Dangerous Sleep Producers
A CABLEGRAM from London, February 7, reads as follows: “Four women patients of the Portsmouth Lunatic Asylum have died suddenly under suspicious circumstances, and it is feared that they were poisoned by an overdose of chloral, administered to them by order of one of the lady doctors on the staff of the institution.” It is not generally understood that the man who swallows a sleeping potion puts himself under the influence of a powerful drug, an overdose of which is capable of destroying his life. Mr. Tyndall died from the effects of taking such a drug. His wife gave him a mixture of chloral to induce sleep; by mistake she administered two teaspoonfuls instead of one, and that giant life went out. It is important for people to understand that these drugs are poisons. The sleep that they give is a paralytic sleep; it is not natural. Under such conditions there is no repair of the tissues, no natural rebuilding of the body. If a person can not sleep naturally, the cause of the sleeplessness must be found and removed. You might as well knock a man senseless with a club as to paralyze him with a drug. It is important that during sleep the body should be just as thoroughly alive as when we are awake. But it is a different kind of life. Animal life rules our waking hours, but organic life is supreme when we sleep. The man who takes drugs for the purpose of putting himself to sleep, goes down to the brink of death; he looks into the grave, and it is only necessary for him to go a little farther actually to step into it.— Australasian Good Health.