CHLORAL AND OTHER NARCOTICS. 649 



tage that might be set forth as an exchange of some good for , some 

 harm. The conclusion I have been forced to arrive at is in brief to 

 this effect : that if chloral hydrate can not be kept for use within its 

 legitimate sphere as a medicine, to be prescribed by the physician 

 according to his judgment, and by him as rarely as is possible, it were 

 better for mankind not to have it at any price. 



I expressed an opinion in 1876 that the use of opium, as a toxical 

 agent to which persons habituate themselves, is dying out in this coun- 

 try. I see no reason to modify that view now. I am quite sure that 

 among the better classes the practice of taking opium is less common 

 than it was formerly, and I believe that chloral hydrate has more 

 than usurped its place. The idea, gathered from one or two local 

 practices, which, like a fashion, come and go, that opium-eating is on 

 the increase among the poorer members of society, is, I believe, equally 

 fallacious. I can discover no warranty for any such a general and 

 sweeping assumption. As to the assertion that those who are by their 

 pledge removed from the use of alcoholic drinks, who are professed 

 abstainers, are more addicted to opium-eating than alcoholic drinkers, 

 the idea is too absurd, and can only have been suggested for the sake 

 of the mischief that might follow a promulgation of the notion that, 

 because one devil is cast out of a man, another must enter that is 

 worse than the first. The facts really tell all the other way. The 

 facts in the main are that those men and Avomen who from principle 

 abstain from one form of intoxicant most resolutely abjure all forms ; 

 and that those who indulge in one form are more apt than the rest to 

 indulge in more than one. In the course of my career I have met 

 with some persons of English society who have indulged in the use of 

 opium ; but I have never met one such who did not also take wine or 

 some other kind of alcoholic drink. Putting the matter in another 

 way, I can solemnly say that in the whole of my intercourse with the 

 abstaining community and few men indeed have been thrown more 

 into contact with that community I have never met with an instance 

 that afforded so much as a suspicion of the practice of indulging in 

 narcotism from opium, or any other similar drug. I have never yet 

 met with an abstainer who was even habituated to the use of chloral 

 hydrate. A few abstainers smoke tobacco, but, as the habit seriously 

 taxes their physical health, most of them in due time forego even the 

 luxury of the weed so soon as they discover its injuriousness. 



The actual opium-eaters of modern society, who form a natural 

 part of the nation as English people, are extremely limited in number, 

 so limited that the mortality returns give no clew to them as a class 

 suffering from the indulgence. I know not either of any physician or 

 pathologist who has made a study of the organic changes induced in 

 the bodies of natives of these islands who have died from the effects 

 of opium. Still there are a few who indulge ; and I fear that among 

 the children of the poor, the infant children, the use of narcotics con- 



