The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1876-10-05
Opfum.Eating in New York.

Inc taste Tor narcotics Is usually aC-
quired during painful illness, when
physicians frequently prescribe these
drugs for sleeping draughts. The patient
finds so much relief from their use, and
the feeling produced by them is so pleas
ant that he sometimes continues his doses
until he acquires a taste for them. This
taste, once acquired, becomes a fixed
habit, which in time grows into mania
impossible to control, and it is then more
dangerous to stop using the drugs than it
particularly liable to become slaves to the
they contribute more largely to the num-
Der of victims than men do.
The reason for this is not far to seek.
The majority of women addicted to the
use of narcotics belong to the better class
es, and many of them are the leading
lights of the fashionable world. These
women, after months of riotous living,
under excitement and fashionable dissipa-
ton, resort to the use of dangerous drugs
in order to quiet their disordered nerves.
They have learned by experience the ben
eficial results of anodynes administered
for special purposes by their physicians;
and, ignorant of their dangerous effects
when injudiciously applied, they continue
to use them without medical advice, and
too often with fatal results. It is true that
there are laws on our statute books regu-
lating the sale of poisons, and forbidding
them to be sold without physicians pre-
scription, but these, like many other ex-
cellent laws, are "more honored in the
breach than the observance" Only the
leading chemists comply with the law,
and even where it is obeyed it is easy for
people who have once used narcotic drugs
to continue using them by having their
original prescription renewed as often as
they wish.
Laudanum-d drinkers usually begin with
a dose of fifteen minims, equal to one
grain of pure opium, and increase it grad
ually until they take two or three ounces
at time, and often five or six ounces
day. A lady of wealth and refinement re-
siding on Madison avenue drinks quart
of laudanum week. She began with the
smallest dose, and the appetite gradually
grew upon her sol that, though she began
taking it secretly and unknown to her hus-
band, it is now given to her as a necessity
of life. Its use has reduced her to a mere
skeleton of her former self. She is weak
and haggard, and her face is as white as,
alabaster. Notwithstanding her long use
of the drug, it frequently intoxicates her,
and she is slowly but surely sinking to
death. Another and more remarka-
bic instance showing the influence
that laudanum has over its victims
was related to me by drug clerk in this
city. Some years ago, when he was
keeping shop near town, a tramp came
to him and ordered eight ounces Of lauda-
mum. He poured it into graduate, and
turned round to get q bottle, when the
tramp snatched up the glass and drank it
TO the last drop. He apologized for his
conduct by saying that lie was confirmed
laudanum- drinker, that he had not tasted
the drug for some months, and that hav-
ing no money to pay for any, he had re-
sorted to this trick to satisfy his appetite.
This remarkable dose of eight ounces
|Nequal to10oO grains of pure opium, did
nDt seemsto affect lin a all. Other cases
OF the Hind, illustrating 1.-THE terrible power
of opium, are numerous. I will refer to
only one more. "a lady OF New York, the
wife Of a well known merchant, acquired
the laudanuh habit, and was sent to Eu.
rope in the hope that,she might be cured.
Three months ago the husband received
the news that she hadldied in Vienna,