The Washington critic., 1888-01-21
now TO srop DRINKING.
Methods 20 Pursue TO Keep the Prom
ises Made New Years nav.


ises Made New Years Day.
"Let me have two powders, thirty
grains each, bromide potassium, and one
sixth of grain morphine" said q man
in an uptown Broadway drug store on
Tuesday afternoon.
The powders were promptly made up
and handed to the customer. As he left
the store the clerk said to q reporter
Guess who he ISL"
"A doctor probably"
"Wcll, yes, he is doctor inasmuch as
with hundreds Of others, he doctors him
salf at this time regularly every year for
the same disease, and knows better how
to prescribe for himself than the family
physician. He is an annual swearer-on
from whisky, and his disease is dipsoma-
mia. This is the third season he has been
in here at the beginning of the New
Year"
"What does he take the drug for?r
ITO help him over the first few days of
his abstinence. When man has been
drinking regularly and stops off suddenly,
he must have something to make him
sleep at night. The combination of bro
mide with little morphine is excellent,
and, unlike chloral hydrate, there is no
few steady drinkers have sound hearts,
and it is q dangerous drug where there is
heart trouble. Chloral only acts by being
changed to chloroform in the blood.
Everyone knows how dangerous chloro-
form is where the heart Is weak
''ls not valerian used in recovering from
a spree"
tit has gone greatly out of fashion, and
Is seldom asked for. 10 steadies the nerves
ull riO ht,t ~ 10 ha1 r,,,. ha
and the stomach. II has the merit, how
ever of acting quickly. II is good enough
for young men who only go on n tear once
in three or four months and make night
of IT. but when man has been steadily
drinking for ten or twelve years, then he
had better let it alone when swearing OIL.
II will do him more harm than good"
"The bromide, after ALL - continued the
drug clerk, after he had served some GUS
toners, 'tis mans main dependence in
getting rid of the nervous feeling which
follows a drunk, as well as ID. L. itself. 1t
is better for n man to leave out morphine
and take his punishment in q sleepless
night. If he gets into taking morphine in
any shape the habit is likely TO grow upon
him, especially if he gets to taking it
hypodermically
'iNow, would advise man who wants
| to swear off and does not want to back
| slide, to start in the minute he gets over
his nervousness and build up his stomach
with q good tonic of bark and iron. He
should live much as q prize fighter in
training for little while, avoiding made
dishes and going in for a beefsteak and
| mutton chops. In n little while he will,
| ifayoung man, suffer nothing, and feel
| that swearing off is no hardship. 1t is
| different though when man has been
drinking for years"
"How is that?"
"Why, you see, he has set up an alco-
holic craving in his system, and when he
swears off from everything and struggles
along bravely for a few weeks and
thinks he is all right and rejoices in his
new-found manhood, some day he gets the
smell of whisky, or finds himself in q
bar-room, and his disease-for ii is a dis
ease with him--seizes him again, and he
winds up 1883 as he did 1887. Such men
would do far better if they only swore of
from distilled liquors and allowed them
selves little light tonic and beer for
their stomach's sake. A little moral
courage would enable them to keep
away from the temptation of getting
drunk ON such feeble stimulants, and
they would accomplish 0 reform wonder
full for them.
"There is q class of whisky drinkers
with whom the taste for alcohol is heredi-
tary. They are TO be pitied. With these
poor wretches the taste for liquor is as
| true q disease as typhoid fever, and should
be so considered. Even they sometimes
stop
'When?' queried the reporter.
when they are dead."-[New York
Graphic.