POISON HABITS

There is a very peculiar property attached to poisons, especially those possessing anodyne properties—that is, they are capable of forming the most enslaving habits known to mankind. Thousands of people to-day are enchained in the slavery of the poison habit in one form or another, and very few are ever successful in wresting them selves free when once it has been contracted. The habit is formed in the most insidious manner. Often, in the first instance, some narcotic drug is recommended to relieve pain or induce sleep. In a short time the original dose fails to produce the desired effect, it has to be increased, and afterwards still further increased, until the victim finds he cannot do without it, and a terrible craving for the drug is created. By-and-by the stupefying action affects the brain, the moral character suffers, and the unfortunate being is at last ready to do anything to obtain a supply of the drug that is now his master.

This is not an overdrawn picture, but one of which instances are constantly to be met with. The enslaving habit of alcohol, when once contracted, is too well known to need description. Opium comes next in the point of influence it exerts over its victims, and a very small percentage ever free themselves from the habit when it is once contracted. In most instances it is taken in the first place to relieve some severe pain, as in De Quincey's case. He says, in his Confessions of an Opium Eater, "It was not for the purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain in the severest degree, that I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet." Like others, he was compelled to increase the dose gradually, until at last he consumed the enormous quantity of 320 grains of the drug a day. He graphically describes the struggle he first had to reduce the daily dose, and found that to a certain point it could be reduced with ease, but after that point, further reduction caused intense suffering. However, a crisis arrived, and he writes, "I saw that I must die if I continued the opium. I determined, therefore, if that should be required, to die in throwing it off. I apprehend at this time I was taking from 50 or 60 grains to 150 grains a day. My first task was to reduce it to 40, to 30, and as fast as I could to 12 grains. I triumphed; but think not my sufferings were ended. Think of me, as one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered; and much perhaps in the situation of him who has been racked." Other cases are commonly met with in this country, where opium eaters take on an average from 60 to 80 grains of the drug a day. The smallest quantity which has proved fatal in the adult is 4½ grains; in other cases enormous quantities have been taken with impunity; and Guy states recovery once took place after no less than eight ounces of solid opium had been swallowed.

Morphine, the chief alkaloid of opium, is also abused by many, and is swallowed as well as used by injection under the skin. Its action is very similar to that of opium. It has been recently given on good authority, that in Chicago—that city of hurrying men and restless women—over thirty-five thousand persons habitually take subcutaneous injections of morphine to save themselves from the pains and terrors of neuralgia, insomnia, and nervousness, etc. To a delicate woman one grain of this drug has proved fatal, yet, under the influence of habit, a young lady has been known to take from 15 to 20 grains daily. A man in a good position, and head of a large commercial house, contracted the habit of taking morphine from a prescription he had had given to him containing 4 grains of the drug. As the habit grew, he would have the medicine prepared by four different chemists daily, and swallow the contents of each bottle for a dose, until he took on an average over 24 grains a day. This being put a stop to by his friends, he commenced to take chloroform, which he would purchase in small quantities until he had collected a bottleful, and then he would drink it, usually mixed with whisky. He eventually had to be placed under restraint.

Chloroform is not often taken habitually, but several instances have been met with where as much as two ounces have been swallowed by a man. The effects, when taken by the mouth, are similar to those which follow its inhalation. Chlorodyne, which generally contains both morphine and prussic acid in its composition, is also much abused, especially by women. Some women have been known to consume two ounces a week of this preparation. Cocaine, an active principle of the Erythroxylum coca, is capable of exciting a powerful craving, which apparently holds its victims in a grip of iron until they are willing to spend any amount of money in obtaining the drug. Arsenic eating is a habit fortunately rare in this country, although cases have been met with in which women have gradually become addicted to taking large quantities for improving their complexions. The peasants in some parts of Styria and Hungary have long been known to eat arsenic, taking, it is said, from two to five grains daily; the men doing so in order that they may gain strength and be able to endure fatigue, and the women that they may improve their complexions. Dr. Maclagan, of Edinburgh, states he saw a Styrian eat a piece of arsenious acid weighing over four grains.

Sleeplessness is a frequent cause of the formation of a poison habit, and for this purpose chloral hydrate, perhaps, is capable of producing more serious results than any other drug of its class. The fact that it accumulates in the system, and that the dose needs constantly to be increased, always renders its use dangerous in unskilled hands. Many gifted men have fallen victims to the habit, among others Dante Rossetti, who seldom was without a bottle of the narcotic near him. Latterly, sulphonal, a drug derived from coal tar, possessing hypnotic properties, has been largely taken; and antipyrine, now a popular remedy for headache, is capable of forming a pernicious and dangerous habit. The practice of self-dosing with drugs of this description cannot be too strongly deprecated.

Some people form a curious habit of taking one drug till at last they become imbued with the idea that that only and nothing else, will have any effect on them. The only remedy Carlyle would ever take, according to the late Sir Richard Quain who was his medical adviser, was Grey powder. "Grey powder was his favourite remedy when he had that wretched dyspepsia from which he suffered, and which was fully accounted for by the fact that he was particularly fond of very nasty gingerbread. Many times I have seen him, sitting in the chimney corner, smoking a clay pipe and eating this gingerbread." Oliver Goldsmith also laboured under the confirmed belief that the only medicine that would have any effect on him was "James' Powder." He doctored himself with this favourite nostrum whenever he felt unwell, and believed it to be a cure for all ills.

According to a West End physician quite a new and most reprehensible vice has recently become fashionable—viz., a craze that has arisen among women for smoking green tea, in the form of cigarettes. Though adopted by some fair ladies merely as a pastime, not a few of its votaries are women of high education and mental attainments. "Among my patients," he states, "suffering from extreme nervousness and insomnia, is a young lady, highly distinguished, at Girton. Another is a lady novelist, whose books are widely read, and who habitually smoked twenty or thirty of these cigarettes nightly when writing, for their stimulating effect." Though tea does not contain a trace of any poisonous principle, it can, when thus misused, exert a most harmful influence. Doubtless, the high pressure at which most of the dwellers in our great cities now live, and the worry of too much brain work on one hand, or the lack of occupation on the other, is one of the chief causes of taking up habits of this kind.

One of the best remedies, and one which it is to be hoped will eventually come to pass is, that the Legislature should render poisons less easy of purchase, by restricting the sale of every drug or compound in the nature of a poison to the properly qualified chemist, who, by his training and special knowledge, is alone competent to sell these substances. Incalculable harm is done by habits such as we have alluded to, and it is better often to endure pain and torment, than to fly constantly to what in the end will only inflict worse punishment.