Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1885 — Certain Death. [ARTICLE]

Certain Death.

“People have very little idea to what an extent this habit of using hypoder-* mic injections prevails,” said a prominent physician, f “Singular that doctors, knowing its effects, should persist in using morphine," said the reporter, flinging out a bait for further revelations. “Not any more singular than that they should drink whisky until death steps in and stops the debauch, but the morphine habit is infinitely more seductive, and more difficult to abandon than whisky drinking. You doubtless know of doctors Who have killed themselves by the bottle. So do I. Now, not many months ago, there died, in Oakland, a physician who was as surely killed by morphine as the poor fellow who died in the House of the Inebriates, Saturday. He took his, also, in the shape of hypodermic injections. He had a large practice, was universally trusted and respected, and not one in 500 of his acquaintances ever suspected that he was a slave to this habit.” “Does it prevail to any extent among women, Doctor ?” “I have had a good many patients of that sex in my own practice-rl think it is next to impossible—l can’t say Jhat it is impossible to cure them. I have in my mind now a lady who resides iu one of the bay counties. She is speckled all over from the use of the hypodermic syringe. I have told her a score of times that she was killing herself, and her friends and relatives have actually gone on their knees to her to abandon this ruinous habit. But it was all of no avail. Why, the very last time I called to see that lady, 1 was in the midst of the most impressive warning I could deliver, and she was apparently listening with tlie utmost attention, and making her mind up to reform, when I noticed a Auspicious motion of her right hand, I grasped her by the wrist, and I’m blest if she was not holding a a hypodermic syringe, charged with morphine, and in the act of treating herself to an injection.l cut my speech mighty short, I tell yon, told her relatives that she was beyond my skill, or powers of persuasion, and left the house.” “How did she acquire the habit?”

“Ok, like most of them, she bad been a sufferer from acute neuralgia, and found relief in morphine. It is a good friend, but a terrible enemy. Never try it, young man, ‘just to see bow it feels,’ or some day you’ll be feeling in your vest pocket for your syringe just as natural as the smoker dives down to see if be has a cigar left.” —Seni Francisco Alta-California. Dixie in Great Favor as a National Air. “That reminds me,” said a veteran of the late war, “of bow I used to feel when I beard the ‘Bonnie Blue Flag’ and ‘Dixie’ played by the bands in the Confederate camps. While the army was besieged at Chattanooga I have lain for five and six hours in one of the holos occupied by the advance pickets on the plain between the Union line at Chattanooga and Confederate line at Mission Ilidge, listening to the bands in the opposing armies. I knewthat if I raised my head or hand there would come a whistling bullet from the sharpshooters on the other side. I knew that for six long hours I must keep wide awake, alert' and watchful, but oiten in the earlier part of the night I have lost myself lying therg in the moonlight listening on one hand to the national airs played by the splendid bands of the Union army, and on the other to the airs played by the Confederate bands. I could heftr the cheers -tbatfollowed—Yankee Boodle’in the Union camp, and the wild shouts that followed ‘Dixie’ in the rebel camp. I studied closely the airs that were most popular to either army, and I often thought in that solitude of advanced picket duty that ‘Dixie’ ought to belong to the ’whole country, Since that time I have heard it played probably a thousand times in the North, and have heard it cheered by Northern people, and I am satisfied that by some process I do not clearly understand, that it has beepme the property of the nation. And I, am glad of it.— Chicago Inter-Ocean':