Part 31

3. OPIUM.

Opium is the dried juice of the poppy. In Eastern countries, this flower is cultivated in immense fields for the sake of this product. When a cut is made in the poppy head, a tiny tear of milky juice exudes, and hardens. These little drops are gathered and prepared for the market, an acre yielding, it is said, about twenty-five pounds. Throughout the East, opium is generally smoked; but in Western countries laudanum and paregoric (tinctures of opium), and morphine--a powerful alkaloid contained in opium, are generally used. The drug itself is also eaten.

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT.--Opium, in its various forms, acts directly upon the nerves, a small dose quieting pain, and a larger one soothing to sleep. It arouses the brain, and fires the imagination to a wonderful pitch. [Footnote: So far as its effects are concerned, it matters little in what form opium is taken, whether solid as in pills, liquid as in laudanum, or vaporized, as when inhaled from a pipe. The opium slave is characterized by trembling steps, a curved spine, sunken glassy eyes, sallow withered features, and often by contraction of the muscles of the neck and fingers. In the East, when the drug ceases its influence, the opium eater renews it with corrosive sublimate till, finally, this also fails of effect, and he gradually sinks into the grave.] The reaction from this unnatural excitant is correspondingly depressing; and the melancholy, the "overwhelming horror" that ensues, calls for a renewal of the stimulus. The dose must be gradually increased to produce the original exhilaration. [Footnote: The victim of opium is bound to a drug from which he derives no benefits, but which slowly deprives him of health and happiness, finally to end in idiocy or premature death. Whatever the victim's condition or surroundings may be, the opium must be taken at certain times with inexorable regularity. The liquor or tobacco user can, for a time, go without the use of these agents, and no regular hours are necessary. During sickness, and more especially during the eruptive fevers, he does not desire tobacco or liquor. The opium eater has no such reprieves; his dose must be taken, and, in painful complications affecting the stomach, a large increase is demanded to sustain the system. If, in forming the habit, two doses are taken each day, the victim is obliged to maintain that number. It is the unceasing, everlasting slavery of regularity that humiliates opium eaters by a sense of their own weakness.--HUBBARD on The Opium Habit and Alcoholism.] The seductive nature of the drug leads the unfortunate victim on step by step until he finds himself fast bound in the fetters of one of the most tyrannical habits known to man.

To go on is to wreck all one's powers--physical and mental. To throw off the habit, requires a determination that but few possess. Yet even when the custom is broken, the system is long in recovering from the shock. There seems to be a failure of every organ. The digestion is weakened, food is no longer relished, the muscles waste, the skin shrivels, the nervous centers are paralyzed, and a premature old age comes on apace. De Quincey, four months after he had cast away the opium bonds, wrote, "Think of me as one still agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered."

No person can be too careful in the use of laudanum, paregoric, and morphine. They may be taken on a physician's prescription as a sedative from racking pain, [Footnote: Many persons learn to inject morphine beneath the skin by means of a "hypodermic syringe." The operation is painless, and seems an innocent one. It throws the narcotic directly into the circulation, and relief from pain is often almost instantaneous. But the danger of forming the opium habit is not lessened, and the effect of using the drug in this form for a long time is just as injurious as opium smoking itself. Opium in one of its forms enters largely into the composition of many of the painkillers and patent medicines so freely advertised for domestic use in the present day, and for this reason the greatest care is needed in having recourse to any of them. Taken, perhaps, in the first instance, to alleviate the torments of neuralgia or toothache, what proves to be a remedy soon becomes a source of gratification, which the wretchedness that follows on abstinence renders increasingly difficult to lay aside. The same must be said of bromide of potassium and hydrate of chloral, frequently resorted to as a remedy for sleeplessness: the system quickly becomes habituated to their use, and they can then be relinquished only at the cost of much suffering. Indeed, the last mentioned of these two drugs obtains over the mind a power which may be compared to that of opium, and is, moreover, liable to occasion the disease known as chloralism, by which the system ultimately becomes a complete wreck. Looking at the whole question of the medicinal use of narcotics, it is perhaps not too much to say that they should never be employed except with the authority of a competent medical adviser.-- Chambers's Journal.] but if followed up for any length of time, the powerful habit may be formed ere one is aware. Then comes the opium eater's grave, or the opium eater's struggle for life!

