The physical effects are equally as di astrous as the financial. Among people past middle age, in easy circumstances, with vigorous constitutions, good food and comfortable surroundings, the drug may used for some time without any apparent deleterious effects. Thia class is only a small percentage of the whole.
Accustomed to the large audiences in the street chapel, Tan, almost without fail, from the pulpit point out the opium smokers, and they are not selected because of their ruddy counteances and stalwart frames, but from the glazed eyes, the dilated pupils, the pale check, the' sunken chest, the stooped shoulders, the swarthy complexion, the stained thumb, the emaciated form, the
pearance. The Chinese sum up the evils spirtless expression nnd the haggard apattending the use of the drug in three words: No flesh, no strength, no money."
An authority says: The average weight of opium-smokers falls considerably about twenty pounds—below the standard for the ordinary healthy man of the same height." Dr. J. Johnston, when in charge of the General Hospital at Shanghai, said: 'Daily observation in hospital and dispensary practice during the past eight years, as well as attentive scrutiny of the health' of opium smokers in all classes of society, abundantly proves to my mind the deleterious influence of opium: smoking on the health, and the serious effect ft has on longevity."
The writer's observation is that with j young men it is attended with rapid loss of 1 strength, and followed by premature death. Phe Chinese proverb says: The opium smoker lives eighty per cent of his natural life i.e. the man who would be expected to "reach sixty, dies at forty-eight, In the medical profession opium is said to considered one of the six principal drugs, but if the "system is previously satur irated' with it, the ordinary dose (or even doubled) has'no effect in various diseases ike dysentery. As a: general rule three or four generations will end an opium-smoking family. Testimony was given before the opium-commission that the families of the former Hong Merchants" at Canton, who controlled the foreign trade, had with one or two exceptions been swept off by smoking. Opium is an engine which pulls a train of evils. Among these evils may be mentioned the use of the hypodermic, for as morphia is not subject to the heavy duty imposed on Jopium it is' cheaper,.and the forearm, amass of ulcers in July, tells of the con stant use in coll weather. Another of the i the Chinese testify, in the number of suicides. Taking life by one's own hand has been prevalent for ayes, and in the case of defeated Generals and chaste widows, the ethical books of China commend the custom, but now the ense with which the narcotic may be obtained, especially in eases of anger, and the knowledge that death is free from. pain, makes suicide a gigantic evil in this land, Many deleterious effects to the physical constitution, some not suitable to be named in print—might be mentioned, but I will content myself with presenting one which the Doctors CALL "coNsrmPATION."
Tt is necessary to call attention to this in order to combat the views of the de-{fenders of the habit. Wo ask what in western lands is the effect of opium on the system? For what class f diseases is it generally used? The Chinese normally are troubled along this line but opium aggravates the evil many fold. The writer, for man's box at the street gate, and his under- the last tivo or three years, has enquired of taker, the constable, collects no fees. The ey-ry opium smoker he conversed with as young man lying on the curb stone with a to his bodily functions. Very occasionally, daily; often once in two days; commonly, from three to five days; not infrequently, once a week; every ten days is mentioned land twice a month is not unheard of while we have a neighbour who, it is said, Keeps a monthly record. Another case of forty days came under our observation, but he died. We would like to put upon the witness stand divers English physicians who advance the theory that opium is anti-malarial in..its tendencies; that the peasants are by the drug fortified against chills and fever, that there is something in the mode of life and climatic surroundings which causes the effects of the opium habit in China to be different from those' which are known to Europe; and that a people who have so little to make life joyful should not be denied this one luxury? I ask, please give your medical opinic this one pointe {f chronic constipnticn is dangerous to the health of Europeans, why should it be helpful to Asiatics This is the prime cause of the Wark, sallow complexion of the opium smoker, the source of his headaches and his " manifold infirmities." We drive a bullet into this "bull's-eye". and ask the, medical advisers of opium to the Chinese to extract
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.