FEMALE OPIUM EATERS.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XVI, Issue 202, 25 August 1881, Page 4

FEMALE OPIUM EATERS.

A katioxal hospital is about to be established in the United States for the treatment of intemperance and opiumeating among the women. Among the poor there the habit of opium-eating is becoming common, and many ladies of the wealthier classes are alleged to be " slaves of the drug. " It is very seldom that anyone who has once acquired the habit is able to relinquish it. There are at present many inebriate asylums in the United States ; but these were built exclusively for males, and are at all times filled with the unfortunate victims of drink. It was thought unnecessary to erect asylums for the other 'sex ; but it is now found that women require ' them as much as, if not more than, men. i There can be little doubt that these institutions are of great service to their inmatea ; but the problem yet to be ! solved is not " how to cure a drunkard," ! but " how to prevent a person from becoming a drunkard." According to recent inquiries in Chicago, the vice of opium-eating is evidently one of middle life, the larger number of persons addicted to this bad habit being from thirty to forty years of age. But Dr. Earlo found one lady, aged fifty, who had taken the drug since she was thirteen ; and an aged coaple (seventy and seventy-five years respectively) taking a drachm of morphia each every week whenever chey could get it. It is among the middle'classes that the great major •< ity of opium-eaters are to be found ; and many people reduced from high soc'-al standing seek thi3 consolation. Various reasons are given for taking the drug — such as its stimulative and bappy e2ect,previous acMiction. to drink, unhappy marriage, rheumatism, neuralgia, sickness, loss of property, and so on. But the great majority confess it was prescribed during some disease in which pain was a prominent symptom. Ladies generally use morphia, men of the lower classes gum opium, a few of both sexes use the tincture, while occasionally one | is found taking large doses of paregoric. One widow, aged fifty, buys of one druggist half a gallon every week. A large number of ladies take from on«---third to one grain of morphia daily.