The moral sense is extinguished, persons once honest resort to fraud and theft, if need be, to obtain the drug, till at last health, character, and life itself all become a pitiful wreck.

301.  The Use of Opium in Patent Medicines.  Some forms of this drug are found in nearly all the various patent medicines so freely sold as a cure-all for every mortal disease.  Opiates are an ingredient in different forms and proportions in almost all the soothing-syrups, cough medicines, cholera mixtures, pain cures, and consumption remedies, so widely and unwisely used.  Many deaths occur from the use of these opiates, which at first seem indeed to bring relief, but really only smother the prominent symptoms, while the disease goes on unchecked, and at last proves fatal.

These patent medicines may appear to help one person and be fraught with danger to the next, so widely different are the effects of opiates upon different ages and temperaments.  But it is upon children that these fatal results oftenest fall.  Beyond doubt, thousands of children have been soothed and soothed out of existence.[43]

302.  The Victim of the Opium Habit.  Occasionally persons convalescing from serious sickness where anodynes were taken, unwisely cling to them long after recovery.  Other persons, jaded with business or with worry, and unable to sleep, unwisely resort to some narcotic mixture to procure rest.  In these and other similar cases, the use of opiates is always most pernicious.  The amount must be steadily increased to obtain the elusive repose, and at best the phantom too often escapes.

Even if the desired sleep is procured, it is hardly the coveted rest, but a troubled and dreamy slumber, leaving in the morning the body quite unrefreshed, the head aching, the mouth dry, and the stomach utterly devoid of appetite.  But far worse than even this condition is the slavish yielding to the habit, which soon becomes a bondage in which life is shorn of its wholesome pleasures, and existence becomes a burden.

303.  Chloral.  There are other preparations which have become instruments of direful and often fatal injury.  Chloral is a powerful drug that has been much resorted to by unthinking persons to produce sleep.  Others, yielding to a morbid reluctance to face the problems of life, have timidly sought shelter in artificial forgetfulness.  To all such it is a false friend.  Its promises are treason.  It degrades the mind, tramples upon the morals, overpowers the will, and destroys life itself.

304.  Cocaine, Ether, Chloroform, and Other Powerful Drugs.  Another dangerous drug is Cocaine.  Ether and chloroform, those priceless blessings to the human race if properly controlled, become instruments of death when carelessly trifled with.  Persons who have been accustomed to inhale the vapor in slight whiffs for neuralgia or similar troubles do so at imminent hazard, especially if lying down.  They are liable to become slowly unconscious, and so to continue the inhalation till life is ended.