BY M. P. REGNARD.

Some one said one day before Fontenelle, that coffee was a slow poison. “I can bear witness to that,” replied the witty academician, “for it will soon be fifty years since I began taking it every day.”

This, which was on the part of the cultivated scholar, a brilliant sally of wit, is, alas! the common reasoning of many people who, simply because danger does not immediately confront them, allow themselves to be slowly but surely drawn to the tomb, because, forsooth, the way, for the time being, is pleasant, or fashionable!

In the midst of us there are persons poisoning themselves to death. I refer to those addicted to the use of morphine. In England they have another class of these unfortunates, for whom the most adulterated liquors no longer suffice, and who drink ether; they are a sort of perfected inebriates, who by the scientific laws of progress succeed simple drunkards just as habitual morphine users follow the opium smokers of China. Our fathers in Asia who have already bequeathed to us many misfortunes, held in check until within recent years, among themselves, the singular taste which they have for opium. Let me tell you in a few words of the ancestors of morphine users of to-day, and you will better understand the history of the latter.

The mania for opium eating diminishes rather than increases among the Mussulmans. Zambaco, who for a long time lived in the Orient, gives the reason. The Turk seeks in opium only intoxication—a delicious sort of annihilation—which he finds to-day more readily in champagne or Bordeaux wine. These give him, in addition, the pleasures of taste. Then, too, he can indulge himself freely in them, and still hold to the letter of the Koran. In the time of Mahomet neither rum nor cognac were invented; it does not then forbid them. But that which is not forbidden is permitted, and so the Mussulman, who considers wine so impure that he will not touch it, even with his hands, will become beastly intoxicated upon brandy, and think that by this process he is not compromising his part in Paradise. But their religionists—and above all their medical men—do not reason thus. They still cling to the opium.

Its first effect upon the system is far from causing sleep. It is rather a sort of intellectual and physical excitant, which renders the Oriental (in his natural state sad and silent), turbulent, loquacious, excitable, and quarrelsome.

These Turks are not contented to take opium themselves, they give it also to their horses. “I have just,” says Burns, “traveled all night with a cavalier of this country. After a fatiguing ride of about thirty miles I was obliged to accept the proposition he made to rest for a few minutes. He employed this time in dividing with his exhausted horse a dose of opium of about two grammes. The effects were very soon evident upon both; the horse finished with ease a journey of forty miles, and the cavalier became more animated.”

In China they do not eat opium, they smoke it. There is an historical fact connected with them well known to all the world to which I would not now call attention were it not to show you to what extent a like calamity may go, and consequently with what the French people are threatened if the love of morphine continues to take among us the same intensity.

Hundreds of years ago opium was, in the Chinese empire, a great luxury, reserved for the mandarins, who did not keep secret at all their use of it, but who interdicted it to all persons under their jurisdiction. All the more did they consider it a great honor to their invited guests, and especially to strangers, to be asked to partake of it. Recently it has come into general use, and since 1840 its abuse has reached the last limits. There is for all this an economic reason which I shall not fear to call abominable. The Chinese received in payment for their products only gold and silver, in money or in ingots; the specie thus introduced into their country never left it, and it was a veritable drainage which on this account Europe and America underwent.

A neighboring nation of ours, and one whose Indian possessions furnish prodigious quantities of opium, forced China, in a celebrated treaty, to allow the entrance of this opium into her ports and to pay for it in ingots and not in merchandise; the empire was thus obliged to disgorge a part of its money held in reserve. You will have an idea of the importance of this operation when you know that to-day there enters annually into China 70,000 packing cases of opium from India, worth at least $558,000. So much poison forced by right of war upon a whole people!

The Chinese smoke opium from the age of twenty to twenty-five years. The immediate effect is a sort of dizzy sensation. The preoccupations of the mind disappear, as do also all ailments of the body. Then comes a noisy delirium, a kind of insanity, in which the subject is deeply agitated; he is apt to hurl down and break everything around him. Sometimes he rushes out of the house, attacks the first passer-by, and not infrequently in his frenzy has committed murder.

The opium smoker, as well as the eater, is obliged rapidly to increase the dose of his poison. At the end of six or eight months he must smoke a dozen pipes a day. His money is soon all spent; he is ruined in a year. He sells all that he possesses, and then he gambles. Writers agree in saying that the maximum of the life of a smoker is then five or six years.

In the face of such an evil as this the imperial government has tried to act on the defensive; it placed a heavy duty on the entrance of opium; but this system was not successful. And before this attempt it tried penal jurisprudence.

