the brain is that intermediate state between intoxication and insanity,
well known as Delirium Tremens. "It is characterized by a low, restless
activity of the cerebrum, manifesting itself in muttering delirium, with
occasional paroxysms of greater violence. The victim almost always
apprehends some direful calamity; he imagines his bed to be covered with
loathsome reptiles; he sees the walls of his apartment crowded with foul
specters; and he imagines his friends and attendants to be fiends come to
drag him down to a fiery abyss beneath."--CARPENTER. (See p. 287.)
INFLUENCE UPON THE MENTAL AND MORAL POWERS.--So intimate is the relation
between the body and the mind, that an injury to one harms the other. The
effect of alcoholized blood is to weaken the will. The one habitually
under its influence often shocks us by his indecision and his readiness to
break a promise to reform. The truth is, he has lost, in a measure, his
power of self-control. At last, he becomes physically unable to resist the
craving demand of his morbid appetite.
Other faculties share in this mental wreck. The intellectual vision
becomes less penetrating, the decisions of the mind less reliable, and the
grasp of thought less vigorous. The logic grows muddy. A thriftless,
reckless feeling is developed. Ere long, self-respect is lost, and then
ambition ceases to allure, and the high spirit sinks.
Along with this mental deterioration comes also a failure of the moral
sense. The fine fiber of character undergoes a "degeneration" as certain
as that of the muscles themselves. Broken promises tell of a lowered
standard of veracity, and a dulled sense of honor, quite as much as of an
impaired will. Under the subtle influence of the ever-present poison,
signs of spiritual weakness multiply fast. Conscience is lulled to rest.
Reason is enfeebled. Customary restraints are easily thrown off. The
sensibilities are blunted. There is less ability to appreciate nice shades
of right and wrong. Great moral principles and motives lose their power to
influence. The judgment fools with duty. The future no longer reaches back
its hand to guide the present. The better nature has lost its supremacy.
The wretched victim of appetite will now gratify his tyrannical passion
for drink at any expense of deceit or crime. He becomes the blind
instrument of his insane impulses, and commits acts from which he would
once have shrunk with horror. [Footnote: Richardson sums up the various
diseases caused by alcohol, as follows: "(_a_). Diseases of the brain
and nervous system, indicated by such names as apoplexy, epilepsy,
paralysis, vertigo, softening of the brain, delirium tremens, dipsomania
or inordinate craving for drink, loss of memory, and that general failure
of the mental power, called dementia. (_b_). Diseases of the lungs:
one form of consumption, congestion, and subsequent bronchitis.
(_c_). Diseases of the heart: irregular beat, feebleness of the
muscular walls, dilatation, disease of the valves. (_d_). Diseases of
the blood: scurvy, excess of water or dropsy, separation of fibrin.
(_e_). Diseases of the stomach: feebleness of the stomach,
indigestion, flatulency, irritation, and sometimes inflammation.
(_f_). Diseases of the bowels: relaxation or purging, irritation.
(_g_). Diseases of the liver: congestion, hardening and shrinking,
cirrhosis. (_h_). Diseases of the kidneys: change of structure into
fatty or waxy-like condition and other results leading to dropsy, or
sometimes to fatal sleep. (_i_). Diseases of the muscles: fatty
change in the muscles, by which they lose their power for proper active
contraction. (_j_). Diseases of the membranes of the body: thickening
and loss of elasticity, by which the parts wrapped up in the membrane are
impaired for use, and premature decay is induced."] Sometimes he even
takes a malignant pleasure in injuring those whom Nature has ordained he
should protect. [Footnote: It has been argued that a man should not be
punished for any crime he may commit during intoxication, but rather for
knowingly giving up the reins of reason and conscience, and thus
subjecting himself to the rule of his evil passions. Voluntarily to
stimulate the mind and put it into a condition where it may drive one to
ruin, is very like the act of an engineer who should get up steam in his
engine, and then, having opened the valves, desert his post, and let the
monster go thundering down the track to sure destruction. Certain persons
are thrown into the stage of mental weakness by a single glass of liquor.
