A CONVICT WHOSE BEVERAGETIS NICOTINE.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume IX, Issue 24, 11 June 1892, Page 595

A CONVICT WHOSE BEVERAGETIS NICOTINE.

HE USES IT INSTEAD OF OPIUM.

In an American penitentiary lives a prisoner known to bis fellow convicts as * The man with the copper-lined stomach.* He is William Troy, who was sent to the prison about three years ago to serve a term of seven years for burglary, committed in San Francisco. If the stories told about him are true, and they are vouched for by warders and doctors alike, the man has richly earned his unique soubriquet. His stomach is capable of receiving and retaining without apparent injury to his health, some of the most violent poisons known to science. Nicotine, one of the most virulent of poisons, Troy consumes in large quantities every day. When he entered the prison his system was shattered through the habit of opium smoking, to which vice he became addicted in San Francisco. Such a wreck, mentally and physically, had Troy become that he was unable to work, and the initial month of his imprisonment was spent in the hospital. Of course, he could get no opium, and his sufferings were acute. The treatment he received in the hospital so far weaned him from the habit that finally the doctor sent him to the quarries, where he was put at work cutting granite. With the lapse of time the desire to smoke opium returned to Troy, and being unable to procure the drug, the thought of a novel and disgusting substitute suggested itself.

Every three months each convict is given a new clay pipe, and they are allowed to do what they please with those used during the preceding quarter of a year. The quality of t tobacco doled out by the State is not of the best, and the result is that after a pipe has been in constant use for a period of three months the clay is saturated through and through with nicotine. It is Troy’s custom to collect these old pipes from their owners, extract the nicotine and diink it as an ordinary man drinks beer. He first puts the pipes into a mortar and pounds them until they are rendered to a fine powder. To this he adds water, arid boils the mess until all the nicotine is thoroughly soaked from the clay. When this has been accomplished, the brew is allowed to stand until the clay has gone to the bottom, while the nicotine remains on the surface. Troy skims the nicotine from the water, and his substitute for opium is ready to be consumed. He drinks it with apparent relish and complains no more because opium is not iven him. This he has been doing ever since he left the

hospital, and the officers of the prison say he has improved in health.

When the doctor learned of Troy's nicotine drinking habit he examined the convict and concluded that the disgusting brew was not doing any harm, a condition which is accounted for by the fact that his system is so thoroughly saturated with opium that one poison serves to counteract the effect of the other. Moreover, the doctor concluded that if Troy continues the use of the nicotine he will become weaned altogether from the opium habit and will in course of time be able to abandon both practices. Nicotine is not the only poison to the fatal effects of which the stomach of Troy is impervious. In an experimental way he has swallowed enough arsenic, strychnine and verdigris to kill half a dozen men. Nothing seems to harm him. The other convicts say if a cobra bit him the reptile would die, while Troy would not lose a moment’s sleep.