The age at which this habit is most common is from thirty to forty, both in males and females. The following table, which, as Dr. Earle states, is only approximative, is of interest in this connection:—
| Males— | |
| From 20 to 30 years | 5 |
| From 30 to 40 years | 19 |
| From 40 to 50 years | 11 |
| From 50 to 60 years | 7 |
| From 60 to 70 years | 1 |
| From 70 to 80 years | 1 |
| Unknown age | 22 |
| Total | 66 |
| Females— | |
| From 10 to 20 years | 2 |
| From 20 to 30 years | 18 |
| From 30 to 40 years | 39 |
| From 40 to 50 years | 22 |
| From 50 to 60 years | 14 |
| From 60 to 70 years | 4 |
| One-third entire number prostitutes, probably from 15 to 50 | 56 |
| Unknown age | 14 |
| Total | 169 |
Females are more frequent victims than males, in the proportion of three to one. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that women more often than men are afflicted with diseases of a nervous character, in which narcotic remedies are used sometimes for a long period, and also to the fact that in some instances it is used by them in place of alcoholic stimulants, its effects being less noticeable and degrading, although none the less intoxicating.
Both males and females are usually of the higher orders, in point of intellect and culture. In some cases business failure or family trouble has been the incentive for a resort to the use of the drug. In some instances the fact that opium eating had ruined the mental powers of the victim, or caused him to be careless or negligent of his home relations, has led to the business failure, or the sundering of family ties. The majority of patients come from the middle classes, those people who are continually toiling and worrying in the almost ceaseless endeavor to “keep up appearances.”
The fact that most opium eaters are married, widow or widower, is probably explainable on the ground that in the majority of instances, the patients among whom it is most common are at just the age when marriage has taken place. In some the habit is contracted before, in others after marriage.
I knew of one example where the wife, a young woman of eighteen, contracted the habit of using the drug subcutaneously, through the carelessness of her physician. The husband began then to use it himself, and to-day the two are separated, the wife partially insane, the husband a confirmed habituè and also an alcoholic drunkard. One who sees much of this disease meets with some very sad cases.
CHAPTER II.
PREPARATIONS EMPLOYED. MANNER OF USING.
The following are the various preparations used by opium and morphia takers—