The eye troubles and the skin affections usually pass away, without interference, a few days or weeks after the discontinuance of the chloral.
Restraint, full control, and a thorough search of the patient are necessary with these as with opium or morphine takers.
The practice employed by some physicians, of “tapering off” chloral eaters on small doses of opium or morphine, I consider unnecessary, and extremely dangerous, for these patients, as is well established, are prone to go from one habit to another, and the use of these drugs is placing needless temptation in their way.
PROGNOSIS.
Cure may be assured if proper control of the patient is had. As much depends on proper after treatment of these cases as in that of the morphine habit.
Relapses less often occur in these than in opium habituès.
Finally, then, the prolonged use of chloral is not so likely to form a habit; is not so thoroughly enslaving when formed; is less prone to endanger life in small, more prone to destroy mind and body in large doses, and is easier broken, than the opium and morphine habits.
DANGERS.
There is a certain peculiar danger attending the use of chloral that is comparatively rare among opium habituès, viz: that of death from an overdose; death, also, from a dose that has previously been taken with safety.[101] Medical literature is filled with records of such cases, and instances where death almost occurred, the patient only being saved through the exertions of the physician called.