Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/632

614 that opium acts as a preservative against the effects of a damp climate, many of the inhabitants have in this way become addicted to its use.

Another and even more reprehensible form of the opium evil among the lower classes is to be found in the practice of administering soothing mixtures to young children for the purpose of keeping them quiet. In one instance, a mother, because her child was unwell, has been known to place a piece of crude opium in its mouth to suck, the death of the child being naturally the consequence; and though cases of such gross and culpable ignorance as this are no doubt rare, it is certain that the administration of soothing sirups and cordials is too commonly resorted to. In large manufacturing towns, where mothers are often employed in factories during the day, their infants are frequently placed for the time in the care of nurses; and these women seldom feel any compunction in administering an opiate to a child who is troublesome. It cannot be too widely known how greatly such a practice tends not only to the direct increase of infant mortality, but also to the permanent injury of the constitution, by inducing convulsions and other similar nervous diseases.

Opium in one of its forms enters largely into the composition of many of the pain-killers and patent medicines so freely advertised for domestic use in the present day, and for this reason the greatest care is needed in having recourse to any of them. Taken, perhaps, in the first instance, to alleviate the torments of neuralgia or toothache, what proves to be a remedy soon becomes a source of gratification, which the wretchedness that follows on abstinence renders increasingly difficult to lay aside. The same must be said of narcotics, such as bromide of potassium and hydrate of chloral, frequently resorted to as a remedy for sleeplessness: the system quickly becomes habituated to their use, and they can then be relinquished only at the cost of much suffering. Indeed, the last-mentioned of these two drugs obtains over the mind a power which may be compared to that of opium, and is, moreover, liable to occasion the disease known as chloralism, by which the system ultimately becomes a complete wreck.

Looking at the whole question of the medicinal use of narcotics, it is perhaps not too much to say that they should never be employed except with the authority of a competent medical adviser.

Turning; again to the narcotics of savage or but semi-civilized races, we find a species of fungus (Amanita muscaria) employed by the natives of Kamtchatka and the adjoining provinces of Siberia. It grows plentifully in parts of Kamtchatka, and is there generally prepared for use in several ways. The inhabitants either gather it during the hottest months, and hang it in strings to dry in the open air, or leave it to ripen and dry in the ground, when it possesses stronger narcotic qualities. Small-sized specimens, covered with warty excrescences and deeply-colored, are also considered more valuable than