494 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



salts used for the preservation of dead animal tissues that are preserved 

 by the process of salting. 



Here, then, was another history of danger from the use of chloral 

 hydrate, a neAV condition of disease to which I drew attention very 

 speedily, and to which I gave the name of chloralism. It is a matter 

 of deep regret to have to report that since the name was given to the 

 disease chloralism has become rather wide-spread. It has not yet 

 spread far among the female part of the community. It has not yet 

 reached the poorer classes of either sex. Among the men of the mid- 

 dle class ; among the most active of these in all its divisions com- 

 mercial, literary, legal, medical, philosophical, artistic, clerical chlo- 

 ralism varying in intensity of evil has appeared. In every one of the 

 classes I have named, and in some others, I have seen the sufferers 

 from it, and have heard their testimony in relation to its effects on 

 their organizations effects exceedingly uniform, and, as a rule, ex- 

 ceedingly baneful. 



The history of chloralism is of interest to the scholar of history as 

 showing how easily a simple scientific discovery may be misapplied 

 when its misapplication ministers to some luxurious desire or morbid 

 inclination of mankind. I give the account at first hand, drawing 

 upon no other experience than my own, an experience which dates 

 from the first commencement of the disease, and which, during all the 

 period, has been probably, in this country, as comprehensive as any in 

 respect both to instances of acute and of slow mischief from this one 

 cause. I could fill easily all the space allotted to me in the present 

 essay by mere narration of observed facts on this topic, were that my 

 object. My object does not lie in that direction, useful and practical 

 though it might be. Let the reader simply remember that from a cer- 

 tain scientific basis of research something specifically social, and either 

 moral or immoral in its tendencies, has occui-red in a brief space of 

 time, and that a singular mental phenomenon has been developed among 

 the most cultivated representatives of a highly cultivated people, and 

 the impression I wish now to indicate by the brief narrative recorded 

 above is supplied. 



This is not the first time in the history of mankind that the same 

 kind of history has been written. There is a previous history, from 

 which dates a great deal that is curious in romance and poetry, and 

 which even to Shakespeare afforded a world of wonder and of story. 



The ancient physicians, dating from Dioscorides himself, tell of the 

 use of a wine made into a narcotic by mandragora. From the leaves 

 and from the root of the Atropa mandragora the ancient physicians 

 prepared a vinous solution which in many respects had the same prop- 

 erties as the chloral hydrate of to-day. This wine, called "morion," 

 was given to those who were about to be subjected to painful surgical 

 operations or to the cautery, so that, ere the sensitive structure was 



