In forty-one cases there is a history of either nervousness, nervous disease, insanity, alcoholism or opium addiction in the ancestors.
In many of these patients there is a “mixed” habit, as opium and chloral, alcohol and chloral, alcohol, chloral and morphine, chloral and chlorodyne, etc.
It is largely used[60] by the intemperate as a substitute for alcohol. On this point the testimony is abundant and positive.
As an example of hereditary tendency, etc., the following, sent me by Dr. N. Jasper Jones, of Blairstown, Iowa, is very interesting:—
“Alcoholism prevalent in the family, also the opium habit, but no insanity, although the mother, at times, under mental worry, becomes somewhat unreasonable, as though she might become insane. Father died of heart trouble while sitting at breakfast. The entire family are of the most intense nervous type, on the mother’s side, all the children taking after the mother; but the father was unusually reserved and cautious, probably because he had schooled himself to be so, on account of his wife’s and children’s excitable natures.”
It will be seen, from the foregoing cases, that while there is no doubt that in certain individuals a morbid craving for chloral may be established by the prolonged use of the drug, it is very different, as a habit, from that produced by opium or morphine. As an offset to this stands the fact that, in those cases where a habit is formed, it causes a more complete and rapid ruin of mind and body than either opium or morphine.
Persons addicted to the habitual use of this drug are usually of the educated class, as is the case with opium.
It has been denied by some authors that it is ever used as a stimulant to the mind. In one case now under my care, and in several reported to me by correspondents, this was the object for which it was first taken, and it was found to answer the purpose admirably, especially in the case of those doing continuous literary work. This effect was, however, short-lived and the reaction decided.
Dr. Quintius C. Smith, who has had a large professional experience among the prostitutes of the Pacific coast, writes me that the drug is or was used largely by this class, they finding it quite as efficient a stimulant, nerve sedative and sleep producer, as opium or alcohol, and having the advantage of leaving no ill after effects. One such patient, unless she previously took a dose of chloral, would have a severe epileptiform convulsion at each connection.
A clearer idea of the ill effects of the long-continued use of chloral in large doses is best studied on each system or apparatus separately. Unlike morphine, it not only shows its baneful effects on the nervous system, but it acts to directly undermine the health by disorganizing the blood.