“This was stated within two years after the substance, chloral hydrate, came into medical use. If at that time the mind of the public had been as ripe as it is now for the acceptance of the truth, or if I could then have reached the ear of the public more plainly, much evil might have been nipped in the bud. As it was, the warning had little effect, except to expose me to adverse criticism as an alarmist, and the evil has gone on with increasing rapidity and mischief. There is, at the present time, a considerable community addicted to the habitual use of chloral hydrate, on one pretence or another, and a learned medical society has recently framed a series of written questions on the subject, which questions it has felt it expedient to address to members of the profession of medicine generally, for their replies. “The persons who become habituated to chloral hydrate are of two or three classes, as a rule. Some have originally taken the narcotic to relieve pain, using it, in the earliest application of it, for a true medicinal and legitimate object, probably under medical direction. Finding that it gave relief and repose, they have continued the use of it, and at last have got so abnormally under its influence that they cannot get to sleep if they fail to resort to it. A second class of persons who take to chloral are alcoholic inebriates who have arrived at that stage of alcoholism where sleep is always disturbed, and often nearly impossible. These persons at first wake many times in the night, with coldness of the lower limbs, cold sweatings, startlings, and restless dreamings. In a little time they become nervous about submitting themselves to sleep, and before long habituate themselves to watchfulness and restlessness, until a confirmed insomnia is the result. Worn out with sleeplessness, and failing to find any relief that is satisfactory or safe, in their false friend, alcohol, they turn to chloral, and in it find for a season the oblivion which they desire, and which they call rest. It is a kind of rest, and is, no doubt, better than no rest at all, but it leads to the unhealthy state we are now conversant with, and it rather promotes than destroys the craving for alcohol. In short, the man who takes to chloral after alcohol enlists two cravings for a single craving, and is double shotted in the worst sense.