p. 461 | Health and Temperance by Talmage

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 30, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 29.

Health and Temperance.

By Talmage

Hasheesh and Opium.

IN all ages the world has sought out some flower, or herb, or weed to stimulate its lethargy or to compose its grief. A drug called nepenthe was widely used among the ancient Greeks and the ancient Egyptians for narcotic purposes. The Theban women knew how to compound it. You had but to chew the leaves, and your sadness was whelmed with hilarity. But nepenthe passed out from the consideration of the world. Next came hasheesh, which is made from Indian hemp. It is manufactured from the flowers at the top, or workmen, in leather clothing, walk through the fields of hemp, and the exudation from the hemp adheres to the leathern garments, and then this exudation is scraped off and prepared with aromatics, and becomes an intoxicant for the people. Whole nations have been stimulated, narcotized, and made imbecile with this accursed hasheesh. The visions kindled by that drug are said to be gorgeous and magnificent beyond all description; but it finally takes down body, mind, and soul in horrible death.

I knew one of the most brilliant men of his day. Whether he appeared in magazine, or in book, or in newspaper column, he was an enchantment. He could, in the course of an hour's conversation, produce more wit and strange information than any other man I ever talked with; but he chewed hasheesh. He did so first as a matter of curiosity to see whether the powers ascribed to it really belonged to it. He put his hand into the cockatrice's den to see whether it would bite; and he found out to his complete undoing. His father, who was a minister of the gospel, prayed for him and counseled him, and obtained for him the best medical prescription of the best physicians in New York, Philadelphia, Paris, London, Edinburgh, and Berlin. He said he could not stop. A large circle of friends put their wits together to try to rescue him; but he went on down. First his body gave way in pangs and convulsions of suffering; then his mind gave way, and he became a raving maniac; then he went, blaspheming God, into a starless eternity. He was only about thirty years of age. Behold the ravages of the Persian and Egyptian weed called hasheesh.

Opium demands emphatic recognition. It is made, as you know, from the white poppy. It is not a new discovery. We read of it 300 years before Christ; but it was not until the seventeenth century that it began its death march, passing out from the medicinal and the curative, and, by smoking and mastication, becoming the scourge of nations. In the year 1861, there were imported into this country 107,000 pounds of opium; but in 1880, 533,000 pounds of opium. It is estimated that, in the year 1876, there were in this country 225,000 opium consumers; but I saw statistics more recent that said there are probably now in the United States at least 600,000 opium consumers. The fact is appalling. Do not think that they are merely barbaric fanatics who go down under that stroke. Read the great DeQuincey's 'Confessions of an Opium-eater.' He said for the first ten years it gave him the keys of paradise. But it takes his own pen to describe the horrors consequent. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, after conquering the world by his pen, was conquered by opium. The most magnetic and brilliant lawyer of this century fell a victim to its stroke; and there are thousands of men and women—but more women than men—who are being bound, body, mind, and soul to this terrific habit.

There is a great mystery about some families. You do not know why they do not get on. The opium habit is so stealthy, so deceitful, and so deathful. You can cure a hundred drunkards easier than you can cure one opium-eater. I have heard of cases of reformation, but I never saw any. I hope there are cases of genuine reformation. I have seen men who for forty years had been the victims of strong drink thoroughly reformed; but the opium-eaters that I have seen go on and go down. Their cry in the last hour of life is not for God, nor for prayer, nor for the Bible, but for opium. Perhaps there are only two persons outside the household who know what is the matter,—the physician and the pastor. The physician called in for physical relief, the pastor called in for spiritual relief; but they both fail. The physician acknowledges his defeat. The minister of religion acknowledges his defeat.

O man! O woman! Are you tampering with this habit? Have you just begun? Are you for the assuagement of physical distresses or mental trouble, making this a regular resource? I beg you stop. The ecstasies at the start will not pay for the horrors at the last. The paradise is followed too soon by the pandemonium. Morphia is a blessing from God for the relief of sudden pang or acute dementia, but was never intended for prolonged use; and the peculiar sadness of it is, it comes to people in their weak moments. DeQuincey says: 'I took it for rheumatism.' Coleridge says: 'I took it for insomnia or sleeplessness.' What do you take it for? For God's sake do not take it too long.

What is remarkable, they are going down from the highest and wealthiest classes, and from the most fashionable circles of New York and Brooklyn—going down by hundreds and by thousands. Over 20,000 opium-eaters in Chicago. Over 20,000 opium-eaters in St. Louis. In the same proportion, that would make over 70,000 in New York and Brooklyn. The clerk of the drug store says: 'I can tell them when they come in. There is something peculiar about their complexion, something peculiar about their nervousness, something peculiar about the look of their eyes, that immediately reveals them.' In some families chloral is taking the place of opium. Physicians first prescribe it for sleeplessness. Then the patient keeps on because he likes the effect. Whole tons of chloral are manufactured in Germany. Baron Liebig says that he knows one chemist in Germany who manufactures a half ton of chloral every week. There are multitudes being taken down by this habit. Look out for hydrate of chloral! But I am, under this head, speaking chiefly of opium. There ought to be ten thousand pulpits turned into quaking, flaming, thundering Sinais of warning against this narcotic. The devil of morphia in this country will be mightier than the devil of alcohol.—Talmage.