.
How does one become a morphine user when he is a Frenchman, an inhabitant of Paris, and when there is not a temptation to it from the fact of a general habit, or the existence of special establishments? This can be accounted for by two methods. The most common is some painful affliction from which one is suffering, it may be neuralgia, acute dyspepsia, or violent headaches. The physician, often at the end of his resources, prescribes injecting a little morphine under the skin. The effect is marvelous; the pain ceases instantly, but temporarily. The next day it returns with new force. The afflicted patient remembers the success of yesterday, and insists upon his anodyne. It seems necessary to give it, and so it goes on for several days. Soon the nature of the drug manifests itself: no longer will one injection a day answer; there must be two, then three, later four, and so on, always increasing, until it reaches formidable quantities. Meantime, the original trouble may have entirely disappeared, but the patient does not cease to use the remedy. The first time that the sick one insists upon having the treatment the doctor is called to perform the operation. But soon, as it becomes necessary to repeat the process oftener, making it expensive, it is entrusted to the nurse or to the family, and from that day the patient is lost; for how can the supplications of a suffering person whom one loves be resisted? Then on a day the sick one practices on himself—and from that on, without any control, with the avidity of passion, he uses the drug in the quantities of which I have told you.
This is one way in which many victims fall into this sad habit. There is another. The victims of the second method are those who seek in exciting tonics the sensations which their weakened nerves and their surfeited imagination can no longer afford them. These are the proselytes of a veritable association, and they, in their turn, soon become missionaries in the same cause. It is a habit which the vicious have of wishing to make others like themselves. The fable of the fox which had its tail cut off is not a fable of yesterday. Two friends meet; one of them complains of slight annoyances; dullness, ennui; he no longer enjoys anything; the world, the races, the theater, do not procure for him distraction; he is bored to death. His friend admits that he also has suffered in the same way, but that he had recourse to morphine, of which some one had told him, and that he found in it a perfect cure. And thus by such conversations there is formed, as it were, a new class; they are the volunteers in this unhappy army.
One can but remark, that luxury, which tends to introduce itself everywhere, has already invaded the domain of morphine. The little syringe of Pravas, which permits of the injection of the poison under the skin, and the consequent avoidance of the bitter taste and the nausea which would be occasioned by eating morphine, has received ingenious and artistic modifications. It was necessary to render it easy to carry, and at the same time to make it deceptive to the eye. I visited a surgical instrument maker at Paris, and he placed at my disposal for inspection his whole line of morphine instruments, those which the taste, the luxury, or the imagination of his clients had caused him to fabricate.
There was first the syringe, containing a centigram of morphine, such as the physicians employ. It was not delicate enough, was difficult to handle and difficult to conceal; it is used now only by those who no longer care to conceal their vice—who feel no shame in regard to it. Then there was one adroitly concealed in a match box. At one side was a little bottle containing a dose of powder necessary for a half day. There was, too, a false cigar holder, containing all that was necessary for injecting the poison. But most remarkable of all was a long, sheath-like instrument. It is somewhat inconvenient in the midst of company to put the morphine into the syringe before making a puncture. This sheath, filled beforehand, can be carried in the pocket; the puncture can be made, and to inject the drug it is only necessary to move the piston in a certain direction; in the evening the sheath will be found empty. There were little gold syringes contained in smelling bottles; a little silver sheath which one would take for an embroidery stiletto; open it; it contains an adorable little syringe of gold and a bottle of the poison.
Among morphine users in fashionable life they make gifts according to their taste, and there are manufactured syringes and bottles enameled, engraved, and emblematic—in every conceivable device.
Do men more often become subject to this vice than women? According to the printed statistics, yes. Out of every one hundred who used the drug there are counted only twenty-five women. But practicing physicians say that the women are the more numerous victims. They are more artful, and try to keep the habit concealed; they do not consult the physicians regarding it, and so are not counted in the statistical returns.
Is it then so very agreeable to live under the influence of this poison, since so many people expose themselves, for its sake, to such grave perils? To this I reply, no, not at the beginning. It is with this vice as with others, the beginning is hard. The first injections are not enjoyable—the puncture is painful, and sometimes nausea follows. But the habit is easily and quickly formed, and the disagreeable effects disappear. The introduction of the morphine produces almost immediately a sort of general vagueness, an annihilation of being which causes to disappear all external realities and replaces them by a sort of happy reverie; and at the same time the mind seems more alert, more active. Physical and moral grievances disappear, all troubles are forgotten for the time being. “You know,” says Mr. Ball, “the famous soliloquy of Hamlet, and the passage where the Prince cries out that without the fear of the unknown, no one would hesitate to escape by means of a sharp point from the evils of life which he suffers, in order to enter into repose. Ah well! this sharp point of which Shakspere speaks—this liberating needle—we possess; it is the syringe of Pravas. By one plunge a person can efface all sufferings of mind and of body; the injustice of men and of fortune; and understand from this time on, the irresistible empire of this marvelous poison.”