How can they be excused when the fact of their peculiar liability lends
additional force to the argument of abstemiousness, and they know that
their only safety lies in total abstinence?--CARPENTER'S
_Physiology._]
2. TOBACCO.
The Constituents of Tobacco Smoke are numerous, but the prominent ones are
carbonic-acid, carbonic-oxide, and ammonia gases; carbon, or soot; and
nicotine. The proportion of these substances varies with different kinds
of tobacco, the pipe used, and the rapidity of the combustion. Carbonic
acid tends to produce sleepiness and headache. Carbonic oxide, in
addition, causes a tremulous movement of the muscles, and so of the heart.
Ammonia bites the tongue of the smoker, excites the salivary glands, and
causes dryness of the mouth and throat. Nicotine is a powerful poison. The
amount contained in one or two strong cigars, if thrown directly into the
blood, would cause death. Nicotine itself is complex, yielding a volatile
substance that gives the odor to the breath and clothing; and also a
bitter extract which produces the sickening taste of an old pipe. In
smoking, some of the nicotine is decomposed, forming pyridine, picoline,
and other poisonous alkaloids. [Footnote: The analysis of tobacco as given
by different authorities varies greatly. The one stated in the text
suffices for the purposes of this chapter. Von Eulenberg names several
other products of the combustion. One hundred pounds of the dry leaf may
yield as high as seven pounds of nicotine. Havana tobacco contains about
two per cent, and Virginia about six per cent.--See JOHNSTON & CHURCH'S
_Chemistry of Common Life_, and MILLER'S _Organic Chemistry_.]
PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS.--The poison of tobacco, set free by the process
either of chewing or smoking, when for the first time it is swept through
the system by the blood, powerfully affects the body. Nausea is felt, and
the stomach seeks to throw off the offending substance. The brain is
inflamed, and headache follows. The motor nerves becoming irritated,
giddiness ensues. Thus Nature earnestly protests against the formation of
this habit. But, after repeated trials, the system adjusts itself to the
new conditions. A "tolerance" of the poison is finally established, and
smoking causes none of the former symptoms. Such powerful substances can
not, however, be constantly inhaled without producing marked changes. The
three great eliminating organs--the lungs, the skin, and the kidneys--
throw off a large part of the products, but much remains in the system.
When the presence of the poison is constant, and especially when the
smoking or chewing is excessive, the disturbance that at first is merely
functional, must necessarily, in many cases at least, lead to a chronic
derangement.
Probably in this, as in the case of other deleterious articles of diet,
the strong and healthy will seem to escape entirely, while the weak and
those predisposed to disease will be injured in direct proportion to the
extent of the indulgence. Those whose employment leads to active, outdoor
work, will show no sign of nicotine poisoning, while the man of sedentary
habits will sooner or later be the victim of dyspepsia, sleeplessness,
nervousness, paralysis, or other organic difficulties. Even where the user
of tobacco himself escapes harm, the law of heredity asserts itself, and
the innocent offspring only too often inherit an impaired constitution,
and a tendency to nervous complaints.
THE VARIOUS DISTURBANCES produced in different individuals and
constitutions by smoking have been summed up by Dr. Richardson as follows:
"(_a_) In the blood, it causes undue fluidity, and change in the red
corpuscles; (_b_) in the stomach, it gives rise to debility, nausea,
and vomiting; (_c_) in the mucous membrane of the mouth, it produces
enlargement and soreness of the tonsils--smoker's sore throat--redness,
dryness, and occasional peeling of the membrane, and either unnatural
firmness and contraction, or sponginess of the gums; and, where the pipe
rests on the lips, oftentimes 'epithelial cancer'; (_d_) in the
heart, it causes debility of the organ, and irregular action; (_e_)
in the bronchial surface of the lungs, when that is already irritable, it
sustains irritation, and increases the cough; (_f_) in the organs of
sense, it produces dilation of the pupils of the eye, confusion of vision,
bright lines, luminous or cobweb specks, and long retention of images on
the retina, with analogous symptoms affecting the ear, viz., inability to
define sounds clearly, and the occurrence of a sharp, ringing noise like a
whistle; (_g_) in the brain, it impairs the activity of the organ,
oppressing it if it be nourished, but soothing it if it be exhausted;
(_h_) it leads to paralysis in the motor and sympathetic nerves, and
to over-secretion from the glands which the sympathetic nerves control."
