RUINED BY DRUGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1920, 4 December 1890, Page 35

RUINED BY DRUGS.

Horrible Example of the Effects of Morphine

and Cocaine.

A man with more than 100 scars on his body lies on a cot at the County Hospital. He is a victim of the use of morphine, cocaine, and other powerful drugs. His story is an interesting one, and as Dr M'Namara says, " He is an excellent subject for a novelist." When an attendant removed the clothing of the patient, the skin of his emaciated form looked like that of a tattooed man. He was black and blue from neck to ankles, the result of five years' use of a hypodermic syringe.

The man's name is George Moyneanx, or Mayneard, a French physician of 35, learned in bis profession, speaking four languages, and a graduate of the University o£ Heidelberg, Germany. He was picked up on a Sunday night at Halsted and Jackson streets. His clothing was old and torn, and he looked like a tramp. He had taken a dose of atropia, one of the deadliest of poisons, and in one of his pockets were found two phials, one containing enough atropia to kill sCmen, and about 15 graius of cocaine in the other. At the hospital Moyneaux at first refused to give his name, but after some persuasion Dr M'Namara secured ifc and a portion of the unfortunate's history.

After graduating at Heidelberg, Moyneaux went to Paris, where he built up a lucrative practice. Several years after establishing himself in the French cupit.al, Moyneaux began to experiment with the use of morphine and cocaine. Ho chose himself to practise upon. He took the drugs in moderate injections, and one day he thought he made a grand disc ivory. He found he could take cocaine with impunity and counteract its effects by taking atropia. This theory has

long ago been exploded by medical men, except that atropia taken with morphine or cocaine will kill the effects of either of the drugs, and leave the patient in the condition he was before he took the poison. However, Moyneaux's experiments ended disastrously, and he fell a victim to cocaine and morphine. Shortly before he fell into the street on the Saturday night he had injected 10 grains of cocaine into his body, and, still believing in his own theory, had taken a dose of atropia. He evidently took too much, as it rendered him unconscious. This was the sad end of his former splendid career in Paris, where ha lost his practice and came to America. Here he sunk lower and lower, evsry cent he could procure going toward the purchase of the only poison that could give him temporary bliss.

Moyneaux suffered untold agony. He was given an injection of two grains of morphine, but this was not l-20th the amount sufficient for him, and he begged and pleaded in four different languages to be given the injector and a bottle of cocaine. The man writhed and twisted about in a frightful manner, and stared like a wild man at those about him. Finally Dr M'Namara bad to tako extreme measures and strap the unfortunate to' the bed. "He will die," said the doctor, " and there is no help for him, he is so far gone. I never before saw such a desperate case." — Chicago Tribune.