Morbid craving for morphia (Die Morphiumsucht.) : a monograph founded on personal observations / by Edward Levinstein ; translated from the German by Charles Harrer.

Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Morbid craving for morphia (Die Morphiumsucht.) : a monograph founded on personal observations / by Edward Levinstein ; translated from the German by Charles Harrer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    16/151 (page 4)
    The originators and propagators of this disease are the medical men who, in cases more or less painful and protracted, have advised the patients to themselves use the injection of morphia. They must not be blamed for acting as they did, as it was done in the hope of affording relief to their patients, none of them thinking of the attendant danger. The evil was still further spread by those suffering from craving for morphia, who highly praised it as a remedy of which they knew the beneficial effects. The injections of morphia not only relieve sleep- lessness and pain, but their action at the same time induces a change in the entire system. It produces a state of mental excitement that can only be com- pared to that produced by the use of alcohol. The temper is altered ; depressed persons will become lively ; to the fainting person it imparts strength ; to the weakly it restores energy ; the taciturn become eloquent; shy persons lose their bashfulness ; and the consciousness of power and ability is greatly in- creased. But as soon as the morphia has left the system, a reaction sets in, and the period of great mental and bodily excitement is followed by a state of deep despondency. This narcotic remedy will soon be indispensable to those who have it often injected, as, by doing so, they know that they are able to banish all physical and moral trouble ; hence they resort to morphia as the drunkard to the dram bottle. They drown their ancrer, their domestic sorrows, and their business