IS TOBACCO A FOOD?--Here, as in the case of alcohol, the reply is a
negative one. Tobacco manifests no characteristic of a food. It can not
impart to the blood an atom of nutritive matter for building up the body.
It does not add to, but rather subtracts from, the total vital force. It
confers no potential power upon muscle or brain. It stimulates by cutting
off the nervous supply from the extremities and concentrating it upon the
centers. But stimulation is not nourishment; it is only a rapid spending
of the capital stock. There is no greater error than to mistake the
exciting of an organ for its strengthening.
THE INFLUENCE UPON YOUTH.--Here, too, science utters no doubtful voice.
Experience asserts only one conviction. _Tobacco retards the development
of mind and body._ [Footnote: Cigarettes are especially injurious from
the irritating smoke of the paper covering, taken into the lungs, and also
because the poison fumes of the tobacco are more directly inhaled. In case
of the cheap cigarettes often smoked by boys the ingredients used are
harmful, while one revolts at the thought of the filthy materials, refuse
cigar stumps, etc., employed in their manufacture.] The law of nature is
that of steady growth. It can not admit of a daily, even though it be
merely a functional, disturbance that weakens the digestion, that causes
the heart to labor excessively, that prevents the perfect oxidation of the
blood, that interferes with the assimilation, and that deranges the
nervous system. [Footnote: There is one influence of tobacco that every
young man should understand. In many cases, like alcohol, it seems to
blunt the sensibilities, and to make its user careless of the rights and
feelings of others. This is often noticed in common life. We meet
everywhere "devotees of the weed," who, ignoring the fact that tobacco is
disagreeable to many persons, think only of the gratification of their
selfish appetite. They smoke or chew in any place or company. They permit
the cigar fumes to blow into the faces of passers-by. They sit where the
wind carries the smoke of their pipes so that others must inhale it. They
expectorate upon the floor of cars, hotels, and even private homes. They
take no pains to remove the odor that lingers about their person and
clothing. They force all who happen to be near, their companions, their
fellow-travelers, to inhale the nauseating odor of tobacco. Everything
must be sacrificed to the one primal necessity of such persons--a smoke.
Now, a young man just beginning life, with his fortune to make, and his
success to achieve, can not afford to burden himself with a habit that is
costly, that will make his presence offensive to many persons, and that
may perhaps render him less sensitive to the best influences and
perceptions of manhood.] No one has a right thus to check and disturb
continually the regular processes of his physical and mental progress.
Hence, the young man (especially if he be of a nervous, sensitive
organization) who uses tobacco deliberately diminishes the possible energy
with which he might commence the work of life; [Footnote: In the
Polytechnic School at Paris, the pupils were divided into two classes--the
smokers, and the non-smokers. The latter not only excelled on the entrance
examinations, but during the entire course of study. Dr. Decaisne examined
thirty-eight boys who smoked, and found twenty-seven of them diseased from
nicotine poisoning. So long ago as 1868, in consequence of these results,
the Minister of Public Instruction forbade the use of tobacco by the
pupils.
Dr. Gihon, medical director of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, in his
report for 1881, says: "The most important matter in the health history of
the students is that relating to tobacco, and its interdiction is
absolutely essential to their future health and usefulness. In this view I
have been sustained by my colleagues, and by all sanitarians in civil and
military life whose views I have been able to obtain."] while he comes
under the bondage of a habit that may become stronger than his will, and
under the influence of a narcotic that may beguile his faculties and palsy
his strength at the very moment when every power should be awake.
Another peril still lies in the wake of this masterful poison habit.
Tobacco causes thirst and depression that only too often and naturally
lead to the use of liquor. (See p. 338.)
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?