Finding pain, “nervousness” and hysteria constantly claiming his attention, and that nothing relieves them so well as opium, or its alkaloid morphia, which is six times the parent strength, the physician resorts to their use more and more freely, expecting as soon as the more distressing symptoms pass away to pursue another and more permanent plan of treatment. The patient, however, having once experienced relief, insists upon the further use of the drug, sometimes feigns illness, in order to procure it, finally obtains some herself, and in guilty secrecy drifts rapidly into the habit. Some physicians are weak enough to place the means of gratifying this morbid appetite directly in the hands of the patient. This is more especially the case since the hypodermic use of the drug has become common. So magical is the effect of this mode of administration, so rapid and forcible the action of the drug, that many persons will not rest content until they possess and are using the instrument. As the affections for which opium and morphine are most commonly used are chiefly found in neurasthenic patients, and as these patients are ever ready to indulge in excesses, in both stimulants and narcotics, it is not surprising that the number of victims to this slavery is daily on the increase, both in town and country. Moreover, nervous affections are on the increase: pain without any very apparent cause, nervousness from the most trivial things. Neuralgias are more common. Insanity also. Suicide is daily more frequent. Those not acquainted with the truth in this matter will be surprised to learn that there are to-day thousands of educated and respectable people in all countries and among all classes, confirmed habituès; slaves to a habit that is more exacting than the hardest taskmaster, that they loathe beyond all else, and yet that binds them in chains that they are wholly unable to break. Everything must give way to this vice. Business is neglected or but imperfectly performed; family ties are sundered; hope, ambition, happiness, self-respect are meaningless words; the one thing that fills the mind is the gratification of this passion, which they loathe, but from which they cannot break.