The Stark County Democrat. [volume] (Canton, Ohio) 1833-1912, 1881-11-24

Cities"
SUBJECT-"THE PLAGUE NARCOTIC"
Text-ExOdus 1914: 81 will at this
time send allmy plaques upon thy heart,
and upon thy servants, and upon thy
people"
Upon the cleanest, the most fertile the
richest, the wisest country of the an
cient world the ten plaques dropped.
First plague: The river Nile, the source
of all the Egyptian fertility and an OBJ
ject of wOTship,was incaTdined and roll
ed its crimson currents amid horror
stricken population, while the reservoirs
and costly water works became putTid
with destroyed animal life. Plague sec
Ond: The frogs, which at all times were
innumeTable, crOaking in the marshes
of the Nile, moved up and took possess
ion of the homes of a nation who dress
ed in white, and were fastidiOus in their
cleanliness, the stOrks and cranes and
yultures sweeping upon their prey.
Plague third: Swarms of gnats and
mosquitoes buZZed and bit and stung
the nation into delirium. Plague the
fourth: The gadtlies became intOleTable,
or the beetle, an imitation of which you
sometimes see on a gentleman's finger
in a stone cut in the shape of a scara-
beus, or Egyptian beetle. Plague fifth:
Distemper smOte the cattle until they
beloved with pain, and epiZOOtics seiZ-
ed the horses and tTichina the swine.
Plague sixth: Carbuncles and elephant
laSeS lntlamed and Sickened multitudeS.
Plague seventh: HailstOrms pounded
the land with their icy mallets at the
season of the year when the cattle were
| in the field grazing and unprotected
| from the pelting. Plague eighth: LO-
| Gusts, marching (as naturalists tell us)
commanded by Captains and COlOnels,
in regiments, swept off the verdure of
| gardens and groves and vineyards. Ninth
| plague: A midnight that lasted days
| threw It's shadows over the country, and
| IL o'clock at noon was as black as II
| o'clock at night. Plague tenth: In ev
| cry house of the Egyptians the oldest of
| the family, whether babe on the moth
| er'S lap or young man seated at the ta-
BILE, took on the last pallOr and expired.
| These sorrows have passed off the
earth, but our modern cities today have
their ten plagues-blasting destructive
and dTeadful-and L propose, in a course
of Sabbath morning sermons, to describe
| them.
The first plague to be mentioned is
the plague narcotic. In all ages the
| world has set some flower or herb or
| weed to stimulate its lethargy or COM
pose its grief. A drug called nepenthe
was widely used by the ancient Greeks
and Egyptians for narcotic purposes.
The Theban women knew how to COM
pound it. You had but to chew its leaves
and your sadness would be whelmed i'll
hilarity. But that drug has passed out
| of the worlds acquaintance. Then came
| the haSheesh, which is made out of In
dian hemp. 1t is made from the flower
at the top; or men dressed i'll leather go
through a field of this hemp, and the
exudatiOn of the leaves adheTes to the
lng, l., I,Ns.
is Scraped off and prepared in arOmat-
les, and becomes an intOXicant. Whole
nations have been stimulated, narcOt-
lied and made imbecile through this ac-
cursed hasheesh. The gorgeous heavens
which unTOll at the start before The
haSheesh eater are magnificent beyond
all description; but they soon take down
body aRd mind and soul into horrible
death. | know one of the most brilliant
writers of the day. Whether he appear
ed in magazine or in editorial column
or in book, he was enchantment. He
would in one hours conversation pro-
duce more wit and strange information
than any man / ever talked with. But
he took hasheesh, first for curiosity
to seq whether it would really
do what was ascribed to it. He
put his hand into the cOckatrice's
den to see whether it would bite. He
1
father, Christian minister, cOunseled
him, prayed for him, had the ablest
physicians of New York and Philadel-
phia and Paris and London and Edin-
buTgh to prescribe for him. A large
circle of acquaintances put their wits
together to rescue him, but down he
went. He said he could not stop. First
his body gave way in awful pangs and
in cOnYulSiOns of suffering; then his
| and hpp1mn
and then his soul, disappearing God,
went out into a staTless eternity. He
died only thirty years old. Behold the
dOings of that Persian and Egyptian
drug called hasheesh!
Opium also demands emphatic recOg-
milton. 1t is made from the white
poppy. 1t is new discovery. We
read of it three centuries before Christ.
But it began its death march about the
SEVENTEEN century, when passing out
from the region of the medicinal and
curative it became through masticatiOn
and smoking the scOurge of nations.
Do not think that it is only barbaric
Asiatics who suffer under it, but read
De Quincey's confession of an opium
eater. He went on until he says he
took three hundred and twenty grains
day. At the start, he said, for ten
years he carried the keys of Paradise,
but only his own pen is sufficient to de-
scribe the horrors consequent. Samuel
Taylor COleridge conquered the whole
literary world with his pen, but opium
conquered him. The most magnetic
American lawyer of the century died
the victim of this drug. There are in
New York and Brooklyn thousands of
men and. women, but more
women than men, bound body,
mind and soul to this Internal habit of
ium-eating. This is the deadly Sc
cret of hundreds of households in Amer
lea. The habit is more hidden, more
subtle, more deceitful than other habits.
You can easier reform hundred drunk
ards than one opium eater. They say
there are cases where Opium-eaters
have recovered from their habit.
hope there are such cases. never saw
a cure. l have seen inebriates of forty
years indulgence entirely reform, but
all the Opium-eaters that l have ever
known go on and go down. Their last
request in the dying hour is not for
God, or for the Bible, or for prayer, but
for opium. There is something mystic
riOusly wrong in many families. You
can not tell what it is. Perhaps only
two persons outside the household do
knOw-the physician and the pastor;
the one called in to help the physical