THE MORPHIA HABIT.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XV, Issue 892, 11 April 1907, Page 21

THE MORPHIA HABIT.

Under the title “The Black Idol,” M. Laurent Tailhade contributes to the Mercure de France a striking article on the alarming increase of the morphine habit in France and other Western countries. After disposing of some misconceptions, such as that morphia produces dreams and visions, whereas its chief primary effect is an extraordinary pleasurable stimulation of the wakeful imagination, the writer speaks of some of the orgies to which the cult of the “elixir of death” has given rise in Paris. The son of. a banker is named as having died in a hideous lodginghouse of the Faubourg St. Honore, after having squandered 20 fortunes, at the end of eight days of uninterrupted morphinisation. It is, however, far from the case that all maniacs of this kind are members of aristocratic clubs or wealthy demi-mondaines like a certain “Queen of the Sahara,” as to whom Dr. Berillon has published his observations. Morphine has, M. Tailhade declares, fewer poets among its victims than alcohol, but more politicans. “Dr. Louveau saw General Boulanger make an inspection in the Elysee Gardens in 1887, at the moment of the Schedule incident. Prince Bismarck only spoke in the Reichs ag after having injected a fairly 'arge dose, and toward the end of his life he used his favourite drug largely. Guy de Maupassant, maniac at once of morphia, ether, and cocaine joined symptoms of general paralysis with toxic delirium in the asylum where he ended his life so miserably. And well-informed persons state that Dr. Babinski sub-, mitted the illustrious Charcot to daily injections of several centigrammes of morphine during the last months of his life.” Alphonse Daudet was another eminent victim. Most of the houses that pretend to cure the habit are either conducted on the lines of a casino, the patients having abundant liberty to obtain il'icit supplies of the drug, or are something very Ike private prisons,- where suicide is not unusual. There are, however, a few sanatoria where, in a month of severe restriction, the victim is wean-, ed of his fatal predilection, and real cures are effected.