ABSTRACT
America is in peril of becoming a nation of opium inebriates. Tens of thousands of hapless devotees bow at the shrine of this seductive goddess, and, from the palace and the poorhouse, the hall and the hovel, is being recruited the increasing host marching downward, with steps, slow but sure, to death or degradation. Dealers in crude opium, and manufacturers of its alkaloids, assure us that the importation of the one and the production of the other are rising rapidly, year by year; so much so regarding morphia, that, at one of our largest manufacturing centres, the supply is said to be insufficient for the demand. A lady in one of the New England States, of high culture and eminent social position, fell a victim after only eight weeks’ daily use of the hypodermic syringe, and underwent ten days’ torture of mind and body ere was broken the last link of the chain that had been unwittingly forged around her.
