POISONED SLEEP.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 581, 29 April 1876, Page 3

POISONED SLEEP.

{The Lancet.)

Sleep is a boon commonly regarded as priceless; but it may be purchased too dearly. Macbeth murdered sleep ; a very large aid unhappily increasing number of well-meaning but misguided persons poison it. TII3 medical profession has a keen interest ia the growing practice of habitual recourse to sleep-potions, because it is Avith the connivance of the profession, if not under i,s specific advice, that these soporific poisons are employed. We think the time has coma when some strong means should be takei to clear medicine from the reproach of. courtenancing the lay use of opium, chloroform, chloral, chlorodyne, and the rest o! the sleep-producers. The public should be told that they are playing with poisons. If they escape a so-called "accident " vhich ends in sudden death, they are scared} to be congratulated, since if the body dees not die, the brain is disorded or disorgarised, the mind enfeebled, and the moral ciaracter depraved, or evils hardly less depbrable than death are entailed. The consideration may be agonising, but it is urgent. The sleep produced by these narcotics or so-called sedatives- let them act as they maT " on the nervous system directly " or "through the blood"—is poisoned.

Their use gives the persons employing them an attack of cerebral congestion, only differing in amount, not in kind, from the condition whicn naturally issues in death. There is grave reason to fear that the real nature of the operation by which these deleterious drugs, one and all, bring about the uncon sciousness that burlesques natural sleep, is lost sight of, or wholly misunderstood, by those who have free recourse to poisons on the most frivolous pretences, or with none save the exigency of a morbid habit. Great responsibility rests on medical practitioners, and nothing can atone for the neglect of obvious duty. The voice of warning must be raised instantly and urgently if a crying abuse is to be arrested, and final loss of confidence in drugs avoided.