“The proofs are still wanting to show that the moderate use of opium produces more pernicious effects upon the constitution, than does the moderate use of spirituous liquors, whilst at the same time, it is certain, that the consequences of the abuse of the former are less appalling in their effect upon the victim, and less disastrous to society at large, than are the consequences of the abuse of the latter. Compare the furious madman, the subject of _delirium tremens_, with the prostrate debauchee, the victim of opium; the violent drunkard, with the dreaming sensualist intoxicated with opium; the latter is at least harmless to all except to his wretched self, whilst the former is but too frequently a dangerous nuisance, and an open bad example to the community at large.” CHAPTER XIV. FALSE PROPHETS. “If your wish be rest, Lettuce and cowslip wine _probatum est_.” POPE. Before describing any of the imitations of opium, or substitutes for it in any form, it will not be out of place to notice briefly the tinctures in popular use in which that drug forms a prominent ingredient. _Laudanum_ is the spirituous infusion, and contains the active ingredients of a twelfth part of its weight of opium. Scotch _paregoric elixir_ is a solution in ammoniated spirit, and is only one-fifth of the strength of laudanum, containing, therefore, one part in sixty of opium. English _paregoric_ is a tincture of opium and camphor, and is four times weaker still. The _black drop_, and _Battley’s sedative liquor_, are believed to be solutions of opium in vegetable acids, and to possess, the one of them, four, and the other, three times the strength of laudanum. Although some good authorities consider this an exaggerated computation of the strength of the latter two, and that they are not more than half that strength. There are several other pharmaceutical preparations into which opium enters as a component, but to which it is unnecessary to refer. Those already named, as has before been intimated, are used not a little, to still the sounds of those miniature human organs so distasteful to bachelor ears. The practice, unfortunately so prevalent, of soothing infants with preparations of opium, cannot be too strongly deprecated. We are ready to express our surprise that oriental mothers should transfer their cigars from their own mouths to those of their infants, that the helpless little creatures may enjoy the luxury of a suck, while, at the same time, we are inuring them to the use of a far more insidious and deadly poison. Rather let us for the future, when inclined to charge this as a crime upon others, remember that scene which took place eighteen hundred years ago, and the rebuke with which it closed, in words written with the finger upon the ground, “Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone at her.”