Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 June 1876 — The Secret Use of Pernicious Drugs. [ARTICLE]

The Secret Use of Pernicious Drugs.

One circumstance which should arrest any inclination to take this easy view is the insidious character of the taste for opiates and narcotics. A man goes on consuming opium for years, and nobody, not even his most intimate friend, notices or suspects the fact. If he visibly suffers from its effects, they are pretty sure to be set down kindlyho some obscure malady, and, probably with perfect sincerity, the sufferer himself may take diis view of his case, lie is sure that his doctor does mot understand his constitution; possibly he goes from one doctor to another in a restless search alter unattainable health, and in pursuit of one who fathoms and sympathizes with his peculiar ailments. By and by he meets some physician w’ho penetrates the real reason of al) the years of illness, and who unmasks the secret habit responsible for everything. But unfortunately, in most cases before this revelation takes place, the' appetite has become an irresistible craving, the will has become too feeble " and flaccid to contend with the imperious passion, and the discover}’ generally comes too late to admit of moral reformation. A reference to the experience of commissioners in British Burmah, where opium is much consumed, will illustrate the stealthy and insiduous manner in which a taste for opiates creeps in. The shops where opium is sold are licensed, and formerly a certain fixed quantity of the drug was delivered from the treasury. So long as the number of licenseholders and the quantity supplied were fixed, the apparent consumption was small. But the moment that these restrictions were removed, and that as much, opium was supplied to the dealers as they wanted, the visible consumption increased amazingly. The inference drawn in Burmah—and it is an inference not merely local in its application—was, that it is quite possible for narcotics and opiates to be used in vast quantities, and yet that the fact should be very little known or suspected by those whose business it is to be cognizant of it. It is true that shrewd doctors who visit the wives of factoryhands know indeed what sort of drugs are used in large quantities in order to send the children to sleep while their mothers are at the mill. The busy chemist who dispenses for the poor knows how important a place morphia holds in his pharmacopoeia. Persons who have been brought into contact with those untrained nurses whom Miss Nightingale wishes to replace by an educated class are well aware that their chief remedy and specific, always excepting alcohol, consists of morphia in some favorite form. Sometimes a dim notion of these facts breaks in upon the general public from evidence given at the coroner’s inquest, or from medical disclosures such as those made a few years ago in'the report of the medical officer of the Privy Council, with respect to the prevalent use of narcotics in the manufacturing districts. But we take it that most people are not brought .much into close contact wlUl these ugly 'facts lying in the background of life. As a rule, we give our neighbors credit for being honestly ailing, even when in reality they may be suffering from slow morphia-poisoning. We-sympathizb with the mother of half a dozen sickly children ; and we rarely suspect that their maladies may’ be the outcome of her rash and criminal use of these drugs. Dr. Johnson said, in his haste, that every’ sick man was a rascal. Posterity has hesitated to indorse a maxim for which, it is to be presuihed, something can be said. But assuredly many of us would see far more in the surly moralist ’s saying than the mere wantonness of paradox if it were suspected that not a few of the diseases which now win ifiost sympathy and condolence were the effect of narcotics; if it were thought that many forms of hypochondria and depression and nervous maladies were produced or aggravated by'scefet indulgence in pernicious drugs', and if, in short, it were generally imagined that a great many of the more subtile ailments of life which are the objects of commiseration were to be ascribed to the use of narcotics of any sort. — London Daily News.

Fifteen of the Chicago hotels occupy ground valued at $0,500,001), the, post ot the buildings aggregate $5,200,000, the furnishing of the same $2,500,000. The fifteen hotels contain nearly 4,000 rooms, and will in case of emergency accommodate nearly double that number of guests, without resorting to “cots.” Jn the course of a year these hotels are visited by 400,000 transient persons, and these . persons, aside from mercantile purchases, expend at least $lO each, or $4,000,000. These hotels employ 580 female servants and 478 male servants, making a total of 1,008, who receive in a total sum $35,000 in salaries. These hotels consume annually 1,200,000 pounds of fresh meat, 270,000 pounds of salt' meat, 225,000 pounds of fish, 20,400 pounds of tea, 100,000 pounds of coffee, 230,000 pounds of sugar, 700,000 pounds of flour. The total amount expended annually in the stewards’ line is SBOO,OOO. They combined bum. 4,600,000 cubic feet ot gas yearly, and consume 18,000 tons of coal in the same time.—