Cocaine is a highly poisonous narcotic, and when rubbed on the skin, or injected under it, deadens the surrounding parts, and renders them insensible to pain. It is therefore much used in minor surgery, and in ophthalmic and dental operations. As such, it replaces chloroform to some extent. But, unfortunately, its highly stimulating effects, and its power to allay hunger, have been taken advantage of by many thousands of people who have made a habit of taking it, and Col. Watson’s description of the dire results of cocaine-sniffing apply with equal force to those which supervene on cocaine-injecting and cocaine-eating, vices that have spread with alarming rapidity all over the civilized world.
The cocaine-habit is an unmixed vice. There is no excuse for it; not even the excuse that the opium and morphia habits have, viz., accident; and the person who takes to it, does so wilfully and deliberately. Cocaine has a greater power over its votaries than either opium or morphia; the after distress is keener; and a slave to it is a slave indeed. And the harm it does, and the certainty with which it eventually kills, is truly appalling.
A Burman Cocaine Eater
Extreme poverty is frequently a cause of the habit. The abject wretch who becomes possessed of a few coppers, realizing that the amount will be insufficient for a square meal, buys an innocent looking packet of cocaine, and mixing it with a small quantity of the lime-paste used by betel-chewers in their quids, smears the mixture on his gums, and slowly swallows the saliva. Gone are the cravings for food; a feeling of pleasant warmth suffuses his wasted body; he feels equal to any exertion. Images are distorted to immense proportions; the stick he holds becomes a club of huge dimensions, and he takes great pride in his ability to wield it so easily; an empty jam-tin lying near assumes the proportions of a five-gallon milk-can; and he takes great pleasure in showing his agility in jumping high over the threshold of the door! In all, he considers himself to be a very fine, powerful, prepossessing fellow indeed—until the effects wear off, and he once more sets off to beg or steal the price of another dose of this elevating narcotic.
I once knew a European who was addicted to this drug—he injected it—and a more pitiable object it would be difficult to conceive. He was a dentist by profession, and the last I heard of him was that he had died by his own hand, a frequent termination of this habit, which produces in its last stages, a sort of morbid, gloomy, mania or insanity in its victims. This individual was the victim of all kinds of hallucinations, and under the influence of the drug, was a fluent, and often convincing, liar. He invested himself with numerous medical degrees; he went in terror of imaginary assailants; and he had a fixed idea that his meagre belongings were the envy of murderous burglars. So much so, that on more than one occasion he fired off the revolver he carried by day, and placed under his pillow by night, at imaginary intruders, to the no small risk of other occupants of the house he lived in. The tales of personal adventure he related, the accounts he gave of deadly combats with men twice his puny size, his stories of his property and wealth at home, were the wonder of all to whom he told them, and who were unable to discover in him the characteristic effects of the fell drug cocaine.
We are unfortunately without complete information about cocaine, but we know enough about it to realize that the habit is spreading with the rapidity and devastating effects of a conflagration over the world. As far as India and Burma are concerned, the law is stringent and severe, and the Dangerous Drugs Bill, which was lately occupying the attention of the Home Government, goes far on the road to bringing things at home into line with India and Burma.
The Germans discovered a method by which cocaine can be manufactured synthetically; and bogey hunters will discover a deep plot to undermine the physique and morals of Indians when they are told that the synthetic manufacture of cocaine is, to all intents and purposes, a state-aided industry. It is classed as an industry, and as such receives the spirit used in the preparation of the synthetic drug, duty-free. Ninety per cent. of the cocaine imported into this country before the war came from Germany.
It would probably surprise the Darmstadt firm, which purveyed almost all the cocaine that came to Burma, if they knew that their drachm-phials, neatly capsuled, and labelled “Cocaine Hydrochloride,” ought really sometimes to have been labelled “Antefebrin,” for that indeed is what a great number that were seized by the authorities contained. In appearance, cocaine and antefebrin are hard to distinguish from one another; and for a long time the results of analyses led the authorities to suppose that the manufacturers were defrauding their eastern constituents; but the discovery of a complete plant consisting of phials, labels, capsules, and a large quantity of antefebrin, eventually cleared the name of the doubtless reputable manufacturers, and fastened the guilt upon local swindling smugglers.