FEMALE OPIUM EATERS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2628, 23 August 1881, Page 3

FEMALE OPIUM EATERS.

A national hospital is about to he established in the United States for the treatment of intemperance and opium-eating 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 this drug.” It is very seldom that any one who have once acquired the habit are 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 unfortiinate 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. There can be little doubt that these institutiont are of great service to their inmates ; 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 Earle found one lady, aged fifty, who had taken the drug since she was thirteen ; and .an aged couple (seventy and seventy five years respectively) taking a drachm of morphia each every week whenever they could get it. It is among the .middle clafsscs that the great majority of opium-eaters are’ to be found ; and many people reduced from high social standing seek this consolation. Various .reasons are given for taking the drug—such as its stimulative and happy effect, previous addiction to drink, unhappy marriage, rheumatism, neuralgia, sickness, loss ol property, and so on. But the great majority confess that 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 largo doses of paregoric. One widow, aged fifty, buys of One druggist half a gallon every week. A large number of ladies take from one third to one grain of morphia daily.