Stockton Herald, South Durham and Cleveland Advertiser. — 1889-04-27 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

THE MORPHIA FIEND.  The practice of injecting morphia is the latest fashionable vice in Loudon and Paris. A few years ago it was a vice almost unknown; but we grow rapidly nowadays, and at the present moment it is by no meow uncommon in the groat world and the half-world of the two capitals. It hos in a great measure superseded another and far coarser habit -the undue consumption of alcoholic intoxicants. The fairer. seeming but more dangeroasValentine of civiliseCon has routed the brutal Orson of the gutter, and the latter skulks Sway from the park, the ball-room, and the hondoir to rougher and mere congenial quarters. It is comparatively rare nowadays to bear the old accusation of epiutuous inclatgenee advaaced at the explawstion of the excuse of a fashionable person's ecceutrieities of demeanour. forgetfulnese of mind, or uncertainty of gait ; there is sometleine so low, so d. grading, in the idea that in the ooia'on of " society it ought not to be lightly raised. It is, in fact, tantamount to s charge of social as well as moral degradation, and there is no necessity to study the par-s of Juvenal to know that oue of the results o the refining process of extreme civilisation is to create an undue estimate of the former at the expense of the latter. " Morphia, on the other hand.- we can imagine the world observing in its quiet, cynical way, "is quite different. It neither brutalities the character nor degrades the mind. It does not unfit the victim for the companionship of the world until it produces total incapacity for enjoyment of it. It is, unhappily, slowly destructive, both to the mind ..a the body, and of course its use is morally indefensible ; but still it injures nobody bet the person principally concerned, and certain:ly does not constitute a reason for exclesion or seclusion from society. Morphine is at least suggestive of the bondoir; drink is dreadful with the reek of the streets. If she mast take something, by all means let her take morphine." In,agiue an instrument about the sire or a pencil-case, construtted somewhat after the model of a wasp's sting, and fitting ioto a tiny case which will go with ease in the matt the waistcoat pocket, or the bosom of the dress. The instrument itself may be of gold, and the case may he fashioned like a jewelled scent bottle or other trinket, and hang suspended from a golden chatelaine with the most innocuous air. This if the injector, and a slight punctuation of the skin with the waspish point is sufficient to enable the required quantity of the magic livid to be diecharged into the system. Nor is the term magic an exaggeration ; for -not more magical was the effect produced by the pills which the travelers i ews,llowed in the cave of Monte Cristo than that which results froth the injection of morphia.. It mast be. however, observed here that there are three distinct stages of morphia-absorption, all I of them brief in duration, the last one briefest I of all.  During the first stage the results are rileae curable; they bring a draught of fresh the into jaded limbs_ The facnities receive a sill lon stimulus, the callous sense of pleasure is s-usi• jive once more. the vision of the won l 1 east on the mental eye IS drawn in..rosy lines, the is'ols appreciation of thine.is earthly is that of one whi is prepared to drain the cup of hie to the hottoni and enjoy it to the full. The subject lives in is , glamorous sense of vague happiness, her half, closed eyes reveal the state of exquisite lassito.'s which laps her limbs, she feels that her one enemy is exertion, she is too happy to trio:ll:4e about anything • all that she asks is that her friends should be happy around her even as she :is happy. Her hold on eternity !easeful as her desire for it decreases. "Why take thought for the morrow ?" would run her new reading of the text, "sufficient for the day as the happiness thereof."  In time, however, a chaage comes o'er the spirit of this rose-coloured dream. Its continuity becomes broken by dreadful intervals of reaction, during which the victim is oppreased by all the horrors of intense melancholy and weakr.ess, anti iron' which relief can nly be obtained by continual repetition of the proces of injection. The baneful habit acquires a firmer hold by counter-irritations. It is so easy to drive away the blue devils that are making themselves apparent, to check the reaction which ham began to set hi, to change the dark shadows which are clouding over the,vision of life into the rainbow 1111.43 of the morning, to transform the vietim of melancholy, the prospective suicide, into the laughing child of pleasure whose creed is that of the half-pagan Leo X., " Let us enjoy what God bet given us." So easy—lnt only by constant use of the fat ii drug ; au.i as the formai slight injections have lost their power, larger doses of the stimulant must be launched lute the system before the desired effect can be produced.  l'he result, however, of the increase of the quantity injected is le develop the feeling of laryitole mail in timo—snoh a brief period !—it completely overpowers the souses, and the victim becomes practically lost to tho worid. iiii lives in a roseeolonred world of her own. :u which happiness reigns sppreine, and whicn she would not leave if she could ; for her re entry into the life she 1134 forrakeu can only he accomplished by Passing through a period of tense mental and bodily torture. Sl.i kamcs that she is slowly dying, that she is stippio. t. extinction in a soulleis ineobraical way like 2 clock which inev:tably rims down whim iti motiva power is exhausted ; but her ap,.reuation oi abstract ideas bar hceonie blurred; li:o tiai lost its meaning, death its terrors. 'leftist it is, site think', so far as she compares her condition at all, to fade slowly and happily out of life, wAhra.t a theught or a rare to ehequor the last period of existence than tc face the Alrug•zle by ! which alone Rho conld be saved. indeed, it if aunbtfnl whothor, even if Rho could bo kept b 7 force from the use of the stimulant, she wool,/ not feel its loss so %cutely that she woidil die IS horrible agonies almost as quickly. By a curios' porvarrion, therefor:, of lii Original object, it has been reserved for molern science to bring into existence and use the &emu of thl a"cient Pouts—the drug which • onferred happiness unchequered &ma unalloyed. Were d possible, however, to analyse the *toilful yeall. tion of the victim during ihe boars of rem•tion it might be possible to realise also the to7loral of the damned in the medieval hell.