FRENCH OPIUM SMOKERS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1694, 25 October 1887, Page 3

FRENCH OPIUM SMOKERS

('• Daily Telegraph.") There Is at present Id the Hospital of the Charity a young non -commissioned officer, as he would be called ia England, who is undergoing treatment as a victim to opium smoking. The soldier, who is a man of education haa given a remarkable account of his experiences as an opium emoker. Ye lays that while m Tonquin or Cochin China one of tbe French penerala caused an order to he issued against the nee of the drug, and this very prohibition wbb the means of several men trying opium smoking through cariosity. The non-commissioned officer went with some comrades to the Binoking.ealoon of a village. There a woman o-rna to him and filled a long pipe with a small ball of what appeared to be a thick brown syrnp, made as consistent as wax. This the soldier was pressed to take, and, placing its bowl over a lamp which was alight, he inhaled what seemed to be the fames of sugar and burnt apples. He was at first reodered ill, but after a second pipe was plnnged into the ecstatio dreamß described by De Qainoey, Baudelaire, and M Paul Bonneiain. He seemed to fbat into a b&th of lukewarm milk, and memories that had long lain burled passed clearly through his imagination. He recollected forgotten melodies, snatches of soDgs, and extracts from favorite authors j but when he awoke from the reverie he was perspiring with pain and fear. After this he kept up the habit for six mnnths, smoking thirty grammes of opium on the day of his departure for France. Tbe man at present looks rather livid, and his general appearance is that of a person who bad been paralysed. It is expected, however, that he will be brought round by the treatment of the hospital physicians. M. iinatole France, who has asked the man for a statement of bis experience, Gays that at the present moment there ia sn o^lum saloon m Montmartre. It is ohiefiy frequented by young artists and Bonlptors, and he himself was allowed by Bpeoial permission to enter a private room, where be saw stretched on a divan lank and livid, one of the beßt known sculptors m Paris, who was slowly poisoning himself with opium owing to tbe death of his wife, whose vision ho was able to oonjure up amid the fumes of the deleterious drug