Women Addicted to Narcotics.
An ominous sign of the times is the increasing use of narcotics by women. On this point Dr. Norman Kerr writes as follows in Woman:— “Alcohol is the narcotic most frequently used. But I could give you a formidable list of narcotics which women in all ranks of society are daily using: chloral, chlorodyne, ether, chloroform, less used by women in England than in America, sal volatile, eau de Cologne, and so on. I have known ladies addicted to alcohol to drink three bottles of brandy a day. A bottle a day is by no means an uncommon quantity. I have had patients who had habituated themselves to two ounces—nine hundred and sixty grains—of chloral as their daily allowance. Twenty grains of chloral, I may say, is a full medicinal dose. I have treated patients who have been in the habit of swallowing eight ounces of chlorodyne a day; and I have known women who could take a pint of chlorodyne in the twenty-four hours. Both tea and coffee are used in excess. I found a patient insensible in her room one day who had drunk nothing but tea. But she had consumed a pound of tea during the day. Tobacco, in the form of cigars as well as of cigarettes, is constantly resorted to. Thirty cigarettes a day has been the allowance of some of my patients.”