The Maryville times. (Maryville, Tenn.) 1884-1944, 1886-07-21
MORAL SUICIDE.
Crime Committed by All Persons Al.
dicted to the Opium Habit.

Whoever first administered opium b
IN agonized sufferer bestowed bless
ing Spon the human race that there Is
no computing. But whoever first
taught that the dose might be repeated
till its pleasant sensations created
desire that became need, habitual
and not to be resisted, should be WIS.,
tied with the severest punishment that
tate reserves for sinners.
The opium habit is one that has so
firm hold now upon many that it be-
comes the public duty to expostulatc,
and to rehearse the suffering it creates
and the degradation it entails, as a
measure of warning to those in any
danger from it.
The physical effects of eating or of
smoking opium, after short time, are
SO fearful that no one W bois acquainted
with them, or who realizes them,
would ever willingly become their VIC
tim. Never to be able to digest any
thing, to endure constant nausea, to
have heavy pains, distress and per-
petual burning sensation in the stom-
ach, to futter and tremble and faint, to
feel as If you were q bubble rising IN
the air, to suffer all sorts of terrifying
Authorizations, TO lose much control OF
the limbs, to laugh and cry at wrong
times like simpleton, and never to be
sure how much you have made fool
of yourself. to have blur and blazing
before the eyes, binding headaches to-
gether with torturing pains in the
bones, to have neuralgia so acutely
that the sensation of touching bare
nerve in a tooth is constant, to find
yourself in condition generally
resembling delirium tremens-all
that is bad enough. But to know
also that it destroys the moral
life in even greater measure, so that
women of pride and wealth, and hith-
erto Of virtue, will practice every mean.
ness, craft and deception, commit
theft, forfeit modesty, all under its in
fluence, and pause at no crime in or
der to obtain possession of the drug.
If they can not get it otherwise-to
know all that, and yet to touch it, ex-
cept by prescription, would seem to be
impossible. In short, there is no ques-
ton that opium debauchcs the whole
moral nature, ruins the physical and
destroys the nervous system, and is
the worst enemy that man has ever en-
countered; for alcohol has its inter-
missions, however brief, but opium
never ceases for one moment in its
tyranny and cruelty. How terrible il
is even the Emperor of China declared
when, it being within Ahis option ia
seize large number Of chests OF
opium belonging to(the British, and
the price all into his Cwn purse, he,
with a sublimity of action unequaled
in any other historical action that We
know, ordered it to no utterly de-
stroyed rather than sell it to his PEG
pie and enrich himself by cursing them
There are many individuals, how
ever, who will not be deferred in sea
son from the use of this cruel drug by
any possibilities in relation either tt
their physical or moral being; but il
would seem US ii human pride, to say
nothing else, might cause them K
pause when they know that the end O
it all is idiocy. for most of us wOult
prefer to die to-day under any circum
stances rather than come to that a
last; and that, moreover, feminine
pride in especial would shrink from
transformation into the hideous-look
ing object that the Opium-eater event
ually becomes.
That this generation drinks less in
toxicating liquor proportionately thai
those that have gone before is possibl.
true, but that in one form or another i
uses vastly more opium is equally true
Not merely the fine lady is its slave
but the operative also. If the innumer
able number of chemists shops doe
not in itself tell the story, it is said tina
one would soon discover 1t in takin!
up position in their neighborhood OF
any Saturday night, when the custom
ers can be seen coming in for thei
little walls of poison in whatever form
they use it. The sight might make on
| tremble for the generations to come.
it were not that after mother an
, daughter addicted to the cruel habit
or a father and son, there will be n
generation to come in that family. Blu
! If hardship and want might be pleade'
> in any faintest breath as some measur
| of EXCUSE for the over-wOrked and Oftel
9 ill-used operative who resorts to tn
q drug that shall open to her an escape
if only for the present, into land q
dreams, there Is no excuse for tn
woman Of property or of educatio
, who puts herself into the power of thi
terrible fascination. If she is in trouble
she has other resources, she is nc
' obliged to drink lethe or nepenthe j
! order to forget herself. Long habit
Z years, culture, friends, opportunities
|, ought to be sufficient to afford relic
from mental sorrow in other ways: an
a il she takes it from idleness, or fror
!. mere love of the effects of the drug
!, then words are too weak to repriman
q her.-Hdrper's Bazar.
Eup kmonr Minis$are