334 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



One would think it was generally known that milk is a peculiarly 

 nutritive fluid, adapted for the fast-growing and fattening young 

 mammal admirable for such, for our small children, also serviceable 

 to those whose muscular exertion is great, and, when it agrees with 

 the stomach, to those who can not take meat. For us who have long 

 ago achieved our full growth, and can thrive on solid fare, it is alto- 

 gether superfluous and mostly mischievous as a drink. Nineteenth 



Century. 



[To be continued,] 



AN EXPEKIENCE WITH OPIUM. 



By S. T. MOETON. 



THE subject of the " opium-habit " is one that recurs with ominous 

 frequency in public print. Whenever touched upon, the inten- 

 sity of interest elicited in the minds of certain readers (alas ! how 

 large a number) would be incomprehensible to one not drawn person- 

 ally to it. That the literature of this subject is mainly very discour- 

 aging and unhelpful to this class is perhaps not the fault of its authors ; 

 but such is uniformly the case. Of innumerable articles in periodicals 

 and books by the dozen which I have read, it must be said that, while 

 the evils of the "habit" ai'e pictured in burning lines, when the dis- 

 cussion of treatment is reached, the habitue is left to believe that, in 

 his case, if it be not impossible of cure, an attempt at total abandon- 

 ment with whatever medical skill he could command would be at- 

 tended with such hazards, and would inflict such tortures, mental and 

 physical, as would be beyond the average power of endurance. 



Unquestionably but a small portion of the general public of 

 those, too, who know something of its blighting evils have any 

 adequate idea of the strength of this " habit," and of the great diffi- 

 culty, or impossibility, in most cases, of unaided cure. The chief re- 

 sponsibility, indeed, with the habitue lies in his initiation rather than 

 in his continuance of the " habit." He can not, like the user of alco- 

 hol or tobacco, by a strong effort of the will shake off his chains. 



A pathetic story has lately come to my knowledge of a young man, 

 an under-graduate in an Eastern college, who had become a victim of 

 the hypodermic use of morphia. He went with his father, who was 

 engaged in the lumbering interest, into the primeval forests of Maine, 

 hoping that during a stay of months with the wood-choppers he would 

 be able to fight out the battle of gradual abandonment successfully. 

 Through a strange fatality, when the party had just arrived at their 

 camping-place, and were transporting their goods across a stream, the 

 case of morphia was broken by an apparent accident and its contents 



