Opiophagism, or, Psychology of opium eating / by W.A.F. Browne.

  • William A. F. Browne
Date:
[1875]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Opiophagism, or, Psychology of opium eating / by W.A.F. Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    14/20 (page 12)
    opium-smokers; 17 of these, with 18s. a month wages, spent 24s. on opium ; one, with 12s. a month wages, spent 24s., theft sup- plying the difference. Stimulants in Europe lead to crimes against the person, opium to crimes against property; stimu- lants to violence, opium to depression, cunning, fraud. In Singapore and Penang, of 22 opium-smokers 19 were condemned for offences against property, and only 3 for offences against the person. Opium-smokers constitute 80 per cent, of those confined in the House of Correction, Singapore, for vagrancy and police misdemeanours, hut only 40, or at most 50 per cent., of those in prison for larceny, highway robbery, burglary, and other similar offences requiring boldness and enterprise. These facts have been obtained from a highly coloured and eloquent description of a demoralisation involving nearly one-fifth of a population, only semi-civilised it is true, but otherwise indus- trious and intelligent.* They have been confirmed by all travellers in the same region, and one of the most recent of these gives as a solution of inexplicable conduct, “ True, they smoke opium, they lie without restraint, and whenever opportu- nity offers are dishonest, cunning, treacherous.”*]* They differ in degree, but unfortunately not in kind, from the characteristics of our indigenous gluttons and epicures. Coleridge’s untruth- fulness and disregard of the duties due to himself and others were notorious. He lavished funds contributed by the generosity of friends for his own support, in purchasing his sensual gratifi- cation, and he pretended to sentiments and resolutions altogether incompatible with his conduct and degrading objects. Of those infected with the same contagion whom I have known, all except one, and he was a moderate inebriate, have been untrustworthy, especially in reference to their ruling passion ; given to romancing, exaggeration, wide and wild assertions or absolute falsehood, and have plunged into debt and difficulties in defiance of prudence—even physical necessities. 5A hile I cannot accept the penitential whinings of these peisons as genuine, I believe in their sufferings and recognise in the exhaustion, the prostration of mind and body, tbe sensation of falling to pieces, of sinking to the centre of the earth, the despair of reaching relief by any other means ; as a leliable exposition of their feelings, and as the only palliation of their infatuation. I knew a domestic servant who expended the whole of her wages on laudanum; a theological and haid-woi ting weaver who, although he did not ruin, impoverished those around by his devotion to the drug; and others, belonging even * « On the Habitual Use of Opium.” By Robert Little, Esq., Surgeon, Singapore. Abridged from Journal of the Eastern Archipelago for January 1848. t Thomson, ut supra, p. 17.