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.”_