The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1893-06-11

in every community. In cities like St.
Louis the slaves of poison perhaps num-
Der thousands, a9cOnSiderable proportion
of whom manage to conceal the fact from
even their nearest friends, for no one is
SO cunning in obtaining, in using or in
concealing the use of a poisonous drug as
its habitual consumer. Nor should it be
forgotten that, by comparison, the evil
wrought on the system by intoxicating
drinks is trifiing. A nOxious drug, habit
ually used, does its work slowly, but with
lightning speed as compared with whisky,
and the habit, once formed, is tenfold
harder I'd break. 1t may be broken in
the same way as it was begun, but the
cases in which the user has the persever-
ance necessary to accomplish so difficult
task are few in number when compared
with reformed drunkards.
The use of opium, morphine, arsenic or
choral is never the growth of a day.
Begun in infinitesimal doses to relieve I'M
easiness or pain, it soon becomes neces-
Sary to increase the dose in order to ac-
complish the desired effect, and there are
persons in this city who daily consume
thirty or more grains of morphine. To
break off that habit it is necessary to re-
duce the dose as gradually as it was in
creased. For few days only twenty-nine
grains, if the dose has been thirty must
be taken, TWEEN twenty-eight, and so on,
little by little, until the daily allowance
has been brought down to its originally
minute proportions, when it may safely
be discontinued. Any other method, par
ticularly with arsenic and morphine, is
likely to prove fatal, since an abrupt dis
continuance produces all the symptoms of
arsenical or morphine poisoning. The
same is true, in minor degree, of several.
preparations used for the small ills of
life.
1.-THE use of antipyrine, for example, is
habitual to many persons in this city,
who have begun its employment as a rem
edy from headache. Young girls in the
schools of this city have been known to
carry walls of this drug in their pockets
and take it regularly every day. Used
properly, it is a valuable panacea used
habitually, its discOntinuance brings on
the ailment it was originally employed to
cure. and abstentiOn for even a single
day will result in a most violent attack Of
sick headache, which only return of the
habitual remedy will allay
MINERAL PoIsoNs.
The man who is determined to shuttle
off this mortal coil need have no trouble
with his druggist in securing the neces-
sary means, for there are scores of min
eral poisons which any druggist will sell
to him without the slightest hesitation
and WlJnOuG ASKING Single question DIS
to the use he intends to make of his pur-
chase.
Arsenic, in the form of white powder
or of paris green, or of any other of a
dozen preparations manufactured for the
purpose of killing vermin, is daily sold in
considerable quantities So also are the
several salts of copper, the acetates or
verdegris, the sulphate or blue vitrol,
either of which is deadly enough to serve
the purpose of the most desperate suicide,
and both of which sometimes occasion in
voluntary poisoning, the former by form
ing in carelessly kept copper vessels, the
latter by the dangerous habit of placing
bits of copper in pickles in order to
highten their color. Any one of dozen
mercurial remedies, openly and freely
sold in the form of blue mass, calomel,
blue ointment, red ointment, and other
preparations may be taken in deadly
doses, to say nothing of corrosive subli-
mate, a mercurial preparation which,
even in minute doses, is one of the dead
lest poisons known.
Lead, too, in almost every form is
deadly, as painters can testify, and not
painters alone, but many hundreds who
have been poisoned by drinking water
which has stood in lead pipes, by eating
canned fruit put up with cheap lead solder
or by working in factories where some Of
the manufactures of lead are prepared.
A great many eye waters are as poisonous
as arsenic, since q favorite element in