Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1876-10-25
OPIUM EATING.


self,* he replied.
OPIUM EATING.
Rapid Increase of the Deadly Habit in =
New Err gland Town.
From the Providence Journal.
Most people know that the opium
habit is increasing throughout the
country, but few are aware of its alarm
ing growth in New England. In Provi-
dence the city druggists report more
or less rapid increase in the number of
their opium custom ers, and physicians
find that female patients can not be af-
fected by less than four times an ordi-
nary dose of morphine.
Many acquire the opium habit dur
ing illness, when it is taken to relieve
pain; others, during great mental de-
spondency; others form an inherited
craving for it, and others still while
trying to leave off drinking liquor. Its
use is not q characteristic of any one
class. The contracted pupil of the eye,
the sallow countenance, the placed ex-
preston, the dreamy distant look,
which denote the opium eater, are
found in the workshop and the factory,
as well as in the counting-room or the
boudoir. Wealthy opium eaters buy
the drug through q trusted agent,
whose tongue is sealed by his pay; the
poor usually buy theirs covertly, in the
eveninp, usually saying that it is for
some one else.
Some try to conceal their purchase
of the drug by buying in different
stores, until almost the whole city has
been gone over; others appear as regu-
larly at the same place, Saturday even
ing, as the evening comes. The wish
to conceal the habit is universal, and it
is never taken, as liquors are drank, in
q crowd and with merry-making. A
grain of opium, or all eighth as much
of morphine, is dose for beginner,
but the desire and ability to make it
grow so rapidly that five and even ten
grains of morphine are taken in day,
perhaps in three doses.
An opium eater in Providence few
months ago ate 125 grains of opium in
twenty-four hours, and a woman drinks
coffee cup full of laudanum without
harm. There are q large number Of
men whose weekly purchase of opium
indicates that they use about twenty
five grains day. A novel method Of
taking opium is by the use of the hy-
podermic syringe-a tiny instrument
with needle point, which the liquid is
conveyed directly into the blood. The
effect when administered in this. way
| is much more immediate than when
taken in the usual way as g. powder or
in little pellets Physicians addicted to
the habit land there is surprising
number of them) usually adopt the
hypodermic method, and one doctor is
known whose body is in spots Scared
like the traces of smallpox from the
marks of his morphine syringe.
The high cost is one hindrance to its
use. Really poor people can not af-
ford to extensively use an artic which
costs $3.50 to $3.50 an ounce. Never
man or woman will do anything to get
opium that the most inveterate drunk
ard would do to get rum. Opium-eat-
ing is, if possible, more seductive than
quor-drinking, and the confirmed
opium-eater can have scarcely hope
of escape from its power; the victim is
in misery whenever he is not under the
influence of the drug.
It is said that there is one opium
eater in Providence who has fully
counted the cost. He began to eat
opium when about thirty-fve years old,
and finding, few years later, the
habit firmly fastened upon him, deter
mined that he could not live, at the
longest, more than thirty years. He
was then taking half a grain a day. He
figured up the amount that he would
require in thirty years, allowing an in
crease of a quarter Of grain year.
He then made a deposit Of money suf-
fcient to supply him with his regular
allowance during all those years, and
now goes about continually under its
influence, viewing life and the world in
which he moves as if he saw them
from the large end of an opera-glass.