558 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[Apbil 28, 1882. 



THE LAMSON CASE. 



AMONG tlio aflidavitB bearing on the cuso of Dr. Lnmson ro- 

 ccivrd by Mr. A. W. Mills, tlio priHonor's solicitor, wan one 

 by Dr. II. II. Kane, wlio has cliarpo of a lio8])ital in New York 

 devoted to tlio treatment of persons habituiitod to the use of opium 

 and other drugs. He is described as author of the following works 

 on the subject: — "The Hypodermic Injection of Morphia; its His- 

 tory, Advantages, and Dangers," Now York, 1879; "Drugs that 

 Enslave ; a Study of the Opium, Morphine, Chloral, and Hashisch 

 Habits," Philadelphia, 1881: and " Opinra Smoking in America and 

 China," New York, 1882. After mentioning that the majority of 

 his patients are and have been physicians or druggists, and 

 dwelling npon the tendency to carelessness in prescribing 

 morphia and other drugs which he had noticed in the case 

 of those who had become accustomed to use large doses 

 of such drags themselves, Dr. Kane remarks that, as regards 

 the question of insanity from the habitual use of opium or 

 its alkaloids, more especially morphia, but little definite is 

 known. Insane asylum reports every year record from one to eight 

 or nine ca.>;es of insanity attributed to the prolonged use of opiates, 

 and physicians in general practice recognise the use of narcotics as 

 a rare, though well-establiished, cause of insanity. A person with 

 an hereditary tendency to insanity, or with a mind weakened from 

 any combination of circumstances, or from actu.al bodily disease, 

 using this drug in largo amount for a considerable time, could hardly 

 escape some unsettling of his mental and moral powers. In the 

 majority of instances the insanity thus produced is chiefly marked 

 by weakening of the will power, entire change of the moral tone, 

 loss of business ability, sundering of family tics, and carelessness 

 about the ordinary duties of life. Actual mania, melancholia, 

 and dementia are probably rare, but have undoubtedly occurred 

 from this cause. Some persons inherit or acquire in after- 

 life an idiosyncrasy which renders them more susceptible to the 

 physical, mental, and moral ill-effects of opium, than obtains 

 in the ordinary individual, and a like idiosyncrasy has been known 

 to lead to death from doses previously considered safe. This is 

 especially true with reference to the hypodermic use of morphia. 

 Certain persons can take large doses of opium for years with 

 impunity, while others, of a peculiarly nervous temperament, are 

 injured out of all proportion to the time the drug has been used or 

 the amount taken. In the majority of cases, habitual users stop 

 short of actual insanity as ordinarily classed, although they mani- 

 fest marked deterioration or total abolition of will, power, and 

 memory. A tendency to lie with reference to their habit, inatten- 

 tion to family and business, and the manifestation of a very decided 

 change in moral tone may be marked. Dr. Kane vrould say, in 

 conclusion, that of all forms of the opium habit, that of hypodermic 

 injection as a rule works the most harm in the shortest time. — 

 Times. 



Ancient Tablets fkom Sippaea, or Sepharvaim. — Nine cases, 

 representing a portion of the results of the researches just on the 

 point of being resumed by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, who left this 

 country for Alexandi'ia and Babylon on the 6th instant, have just 

 arrived in London. The tablets which they contain are, for the 

 most part, small, and, either whole or in a "fragmentary condition, 

 are estimated to roach about five thousand in number." The texts 

 on the tablets are large beyond precedent, as compared with the 

 size of the vehicle on which they ai-e inscribed. The new importa- 

 tion, so far as it has been investigated, consists chieHy of trade 

 documents, and largely of contracts for the sale or supply of corn 

 and other agricultural products. They are dated in the reigns of 

 Samassumnkin and Kandalanu, the Ch'inladanus of the Greeks, who 

 were contemporary with tlie latter halt of the reign of Assurhanipal, 

 or Sardanapalus, of Assyria, about B.C. 616. The tablets are from 

 Aboo-habba, the site of the ancient Sippara, the Sepharvaim of 

 the Old Testament, which is mentioned by Sennacherib in his 

 letter to Hezekiah as one of the cities whoso kings had been unable 

 to resist the might of the Assyrians. Sippara— or Pantibiblon, as 

 the Greeks called it— is mentioned by Berosus as having furnished 

 five out of the ten Chaldean kings o"f the time before the Flood, 

 and as the place where Xisuthrus, or Noah, buried the records of 

 the antediluvian world at the time of the Deluge, and from which 

 his posterity afterwards recovered them. The Hebrew term Sep- 

 harvaim, which is the verbal equivalent of the " two Sipparas," is 

 applied to twin cities, one of which is situated on each side of the 

 river. The Sippara from which the tablets just received in London 

 have been procured, is the Sippara of Samas, Tsipar sha Shamas, 

 or Sii)para of the Sun God, as being a place, par exnellence, where 

 the sun was a chief object of worship. The other Sippara, or 

 Sippara of Anunit, which is supposed to have contributed in ancient 

 times to name the Sepharvaim ' Scripture history, is up to the 

 present moment nnknowu to mo, ;rn investigation. 



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