Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 July 1879 — An Experiment in Opinm Smoking. [ARTICLE]

An Experiment in Opinm Smoking.

Opium smoking, it seems, falls far short, after all, of those many delights which it is popularly supposed to afford. One Herr Maclay, in the course of a stay at Hcng Kong, has made an experiment upon his own body which should be considered pretty conclusive. After fasting eighteen hours, he smoked twenty-seven pipes, holding in all 107 grains of the opium used by the Chinese. It is interesting to know that after the third pipe he ceased to feel hungry, that the fifth left him unable to walk about comfortably, the seventh brought his pulse down from eighty to seventy, the twelfth caused singing in the ears, and the thirteenth a hearty fit of laughter. Twenty-five pipes affected his hearing, but witnin an hour after the trial, which had only lasted about 160 minutes, he was able to walk home and go to bed, where he slept so soundly as to wake up fairly fresh and hungry next morning. The point especially to be noted is that during the whole experiment he had no dreams or hallucinations of any sort whatever. Opium smoking is accordingly a failure in this respect. It does not even equal the study of politics as a producer of illusions.—London Telegraph.