ABSTRACT
The opium habit is, in civilised countries, indulged in almost exclusively through the instrumentality of the hypodermic syringe. Opium smoking, which has long been a national characteristic of the Chinese, has found a limited number of imitators among the lower strata of society in places where Chinamen have introduced the practice. The use of remedies by hypodermic or subcutaneous injection is an outcome of the British school of therapeutics. The opium habit, in the form of the hypodermic use of morphin, is more general and more on the increase than many think, and is indulged in rather by the refined and educated classes than by the lower orders. An analogous tapering off or weaning plan is adopted in the East in the case of opium chewers, by gradually mixing an increasing proportion of wax with the crude opium, till at last there is more wax than opium in the combined mass.