This is the decree which the Viceroy of Canton published in 1841:

“It is two years since the Emperor of the Celestial Empire forbade all his subjects to smoke opium. This delay of grace expires the twelfth day of the twelfth moon of this year. Then all those guilty of offense against this law will be put to death, their heads will be exposed in public, in order to frighten those who might be tempted to follow their example.” (Then follows this modification.) “I have reflected, however, that solitary confinement would be more efficacious than capital punishment, in order to arrest such a dreadful misdemeanor. I declare then, that I am going to have built a special prison for opium smokers. There they will all, rich or poor, be shut in narrow cells, lighted by one window, with two boards serving as a bed and a seat. They will be given each day a ration of oil, of rice, and of vegetables. In case of a second offense they will be put to death.”

This legislation was not practicable. The punishment was out of proportion to the crime, and consequently inapplicable.

Besides, in looking around him the emperor found that his own wives smoked opium, and I would not guarantee that if he meant to live up to the letter of his law, he would not have to begin by committing suicide.

After this legislation they tried moralization and preaching. The misfortunes of the opium smoker were depicted in an infinite number of ways. All this propagandism had about as little success as societies against intemperance, and this state of affairs is existing to-day in the East.

There are not noticeably many opium eaters or smokers among the French. But every one knows that the people of the Orient have for their European brothers the morphine users. There is between the first and second the same difference that is found in everything pertaining to barbarous and to cultivated men. Civilization prescribes as to the manner of the poisoning.

While the Oriental eats or smokes simply the juice of the poppy almost as nature furnishes it, the European is more refined, and wishes only the active principles of opium. So he uses it prepared in such a way as to have lost almost entirely its disagreeable properties.

How does one become a morphine user when he is a Frenchman, an inhabitant of Paris, and when there is not a temptation to it from the fact of a general habit, or the existence of special establishments? This can be accounted for by two methods. The most common is some painful affliction from which one is suffering, it may be neuralgia, acute dyspepsia, or violent headaches. The physician, often at the end of his resources, prescribes injecting a little morphine under the skin. The effect is marvelous; the pain ceases instantly, but temporarily. The next day it returns with new force. The afflicted patient remembers the success of yesterday, and insists upon his anodyne. It seems necessary to give it, and so it goes on for several days. Soon the nature of the drug manifests itself: no longer will one injection a day answer; there must be two, then three, later four, and so on, always increasing, until it reaches formidable quantities. Meantime, the original trouble may have entirely disappeared, but the patient does not cease to use the remedy. The first time that the sick one insists upon having the treatment the doctor is called to perform the operation. But soon, as it becomes necessary to repeat the process oftener, making it expensive, it is entrusted to the nurse or to the family, and from that day the patient is lost; for how can the supplications of a suffering person whom one loves be resisted? Then on a day the sick one practices on himself—and from that on, without any control, with the avidity of passion, he uses the drug in the quantities of which I have told you.

This is one way in which many victims fall into this sad habit. There is another. The victims of the second method are those who seek in exciting tonics the sensations which their weakened nerves and their surfeited imagination can no longer afford them. These are the proselytes of a veritable association, and they, in their turn, soon become missionaries in the same cause. It is a habit which the vicious have of wishing to make others like themselves. The fable of the fox which had its tail cut off is not a fable of yesterday. Two friends meet; one of them complains of slight annoyances; dullness, ennui; he no longer enjoys anything; the world, the races, the theater, do not procure for him distraction; he is bored to death. His friend admits that he also has suffered in the same way, but that he had recourse to morphine, of which some one had told him, and that he found in it a perfect cure. And thus by such conversations there is formed, as it were, a new class; they are the volunteers in this unhappy army.

One can but remark, that luxury, which tends to introduce itself everywhere, has already invaded the domain of morphine. The little syringe of Pravas, which permits of the injection of the poison under the skin, and the consequent avoidance of the bitter taste and the nausea which would be occasioned by eating morphine, has received ingenious and artistic modifications. It was necessary to render it easy to carry, and at the same time to make it deceptive to the eye. I visited a surgical instrument maker at Paris, and he placed at my disposal for inspection his whole line of morphine instruments, those which the taste, the luxury, or the imagination of his clients had caused him to fabricate.

