THE MORPHIO-MANIAC.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1255, 19 March 1886, Page 3

THE MORPHIO-MANIAC.

“It is the height of fashion juat no w ,” wrote the Duchess d'Orleaus iu the time of Le Grand. Monarque, “ for the Parisian ladies to beooms intoxicated just like the men." But the ladies thus written in 1G93 were to be outdone by their descendants of nearly 200 years later. These have succeeded in inventing a mode of inn toxication of their own, and one which is even more fatal im effect, if pen* haps less degrading, than that produced by the too lavish use of in toncating liquors. The sub-cutaneous injection of morphia, first used, by medical men for the alleviation of physical sufferings, has a mania among the women of Paris, who fly to it in the moments of ennui as in hours of grief. Not long ago was recorded the death, after horrible sufferings, of one of the victims of this vice; a woman who had. been beautiful, happy, and respected. She absorbed morphia three or four times an hour, into her system. In the midst of a meal she would rise from table and retire to her room to manipulate the fatal little syringe. ■ The effects of these* absorptions resemble in some degree those of opium eating, A delicious languor pervades the mind, while the body is Wrapped in a pleasant sense of wellbeing. Enchanting visions pass before the tonsciousness. Vague rose-tinted dreams brighten the thoughts. A dreamy happiness for the time exalts the spirit, which feels that it has found its true home. We all think that happiness is ours by right. But the effect soon passes. The dreamer awakes to find the realities of cold, dull, and grey. The reaction magnifies small annoyances into unendurable troubles. The relaxed energies are found unequal to even the smallest exertion. The spirit droops, conquered wholly by the contrast of what now surrounds it, as j compared with the fools’ paradise into which it had strayed. The daily draught of Lethe becomes by degrees an hourly one. The morpho-maniac loses hold on herself. She is as thoroughly lost to her children, her husband, her friends, her home, as though she had been a drunkard for years. The way has been shorter and a little less revolting. The end is the same. When Frank Bucldand was about to have an operation pers formed upon him the surgeon told him that it would be a paiuful one, and suggested the use of chloroform. “ JNo,” was the decided reply, *• I wish to be present at the operation." Balzac, without-.being put to the actual proof as our great naturalist I was, uttered.a somewhat similar remark. “ Were I going to have a leg cut off,” he said, “ I would not be,| chloroformed. 1 would never abdicate ■my ego.” But the morphio maniac j resigns her ego, and can scarcely be 1 said to be present herself as the great drama of her wretched life unrolls j itself. More dreamy, more unreal, j more clouded becomes the mind, as the fatal doses are more frequently taken. The action of the drug on the brain tissue produces the usual results,such as we see them; sadly • developed' in the habitual drunkard. The truthful becomes a liar. The neat grows slovenly. The once tender mother is now indifferent and careless ; initahle almost to insanity in the intervals between the periods of helpless iutoxi cation. Her outbreaks of instability are followed by a dull sense of remorse. Her perception of her own degradation causes her a vague pain. Both drive her again to have recourse to the syringe with its fatally fascinating contents. The - grief anyl .re., proaches of friends, the loss of her own self-respect, the misery of her lucid movements, all seem to diivc her back to the drag that is lief happiness and her ruin. The victim of morphia loses all power of will, and when that has gone she drifts like a rudderless ship to the inevitable end. Seldom has a morph io-raaniac been reclaimed. Dr Levenstein, a German who has published h.s observations upon this fashionable vice, declares that no one who has passed the Hist stage has ever been rescued from the final horrible death. This comes iu the form of an aggravated attack of delirium tremens. Frightful hallucinations take the place of the rosy dreams the poison produced in its initial phases. Hideous imaginings and a horrible sense of indefinable dread, of intangible terror, fill the mind. The thoughts grope in a frightful chaos of dark bewilderment and gloom. In agonies, both mental and physical, the wretched life flickers out. Tho number of victims to this repulsive vice are yearly increasing, and it is among the rich and tho great ones of the earth that they are to be found. It is to be feared that its ravages arc not wholly confined to our excitable

and impulsive neighbors. English doctors are beginning to he aware of it, and have little difficulty in recogs nising the symptoms ; the wandering glance, the absent manner, the look of dazed imbecility, the careless dress, and tbe heavy indolence of the movements.

Occasionally, in the very first stages of the disease, if so it may bo called, the sufferer feeds that it is stronger than she is, and longs for Some place of repentance where she might be kept forcibly from the small bottle imp that claims her; some retreat whore, under careful supervision, she may regain her abdicated self command.

In America such places are to be found for the cliusoinauiac, and it would appear fiom the reports ot such institutions that they are productive of real, and permanent good In'the home it has always Iveon iound impossible to prevent the victim , of-drink or of drugs fiom obtaining what she craves. The subtlety that marks this terrible dailing oVercbhies every diffi culty. There is always some one who may be bribed, tq fetch what is so ardently desired. • But in retreats where patients of this sort are received a certain amount of liberty is perfectly compatible with safety from terap.tatioq .The knowledge that it is impossible to obtain intoxicants of | afty kind soon brings with it its own ■ natural .sequence; of resignation to circumstances. The oraving'*diminishes. The mind regains its lost balance. The will begins to reassert itself. Self-resjiect slowly returns. The mental vision .becomes clear, and the consciousness is aghast at the sight of the abyss from whicli the suf« fever has been turned hackjustiu time.