Devils Lake inter-ocean. (Devils Lake, Ramsey Co., Dakota [N.D.]) 1884-1905, 1897-11-12
MANY INTOAiCANTS,
Mr.. JOHNSON, WHO TRAVELS, FREE
~ DISCUSSES THE SUBJECT.

III " I7E OO6JECI @
-
no Occasionally Indulges In Hasheesh
Himself How III Opium Habitue Was
Cured-Etheric as q Substitute For Al.
coholic Exiilarntion.
johnson travels for'' q New York
state wine and brandy producing firm
and is a veritable mine of information
concerning wines and spirits, alcohol
percentages, bouquets, methods and
processes of refining and "aging" wines,
and besides is q connoisserr of no mean
quality i'll everything drinlzable. No
Il ever saw him drink more of any al
coholic liquor than the half dozen drops
he sips before passing a wonderfully
near infallible verdict on a sample. New
ertheless johnson remarked IL day to
a friend that he took an occasional
spree. "Not an alcoholic drunk, he
explained, "but a hasheesh vision"
."Hashcesh!" exclaimed tho other.
"Why, I've always regarded that as
more dreadful than spirits"
perhaps it is, replied johnson. II
don't advise any Il to use it. But in
parts Of Europe and in all oriental coun-
tries many persons use hasheesh as I do.
Tho effect Of tho drug taken in the
larger quantity is to stimulate tho i'm
nginatim. 1t seems to release the soul
from tho body's bonds. Fatigue, depres-
sion, mental WEAKNESS, business cares,
all harassments, i'll fact, are thrown off,
and the mind revels in an abnormal and
%pleasurable supcractivity. I never expe-
rierced any unpleasant reaction.
"Persons Of different te~mperaments
are affected in different ways. I knew O
man who wanted to try a dose Of
hasheesh with NE. He had a most un-
pleasant time Of it. He said that his
mental sufferings wcro indescribable,
fear, " rather apprehension, of some
thing mysterious and more grewsome
than all the ghost stories ever told rolled
into Il awful horror depressing him
throughout tho short time that he was
under the spell of the hemp. He never
will try it again, for which I am glad,
for he might get into the habit of it.
Johnson's business takes him among
pharmacists q good deal, and by way of
adding to his disclaimer of being a
hasheesh slave he remarked that every
druggist has among his customers one
Or moro opium "fiends'' who do not
feel the bondage of tho drug, although
they arc enslaved. 81 saw q clerk max
ing 100 small powders of morphine one
day." said johnson, land I asked him
J why he was putting up so many. The
( clerk replied that lie put up that num-
Der every Thursday for q certain lady
OH renewal Of a physicians prcscrip-
ton. The physician had authorized the
renewal, and the patient had been TAX
ing the lnorphia for several years in tho
same quantity. Tho habit probably
grew out Of the drug having been pre-
scribcd originally for the relief of some
obstinate pain. The patient only knew
that tho powders kept her pain away.
"This am drug clerk also told Of
the successful cure Of a sufferer from
the opium habit, another lady who re-
allied her situation and longed to be
free. She went to live at her physicians
house. She had been drinking so much
laudanum Il day. The doctor began by
allowing her the equivalent in NOR
phinc in capsules, taken at tho hours ut
which she had been accustomed to take
the liquid. He kept her on q n%ourishing
and stimulating diet and very gradual
ly, without tho patients knowledge,
reduced the size Of the doses of morphia.
"Aftcr q time he substituted for one Of
the morphine capsules daily one Of the
Same appearance, filled with cinchoni-
dia, an alkaloid Of Peruvian bark like
quininc, but weaker. Tho patient did
not feel tho difference. Another circho-
india capsule was substituted daily aft
or another week Or two, and so on, until
after some months the habitue was talk
ing nothing but %cinchonidia one day,
with, perhaps, two morphine doses the
next. AS gradually as before these
wero eliminated, and the patient was
told ono day that she had had no NOR
phia for q month. She was surprised
and incredulous, but she at last real
lied that she was cured. T don't know
that every one could be freed from the
opium habit in that manner.
"The druggists clerk told NE of a
fellow employee Of his who had a pas.
sion for ether. He had found him sew
eral times asleep or DOING in a heap of
excelsior packing in the cellar, and at
last discovered that the young man had
been stealing ether. He would saturate
a sponge, put it into a %pasteboard cone,
hold it over his nose, and thus anes-
thetize himself. You know that the
sensation Of passing under the influence
of ether is very pleasant. It is akin to
the exhilaration Of alcohol. The patient
about to be operated upon is in a state
of high spirits, no matter how great his
anxieties may be, as soon as the ether
has begun to intoxicate him.
"But in n part of Ireland, where
the making Of 'potheen' has been
squelched by tho excise, the simple ma
tives have taken to using ether-a prod
uct not extensively purified like that
used by surgeons. Only instead of in
haling it they drink it. It induces ex-
IRENE exhilaration, then sleep, and the
drunkard awakcs with a headache, a
sick stomach and an unpleasant, sweet,
taste i'll the mouth, just as the surgeons
patient does. The ether drinking makes
a man noisy and quarrelsome and reck-
less while its ex~hilarating effect lasts,
and is i'll other ways far worse than
whisky. A man may be drunk and So
Der again in Is minutes. The local cler-
gy are very bitter against the excisemen
for driving out the comparatively harm
less 'potlleen. "-New York Mail and
Express.
Cufreo and Its Uses,
When there are in Il community cpl