…More than the hunger after bread, more than the frenzy of love or hatred, the poison hunger overpowers every other instinct, even the fear of death. Dr. Isaac Jennings has illustrated this by the following example: A clergyman of his acquaintance attempted to dissuade a young man of great promise from habits of intemperance. "Hear me first a few words," said the young man, "and then you may proceed. I am sensible that an indulgence in this habit will lead to the loss of property, the loss of reputation and domestic happiness, to premature death, and to the irretrievable loss of my immortal soul; and now, with all this conviction resting firmly on my mind and flashing over my conscience like lightning, if I still continue to drink, do you suppose anything you can say will deter me from the practice?"
…Ignorance is a chief cause of intemperance. The seductions of vice would not mislead so many of our young men if they could realize the significance of their mistake. There is still a lingering belief that, with due precaution against excess and adulteration, a dram drinker might "get ahead" of Nature, and, as it were, trick her out of some extra enjoyment. There is no hope of a radical reform till intelligent people have realized the fact that this "trick" is in every instance a losing game, entailing penalties which far outweigh the pleasures that the novice may mistake for enjoyments. For the depression of the vital energy increases with every repetition of the stimulating process, and in a year after the first dose all the "grateful and exhilarating tonics" of our professional poison venders can not restore the vigor, the courage, and the cheerfulness which the mere consciousness of perfect health imparts to the total abstainer. A great plurality of all beginners underrate the difficulty of controlling the cravings of a morbid appetite. They remember that their natural inclinations at first opposed, rather than encouraged, the indulgence; and they feel that at the present stage of its development they could abjure the passion without difficulty. But they overlook the fact that the moral power of resistance decreases with each repetition of the dose, and that the time will come when only the practical impossibility of procuring their wonted tipple will enable them to keep their pledge of total abstinence. It is true that, by the exercise of a constant self-restraint, a person of great will force may resist the progressive tendency of the poison habit and confine himself for years to a single cigar or a single bottle of wine per day….But the attempt to resist that bias will overtask the strength of most individuals. According to the allegory of the Grecian myth, the car of Bacchus was drawn by tigers; and it is a significant circumstance that war, famine, and pestilence have so often been the forerunners of veritable alcohol epidemics….The explanation is that, after the stimulant habit has once been initiated, every unusual depression of mental or physical vigor calls for an increased application of the accustomed method of relief….Nations who are addicted to the worship of a poison god will use his temple as a place of refuge from every calamity; and children whose petty ailments have been palliated with narcotics, wine, and cordials, will afterward be tempted to drown their greater sorrows in deeper draughts of the same nepenthe.—FELIX L. OSWALD, M.D., Remedies of Nature, Popular Science Monthly, October and November, 1883.
DANGERS FROM THE USE OF NARCOTICS.—It may seem a paradox, it is a truism, to say that in the value of narcotics lies their peril. Because they have such power for good, because the suffering which they alleviate is in its lighter forms so common, because neuralgia and sleeplessness are ailments as familiar to the present generation as gout, rheumatism, and catarrh were to our grandfathers, therefore the medicines which immediately relieve sleeplessness and neuralgic pain are among the most dangerous possessions, the most subtle temptations of civilized life. Every one of these drugs has, besides its instant and beneficial effect, other and injurious tendencies. The relief which it gives is purchased at a certain price; for, at each repetition of the dose, the immediate relief is lessened or rendered uncertain, while the mischievous influence is enhanced and aggravated; till, when the drug has become a necessity of life it has lost the greater part, if not the whole, of its value, and serves only to satisfy the need which itself alone has created….We read weekly of men and women poisoned by an overdose of some favorite sedative, burned to death or otherwise fatally injured, while insensible from self- administered ether or chloroform….The narcotist keeps chloroform or chloral always at hand, forgetful or ignorant that one sure effect of the first dose is to produce a semistupor more dangerous than actual somnolence. In that semistupor the patient is aware, or fancies, that the dose has failed. The pain that has induced a lady to hold a chloroformed handkerchief under her nostrils returns while her will and her judgment are half paralyzed. She takes the bottle from the table beside her bed, intending to pour an additional supply upon her handkerchief. The unsteady hand perhaps spills a quantity on the sheet, perhaps sinks with the unstoppered bottle under her nostrils, and in a few moments she has inhaled enough utterly to stupefy, if not to kill. The sleepless brain worker also feels that his usual dose of chloral has failed to bring sleep; he is not aware how completely it has stupefied the brain, to which it has not given rest. His judgment is gone, so is his steadiness of hand; and he pours out a second and too often a fatal dose….But the cases that end in a death terrible to the family, though probably involving little or no suffering to the victim himself, are by no means the worst. A life poisoned, paralyzed, rendered worthless for all the uses of intellectual, rational, we might almost say of human existence, is worse for the sufferer himself and for all around him than a quick and painless death; and for one such death there must be twenty, if not a hundred, instances of this worst death in life….The demoralization of the narcotist is not, like that of the drunkard, rapid, violent, and palpable; but gradual, insidious, perceptible at first only to close observers and intimate friends. Here and there we find a constitution upon which opium exerts few or none of its characteristic effects. Such cases are, of course, wholly exceptional; but their very existence is a danger to others, misleading them into the idea that they may dally with the tempter without falling under its yoke, or may fall under that yoke and find it a light one. I doubt, however, whether the most fortunate of its victims would encourage the latter idea; whether there be an opium eater who would not give a limb never to have known what opium slavery means….Besides, no one can be sure, or indeed reasonably hope, that the mischief will be confined to the individual victim. That the children of drunkards are often predisposed to insanity is notorious; that the children of habitual opium eaters inherit an unmistakable taint, whether in a diseased brain, in morbid cravings, or simply in a will too weak to resist temptation, is less notorious, but equally certain.—PERCY GREG, Narcotics and Stimulants, Contemporary Review.
