Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/517

 closely this confession runs, even from the pen of a philosopher, to similar confessions made by many who are not philosophers, respecting another purely chemical intoxicant which is more generally known than Sir Humphry's gas, I need not stay to explain.

An experience, closely allied to the above, occurred to a scientific friend of mine in relation to another intoxicant—namely, chloroform. This gentleman, commencing like Sir Humphry with the inhalation of chloroform for purposes of experiment, at last began daily to inhale a certain measured quantity. In a few days he increased the quantity, and at last discovered, from the intervals of time which elapsed after he commenced each inhalation, that he must have gone off into deep sleep and so have forgotten to note the passage of time. At first the sense of desire to repeat the inhalation alarmed him greatly, but soon the desire overcame all sense of fear, and at last he became a complete devotee to the practice. A break-down in his health led him to communicate his position to his friends, and by the earnest advice and warning of one of them he did at last resolve to abstain altogether. It was a very difficult fight, the odor of the vapor whenever he was near to it recalling most keenly the old desire, and even four years elapsed before he felt himself fully emancipated from the dangerous habit.

The craving attaches itself to other substances than I have hitherto named. I have known it connected with that most nauseous of all medicines, asafœtida; I have known it strongly attach itself to another medicine, valerian; and once I knew it attach itself to turpentine. My learned and very good friend the late Dr. Willis, of Barnes, had a patient who acquired the craving for common wood or methylated spirit; and there are many who have acquired a liking for spirit that is flavored or more than flavored with fusel-oil.

The readiness with which mankind will attach themselves to varied cravings is shown again and on a comparatively large scale in the north of Ireland. In a district there, of which Draper's Town is the center, the eminent Father Mathew labored in his lifetime with such magical effect that he practically converted the whole district to sobriety. A little after his time, and when the influence of his work was fading away, a person came into the district and introduced a new beverage or drink which was not whisky, which was not strong drink, and which, it was said, would do no harm. The bait took, and for over thirty years there has existed in the place I have named a generation or two of ether-drinkers. I have visited this place recently and found the habit still in progress. The ether-drinker tosses off his two or three ounces of common ether, as another man tosses off gin or whisky. He passes rapidly into a state of quick excitement and intoxication, is often senseless for a brief period, and then rapidly regains the sober state. He suffers less from this process in the way of organic disease than he would from a similar number of intoxications from alcohol; but he gains, as he would from alcohol, the same intense