CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| CHAPTER I. | |
| The Opium and Morphine Habits. Formation; General Symptoms | [17-26] |
| CHAPTER II. | |
| Preparations Employed. Manner of Using | [27-33] |
| CHAPTER III. | |
| General Symptoms Analyzed and Classified | [34-45] |
| CHAPTER IV. | |
| General Symptoms Analyzed and Classified—Concluded | [46-70] |
| CHAPTER V. | |
| Accidents Incident to the Subcutaneous Use of Morphia | [71-105] |
| CHAPTER VI. | |
| The Treatment of the Opium and Morphia Habits. General Considerations | [106-129] |
| CHAPTER VII. | |
| Agents Used in the Treatment of the Opium and Morphia Habits | [130-148] |
| CHAPTER VIII. | |
| The Continued Use of Chloral | [149-164] |
| CHAPTER IX. | |
| Effects of Chloral on the Different Systems and Apparatuses | [165-179] |
| CHAPTER X. | |
| Effects of Chloral on the Different Systems and Apparatuses—Concluded | [180-199] |
| CHAPTER XI. | |
| Symptoms of Abstinence from Chloral—Treatment | [200-205] |
| CHAPTER XII. | |
| The Hashisch Habit | [206-218] |
| CHAPTER XIII. | |
| Conclusion | [219-221] |
THE OPIUM AND MORPHINE HABITS.
CHAPTER I.
THEIR PATHOLOGY.
A higher degree of civilization, bringing with it increased mental development among all classes, increased cares, duties and shocks, seems to have caused the habitual use of narcotics, once a comparatively rare vice among Christian nations, to have become alarmingly common.
Increase in mental strain, hot-house development of the passions, lessened physical labor and increased mental work, have been gradually giving us bodies in which the nervous element largely preponderates. Persons who may be classed under the head of “nervous temperament” are daily on the increase.
Diseases are to-day as different from diseases of a century ago as is their treatment. While the average individual now does more mental work in an hour than did our ancestors in six hours, we are not one-sixth as well able to bear the intellectual strain as they were.
Nine-tenths of us neither eat, sleep, exercise, bathe, or procreate in a proper way. It is all hurry and turmoil; little rest and much care. Generation by generation our physical natures are changing, and in the children of each succeeding generation we see the preponderance of the nervous element; a gradual evolution of that or those peculiarities most prominently brought forth by the exigencies of the individual and national life of a people.
Finding pain, “nervousness” and hysteria constantly claiming his attention, and that nothing relieves them so well as opium, or its alkaloid morphia, which is six times the parent strength, the physician resorts to their use more and more freely, expecting as soon as the more distressing symptoms pass away to pursue another and more permanent plan of treatment. The patient, however, having once experienced relief, insists upon the further use of the drug, sometimes feigns illness, in order to procure it, finally obtains some herself, and in guilty secrecy drifts rapidly into the habit.