Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/630

612 recourse to a dangerous expedient: he mixes a small quantity of corrosive sublimate with the opium, the influence of which is thus for a time renewed. Then these means also fail; when the victim must bear the miserable condition to which he is reduced, until probably, sooner or later, he sinks into the grave. On the excitable temperament of the Malays and Javanese, a strong dose of opium causes a state of frantic fury amounting almost to madness, and this often ends in that homicidal mania which has been called "running amuck;" in other words, in the individual attacking with his crease or dagger every one whom he meets, so that it becomes necessary to shoot him down with as little compunction as we do a mad dog. In Java, opium is not allowed to be sold except in an adulterated form, the risk of these evil consequences being thus in some measure lessened.

So far as the effects of opium on the system are concerned, it is almost entirely a matter of indifference in what way the drug is used. Whether it be taken in the solid form of pills, in the liquid form of laudanum, or inhaled from a pipe as heated vapor, it speedily exerts its pernicious and almost irresistible influence over the mind; so that few possess the iron will needed to relinquish the habit when it has once been fairly acquired. How completely even the most intellectual and cultivated minds may become enslaved was well illustrated in the cases of Coleridge and De Quincey, whose highly-colored descriptions of their experiences are said to have been productive of much evil among the educated classes of this country. These descriptions must not, however, be regarded as safe criteria of the usual influence of opium on the colder temperament of the North European. According to Dr. Christison, it seldom produces a more striking effect on the Anglo-Saxon constitution than the removal of torpor and sluggishness, thus rendering the opium-eater a pleasant and conversable companion; but these small advantages, in turn, are purchased by a period of subsequent pain and depression, the misery of which it would be difficult to exaggerate.

Opium, besides acting as a narcotic, possesses a remarkable power as a restorative. By apparently checking the natural waste of nervous energy, it enables the system to support fatigue, beneath which it must otherwise inevitably have sunk. For this reason it is much used by the Halcarras, the palanquin-bearers and messengers of India, who journey almost incredible distances, furnished with nothing more than a bag of rice, a little opium, and a pot to draw water from the wells. The Tartar couriers also use it to sustain them, when compelled to travel night and day in crossing the arid deserts of Central Asia; and in some parts of the East it is administered as a restorative even to horses.

It is difficult to come to any definite conclusion as to whether the physical character of Eastern races who habitually use opium as a narcotic has deteriorated in consequence. No doubt the general