CHLORAL AND OTHER NARCOTICS. 653 



them, have instinctively avoided them with an instigation of common 

 sense that might happily have been imitated by their superiors in 

 wisdom and intelligence. 



Moreover, it has generally turned out that all which is required by 

 man as a necessity for his existence has been in the most signal man- 

 ner provided for him. He is a water-engine, so water is ready at his 

 command ; he is a muscular-engine, so muscle-forming substance is 

 at his instant command ; he is a passive skeleton, so the materials for 

 the skeleton are at his ready command ; he is a receptive organism 

 through his nervous organization, so everything that is wanted for that 

 system is ready prepared. He requires light to bring him into visible 

 communion with the external world, and ere he existed the sun was 

 ready to give him light and to quicken him with heat and motion. 

 He requires sound, and there is the prepared atmosphere ready to 

 vibrate in obedience to his voice. These were all pre-prepared for the 

 man and his life. Is it possible that something more was wanting that 

 he, in course of ages, had to discover ? Suppose, like the lower ani- 

 mals, he had failed to discover, what then had been his fate ? 



To my mind and I wish to be as open to conviction on this point 

 as any one can be I fail to discern a single opening for the use of 

 these lethal agents in the service of mankind save in the most excep- 

 tional conditions of disease, and then only under skilled and thought- 

 ful supervision, from hands that know the danger of infusing a false 

 movement and life into so exquisite an organism as a living, breathing, 

 pulsating, impressionable human form. 



In the argument that these lethal agents are necessities, instinctive- 

 ly selected and chosen to meet human wants, there is no logical se- 

 quence. It is all confusion, assumption, apology for human weakness, 

 exaltation of human weakness, sanction of temporary and doubtful 

 pleasure, compromise with evil, and acceptance of penalties the direst, 

 for advantages the poorest and least satisfactory. But when we turn 

 to the other argument when we reason that these lethal agents induce 

 a physical and mental aberration which they afterward maintain 

 when we but whisper the word toxico-mania, as the exposition of their 

 influence, all is clear enough. We leave the purely natural world of 

 life to enter the aberrant world, and all there is as it would be to eyes 

 from which the scales of superstition have fallen. These agents play 

 no part in natural function or construction, but add a part which is 

 obviously an aberration. If into a steady-going locomotive-engine the 

 engineer infused some gallons of brandy, he would do something that 

 would be conspicuous enough, but he would not thereby play a natural 

 part in the working of that engine. He would only add a part which 

 would be an aberration. There might be more rapid pulsation and 

 motion for a brief period truly, but the pressure would be unequal, the 

 working-gear unsteady, and by much repetition of the same act there 

 might be accident, apoplexy, stroke, even in an engine, and there cer- 



