Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1899-07-06
a COCAINE FIEND.
The Terrible Sensations of a Per-
son When Addicted to the
Use of the Drug.


These evils cannot be more strongly
revealed than in the experience of an
Australian physician. He has given the
world of medicine the benefit of a mar
ration of what he underwent after he
had become addicted to the almost con-
slant use of the drug. In the course
of mat confession, which he did not
hesitate to make public, he said, in de-
kcribing his sensations: THE first
feeling a cocainist has is an indescriba-
BILE excitement to do something great;
to leave mark. But, alas! this dis
appears as rapidly as it came, and soon
every part of the body seems to cry out
for new syringe. The second sensa-
tion-at first, at least, no hallucina-
TOMS that his hearing is enormously
increased, so that he hears the flies
walking over the paper. Very soon
every sound begins to be a remark about
himself, mostly of a nasty kind, and he
begins to carry on a solitary life, his
only companion being his beloved
syringe. Every passer-by seems to talk
about him. Often and often have I
stopped persons, or ordered the police
to arrest them, thinking they were
talking about me.
after relatively short time begins
the hunting of the cocaine bug. You
imagine that in your skin worms or
similar things are moving along. If you
touch them with wool especially alb
sorbent woody they run away and disap-
pear, only to peep cautiously out of
some corner to see if there is any dam
ger. These worms are projected only to
| the cocainist'S own person or clothing.
! He sees them on his washing, in his
| skin, creeping along his penholder, but
not on other people or things, and not
On clothes brought clean from the laun-
dry. How is this to be explained?
| About the same time appear many other
hallucinations of the optics, and,
strange to say, self-suggested halluci-
nations also. Night turns to day. You
sit up in your room Swinging until the
morning, and then fall asleep in coma.
In my case this occurred to such an eX-
tent that I had to engage a hospital
warder, who came in the morning to re-
vive me with about ten syringes of five
per cent. solution, so that [ was able to
drive, not walk, fearing some one might
garrote me. Other dreadful hallucina-
lions [ had in thousands, all of perse-
cutting character, and frightening the
life out of me Sc long as the effects OF
the drug lasted.
''You see small animals running
about your body and feel their bites.
| Every object seems to become alive to
stare at you; from all corners look re-
volvers, knives, ETC., and threaten you
Yet, so soon as the effect of the iniec-
ton is over you laugh at it, and produce
willingly, by new injection, the same
| terrors. About the same time bought
three ST. Bernard dogs, thinking they
| would protect me, but one night found
| they were talking about mellow they
could get rid of me-so [ stood up and
shot one of them with revolver, which
[ always used to carry. think this was
the most dreadful night of my life
standing on the table, with an Indian
dagger and syringe on the ground
one three-foot high dog going to die
and two rather dangerous dogs roaring
and groaning aloud, reproachfully look
| ing at me, who always fancied: Now
comes the moment when they viii teal
you to pieces I stood the night on the
table until the arrival of my wardman
who hardly risked to enter the room
The strange thing, however, in the co
caine habit is that there seems to be
two souls in the cocainist-one infested
by the cocaine, suffering and tortured
by its effects; the other normal, laugh
ing at his fears and saying: What non
sense! 1t is only 'hallucination, pro
duced by an Injection Not frightened
enough by these experiences and escap
ing from the troubles produced by hi.
conduct, on the cocainist goes, taking
more and more, and then enters new
kind of illusion, which finishes him VI
for the madhouse." - PhiladeIphi;