members of the toxical family of luxury. Let me rather devote a few pages to the consideration of two or three of the less commonly used agents, with the dangers of which the public mind is not so strongly impressed, and with the facts of which it is not so conversant. I will take three of these as the most important at the present time—namely, chloral hydrate, opium, and absinthe.
The serious truth that chloral hydrate after its introduction into medicine was soon made use of as a toxical luxury has already been adverted to. At the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Edinburgh in the year 1871, I drew earnest attention to this subject. I said—and the words were published in the report of that year (page 147)—"There is another subject of public interest connected with the employment of chloral hydrate. I refer to the increasing habitual use of it as a narcotic. As there are alcoholic intemperants and opium-eaters, so now there are those who, beginning to take chloral hydrate to relieve pain or to procure sleep, get into the fixed habit of taking it several times daily and in full doses. I would state from this public place as earnestly and as forcibly as I can that this growing practice is alike injurious to the mental, the moral, and the purely physical life, and that the confirmed habit of taking chloral hydrate leads to inevitable and confirmed disease. Under it the digestion gets impaired; natural tendency to sleep and natural sleep is impaired; the blood is changed in quality, its plastic properties and its capacity for oxidation being reduced; the secretions are depraved, and, the nervous system losing its regulating, controlling power, the muscles become unsteady, the heart irregular and intermittent, and the mind excited, uncertain, and unstable. To crown the mischief, in not a few cases already the habitual dose has been the last, involuntary or rather unintentional suicide closing the scene. I press these facts on public attention not one moment too soon, and I add to them the further facts that hydrate of chloral is purely and absolutely a medicine, and that, whenever its administration is not guided by medical science and experience, it ceases to be a boon, and becomes a curse to mankind."
This was stated within two years after the substance chloral hydrate came into medical use. If at that time the mind of the public had been as ripe as it is now for the acceptance of the truth, or if I could then have reached the ear of the public more plainly, much evil might have been nipped in the bud. As it was, the warning had little effect, except to expose me to adverse criticism as an alarmist, and the evil has gone on with increasing rapidity and mischief. There is at the present time a considerable community addicted to the habitual use of chloral hydrate on one pretense or another, and a learned medical society has recently framed a series of written questions on the subject, which questions it has felt it expedient to address to members of the profession of medicine generally for their replies.