There was first the syringe, containing a centigram of morphine, such as the physicians employ. It was not delicate enough, was difficult to handle and difficult to conceal; it is used now only by those who no longer care to conceal their vice—who feel no shame in regard to it. Then there was one adroitly concealed in a match box. At one side was a little bottle containing a dose of powder necessary for a half day. There was, too, a false cigar holder, containing all that was necessary for injecting the poison. But most remarkable of all was a long, sheath-like instrument. It is somewhat inconvenient in the midst of company to put the morphine into the syringe before making a puncture. This sheath, filled beforehand, can be carried in the pocket; the puncture can be made, and to inject the drug it is only necessary to move the piston in a certain direction; in the evening the sheath will be found empty. There were little gold syringes contained in smelling bottles; a little silver sheath which one would take for an embroidery stiletto; open it; it contains an adorable little syringe of gold and a bottle of the poison.

Among morphine users in fashionable life they make gifts according to their taste, and there are manufactured syringes and bottles enameled, engraved, and emblematic—in every conceivable device.

Do men more often become subject to this vice than women? According to the printed statistics, yes. Out of every one hundred who used the drug there are counted only twenty-five women. But practicing physicians say that the women are the more numerous victims. They are more artful, and try to keep the habit concealed; they do not consult the physicians regarding it, and so are not counted in the statistical returns.

Is it then so very agreeable to live under the influence of this poison, since so many people expose themselves, for its sake, to such grave perils? To this I reply, no, not at the beginning. It is with this vice as with others, the beginning is hard. The first injections are not enjoyable—the puncture is painful, and sometimes nausea follows. But the habit is easily and quickly formed, and the disagreeable effects disappear. The introduction of the morphine produces almost immediately a sort of general vagueness, an annihilation of being which causes to disappear all external realities and replaces them by a sort of happy reverie; and at the same time the mind seems more alert, more active. Physical and moral grievances disappear, all troubles are forgotten for the time being. “You know,” says Mr. Ball, “the famous soliloquy of Hamlet, and the passage where the Prince cries out that without the fear of the unknown, no one would hesitate to escape by means of a sharp point from the evils of life which he suffers, in order to enter into repose. Ah well! this sharp point of which Shakspere speaks—this liberating needle—we possess; it is the syringe of Pravas. By one plunge a person can efface all sufferings of mind and of body; the injustice of men and of fortune; and understand from this time on, the irresistible empire of this marvelous poison.”

The habit of taking ether is induced by the same causes that lead to the use of morphine. The danger, however, is not so great, and the habit can more easily be broken up. At the end of the inhalation one experiences a little dizziness that is not at all disagreeable; the sight becomes a little blurred, and the ears ring; the mental conceptions become gay, charming; hallucinations are developed, generally very pleasing. It is not necessary to increase the dose, for one would then reach a state of excitement, or be thrown into a sound sleep, such as physicians produce. Those who use it know this well, and moderate the dose, in order to make the pleasure of long duration. After the inhalation the subject returns almost immediately to his natural state. There is a little heaviness in the head and a dullness of the mind. Morphine users can secretly indulge in their habit, but ether emits a penetrating odor. In London, where it is more frequently practiced, the keepers of public squares and large parks often find in the more retired places empty bottles labeled “Sulphuric Ether.” These have been thrown down by those who have left their homes in order to give themselves up in the open air to their favorite passion.

These victims commence by breathing ether. Then they drink a few drops—and after a while larger quantities. This burning liquid soon becomes a necessity; and some even go so far as to drink chloroform—a veritable caustic.

Can anything be done for these unfortunate people? Yes, certainly—but only on one condition—that they wish to be cured. The best method is to separate, instantly, entirely, the patient from his family; to place him in an establishment where his movements can be watched, where he can be debarred, suddenly or gradually, as shall be judged best, from the poison.

The Americans—a practical people—have already built asylums for the treatment of morphine users. The Germans have recently finished two, one at Marienberg, the other at SchÖnberg.

But unfortunately, the French law does not permit us to do this. We can place in hospitals only those poison users who have become maniacs or idiots.

If the French are to be saved from this rapidly increasing evil, it is evidently necessary to prevent its beginnings. In order to do this, the sick must be kept from procuring it. Its sale must be regulated so that it will be impossible to get it in any quantity, or to use the same prescription twice. The emperor of Germany, upon the proposition of Prince Bismarck, has issued a decree to this effect. Under such a regulation the law for the physician would be never to prescribe the use of these drugs save in cases of absolute necessity.

The reading of medical books by the people is generally pernicious. I would, however, permit them to read the recent accounts of the effects of these drugs. If they are of comparatively late origin, these two fashionable poisons have already destroyed more victims than in a whole century has all the poison used by assassins.—An Abridged Translation for “The Chautauquan” from the “RÉvue Scientifique.”