4. CHLORAL HYDRATE.

CHLORAL HYDRATE is a drug frequently used to cause sleep. It leaves behind no headache or lassitude, as is often the case with morphine. It is, however, a treacherous remedy. It is cumulative in its effects, i. e., even a small and harmless dose, persisted in for a long period, may produce a gradual accumulation of evil results that in the end will prove fatal.

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT of its prolonged use is very marked. The appetite becomes capricious. The secretions are unnatural. Nausea and flatulency often ensue. Then the nervous system is involved. The heart is affected. Sleep, instead of responding to the drug, as at first, is broken and disturbed. The eyesight fails. The circulation is enfeebled, and the pulse becomes weak, rapid, and irregular. There is a tendency to fainting and to difficult respiration. Sometimes the impoverished blood induces a disease resembling scurvy, the ends of the fingers ulcerate, and the face is disfigured by blotches. An excessive dose may result in death.

Prolonged habitual use of chloral hydrate tends to debase the mind and morals of the subject in the same manner as indulgence in alcohol, ether, or chloroform.

5. CHLOROFORM.

CHLOROFORM is an artificial product generally obtained, by distillation, from a mixture of chloride of lime, water, and alcohol. It was discovered in 1831 by Samuel Guthrie, of Sackett's Harbor, New York. It is a colorless, transparent volatile liquid, with a strong ethereal odor.

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT.--Chloroform is a powerful anæsthetic, which, when inhaled, causes a temporary paralysis of the nervous system, and thus a complete insensibility to pain. There is great peril attending its use, even in the hands of the most skillful and experienced practitioners. It is sometimes prescribed by a physician, and afterward (as in the case of laudanum, morphine, and chloral) the sufferer, charmed with the release from pain and the peaceful slumber secured, buys the Lethean liquid for himself. Its use soon becomes an apparent necessity. The craving for the narcotic at a stated time is almost irresistible. The patient, compelled to give up the use of chloroform, will demand, entreat, pray for another dose, in a heartrending manner, never to be forgotten. Paleness and debility, the earliest symptoms, are followed by mental prostration. Familiarity with this dangerous drug begets carelessness, and its victims are frequently found dead in their beds, with the handkerchief from which they inhaled the volatile poison clutched in their lifeless hands.

6. COCAINE.

Cocaine is an alkaloid prepared from the erythroxylon coca, a shrub, five or six feet high, found wild in the mountainous regions of Ecuador and Peru, where it is also cultivated by the natives. The South American Indians, for centuries, have chewed coca leaves as a stimulant, but the highly poisonous principle, now called cocaine, to which the plant owes its peculiar effects, was not discovered till 1859. Within a few years this drug has come into favor as an agent to produce local anæsthesia, and has proved exceedingly valuable in surgical operations upon the eye and other sensitive organs. It has already, however, been diverted from its legitimate use as a benefaction, and to the other evils of the day is now added the "cocaine habit," which is, perhaps, even more dangerous and difficult to abandon than either the alcohol or the opium habit.

PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECT.--Applied locally, cocaine greatly lessens and even annihilates pain. Taken internally, it acts as a powerful stimulant to the nervous system, its physiological action being similar to that of theine (p. 170), caffeine, and theobromine. Used hypodermically, its immediate effect, says one to whom it was thus administered, is to cause "great pallor of countenance, profuse frontal perspiration, sunken eyes, enlarged pupils, lessened sensitiveness of the cornea and conjunctiva, lowered arterial tension, and a feeble pulse and heart beat. Under its influence I could not reason. Everything seemed to run through my brain, and in vain I summoned all my will power to overcome an overwhelming sleepiness." A few doses of this drug will in some persons produce temporary insanity. Used to excess, it leads to permanent madness or idiocy. "Cocaine," says a writer in the Medical Review, "is a dangerous therapeutic toy not to be used as a sensational plaything. If it should come into as general use as the other intoxicants of its class, it will help to fill the asylums, inebriate and insane."

PRACTICAL QUESTIONS.

1. Why is the pain of incipient hip disease frequently felt in the knee?

2. Why does a child require more sleep than an aged person?

3. When you put your finger in the palm of a sleeping child, why will he grasp it?

4. How may we strengthen the brain?

5. What is the object of pain?

6. Why will a blow on the stomach sometimes stop the heart?

7. How long will it take for the brain of a man six feet high to receive news of an injury to his foot, and to reply?

8. How can we grow beautiful?

9. Why do intestinal worms sometimes affect a child's sight?

10. Is there any indication of character in physiognomy?

11. When one's finger is burned, where is the ache?

12. Is a generally closed parlor a healthful room?