Some men, in the early history of this drug, and some at the present day likewise, lauded it highly as a substitute for opium, claiming for it perfect freedom from the danger of forming a habit and the non-production of ill effects when used for a long time.
Thus a correspondent of the Doctor[54] says:—
“Long-continued use does not impair the general health. I know persons who have taken it almost since its introduction, in the same dose and with the same success.”
Dr. Pollak[55] says: “The prolonged employment of chloral is not usually attended with any disagreeable effects, and if any such occur, they are of no consequence. It especially does not induce congestion of the brain or disturbance of the digestive organs.”
Dr. C. W. Cram,[56] of Columbus, Ohio, writes: “Its use is not followed by that craving for its continuance which so often attends the administration of preparations of opium, especially morphine, producing a multitude of opium-eaters.”
Others went to directly the opposite extreme.
Dr. Madison Marsh[57] says: “Its effects are so pleasant, its use so exquisitely fascinating, that, the habit once acquired, a person becomes a slave to its use, never to stop till death closes the scene. The enchantments of alcoholic stimulants, cannabis Indica, morphine or tobacco, bind with silken cords, compared to the bars and hooks of steel thrown around the unhappy victim of this popular drug and infatuating stimulant.”
The first to call attention to the possibility of the formation of a “chloral habit” was Dr. B. W. Richardson, of London, a part of whose most excellent paper[58] I cannot refrain from giving.
“It is a matter of deep regret to have to report that, since the name was given to the disease, chloralism has become widespread. It has not yet spread far among the female part of the community. It has not yet reached the poorer classes of either sex. Among the men of the middle class, among the most active of these in all its divisions—commercial, literary, medical, philosophical, artistic, clerical—chloralism, varying in intensity of evil, has appeared. In every one of these classes I have named, and in some others, I have seen the sufferers from it and have heard their testimony in relation to its effects on their organizations. Effects exceedingly uniform and, as a rule, exceedingly baneful.
“At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Edinburgh, in the year 1871, I drew earnest attention to this subject. I said, and the words were published in the reports of that year (p. 147), there is another subject of public interest connected with the employment of chloral hydrate. I refer to the increasing habitual use of it as a narcotic. As there are alcoholic intemperants and opium eaters, so, now, there are those who, beginning to take chloral hydrate to relieve pain or to procure sleep, get into the fixed habit of taking it several times daily, and in full doses. I would state from this public place, as earnestly and as forcibly as I can, that this growing practice is alike injurious to the mental, the moral, and the purely physical life, and that the confirmed habit of taking chloral hydrate leads to inevitable and confirmed disease. Under it the digestion, natural tendency to sleep, and natural sleep are impaired; the blood is changed in quality, its plastic properties and its capacity for oxidation being reduced; the secretions are depraved, and the nervous system losing its regulating, controlling power, the muscles become unsteady, the heart irregular and intermittent, and the mind excited, uncertain, and unstable. To crown the mischief, in not a few cases, already, the habitual dose has been the last; involuntary, or rather, unintentional suicide closing the scene. I press these facts on public attention not one moment too soon, and I add to them the further facts that hydrate of chloral is purely and absolutely a medicine, and that whenever its administration is not guided by medical science and experience, it ceases to be a boon and becomes a curse to mankind.