Thus also in America scarcely a week passes but we see announced in the public prints deaths or suicides resulting from the use of narcotics. Now, it is from tobacco: A Yale College student dies from excessive smoking; another student in the same college, and as a result of the same habit, commits suicide; a third young man is found dead in his bed in New York, from heart disease induced by cigarettes; and so, month by month, and year by year, grows in rapid increase the list of tobacco deaths.—Or, again, it is from opium. A Harvard student with two of his college companions in search of a new sensation, tries opium smoking one fatal night and dies before morning; a woman in Ohio, belonging to a prominent family, dies at the age of thirty-three years, from an overdose of morphine, her body covered with hypodermic scars; another, once the respected wife of a Baptist clergyman, becomes a morphine drunkard, drifts, step by step, into a Central New York Almshouse, and there hangs herself; a third, young, accomplished, and wealthy, falls first a victim to the morphine habit, then to opium smoking, finally becomes the frequenter of a New York opium joint, and so is lost forever to home, friends, and respectability.— Occasionally it is cocaine, as in the case of the Chicago physician, who, for the purposes of investigation, experiments with this new drug upon himself, his wife, and finally upon his innocent children; the entire family being found unconscious from the effects of the subtle narcotic. These are but solitary instances in an appallingly long list of similar cases, most of which have occurred within the last two years (1887-'88).
Cigarette Smoking is chargeable with a growing demoralization and mortality among boys and young men. It is no uncommon sight to see lads of ten years old and under, with the irresponsibility of ignorant childhood, puffing the dangerous cigarette, and thus undermining health and intellect at the very outset of useful existence. Even when told of the near and remote perils thus incurred, they scarcely listen, for do not they see their elders smoke and prosper?—Most of them do not understand that there is more danger to the young than to the old in the tobacco habit, more danger to some constitutions than to others, and more danger in the cigarette than even in the pipe or the cigar. Pause a moment to consider it, boys, when you are tempted to light the clean-looking, paper-covered roll and place it in your mouth. Think of the heated smoke irritating the delicate membrane in your throat, dulling your brain, and vitiating the blood which should be bounding fresh and pure through your veins. Think of the many filthy and diseased mouths from which have been cast away the tobacco refuse, picked up in streets and public places to reappear in the "Cheap and Popular Brand" which looks to you so innocent and so attractive. It is astonishing, indeed, how an otherwise cleanly boy will consent to defile himself with these vile abominations. And yet, I have known lads who—not always with perfect politeness—would fastidiously refuse "hash" at their mother's breakfast table, but who would shortly afterward serenely place one of these unknowable compounds between their lips and walk away with the air of superior manhood!
Of Chloral Hydrate, Dr. Fothergill remarks: "When this was announced with a flourish of trumpets as a perfectly innocuous narcotic, the sleepless folk hailed its advent with eager acclamation. But a little experience soon demonstrated that the innocuous, harmless drug was far from the boon it was proclaimed. In fact, the impression of its harmlessness was the outcome of ignorance of its properties. Death after death, even among medical men themselves, as well as nonprofessional persons, have already resulted from the use, or rather misuse, of this narcotic agent."
The Bromides (of Soda or Potash), also, should be used with caution, and only on the prescription of a conscientious physician. "The bromide of potash," says Percy Greg, "is claimed not to produce sleep by stupefaction, like chloral or opium, but, at least in small doses, to allay the nervous irritability which is often the sole cause of sleeplessness. But in larger quantities and in its ultimate effects, it is scarcely less to be dreaded than chloral." Overdoses of the bromides will produce among other evil effects a peculiar eruption upon the face, which, though generally temporary, is liable to reappear from time to time under certain conditions of the system, and especially upon a subsequent dose, however dilute.
Absinthe is a compound of absinthium (the essence of wormwood), various aromatic oils, and alcohol. Absinthium, taken in small doses, induces trembling, stupor, and insensibility; in larger doses, epilepsy. When, therefore, this dangerous essence is added to alcohol, it strengthens its influence to specific disease. Absinthe drinking is recognized in France as such a serious vice that it has been officially prohibited in the army and navy.
Hasheesh is a syrup prepared from the leaves and flowers of Indian Hemp. Though its use in this country is comparatively small, instances are not unknown in which reckless or curious persons have fatally experimented with it. As a medicine, it is in limited use, and with results not always satisfactory. It acts in a peculiar manner upon the nervous centers, occasioning that strange condition of the nervous system called catalepsy, in which the limbs of the unconscious patient remain stationary in whatever position they may be placed. After an average dose of hasheesh, the subject becomes the helpless victim of rapidly shifting ideas, a prominent characteristic of which is an entire loss of judgment as to time and place. A larger dose produces hallucinations and delirium, with that distressing sensation of falling through endless space which is induced in some people by opium. [Footnote: In an article entitled "An Overdose of Hasheesh" (Popular Science Monthly, February, 1884), Miss MARY A. HUNGERFORD gives a vivid description of a painful experience with this drug, some portion of which is as follows:
"Being one of the grand army of sufferers from headache, I took, last summer, by order of my physician, three small daily doses of hasheesh in the hope of holding my intimate enemy in check….I grew to regard the drug as a harmless medicine, and one day, when I was assured by some familiar symptoms that my headache was about to assume an aggravated form, I took a larger quantity than had been prescribed. Twenty minutes later I was seized with a strange sinking or faintness which gave my family so much alarm that they telephoned at once for the doctor.