patent
medicines contain chloral, bromide and hyoseamus, and they have a
large sale, being bought by persons of wealth, who do not know what
they are composed of and recklessly take them for the effect they
produce.

6. VICTIMS RAPIDLY INCREASING.--"From my experience," said a leading
and conservative druggist, "I infer that the number of what are termed
opium, cocaine, and chloral "fiends" is rapidly increasing, and is
greater by two or three hundred percent than a year ago, with twice
as many women as men represented. I should say that one person out
of every fifty is a victim of this frightful habit, which claims its
doomed votaries from the extremes of social life, those who have the
most and the least to live for, the upper classes and the cyprian,
professional men of the finest intelligence, fifty per cent. of whom
are doctors and walk into the pit with eyes wide open. And lawyers and
other professional men must be added to this fated vice."

7. DESTROYS THE MORAL FIBER.--"It is a habit which utterly destroys
the moral fiber of its slaves, and makes unmitigated liars and thieves
and forgers of them, and even murder might be added to the list of
crimes, were no other road left open to the gratification of its
insatiate and insane appetite. I do not know of a single case in which
it has been mastered, but I do know of many where the end has been
unspeakable misery, disgrace, suffering, insanity and death."

8. SHAMEFUL DEATH.--To particularize further would be profitless so
far as the beginners are concerned, but would to heaven that those not
within the shadow of this shameful death would take warning from those
who are. There are no social or periodical drunkards in this sort
of intoxication. The vice is not only solitary, unsocial and utterly
selfish, but incessant and increasing in its demands.

9. APPETITE STRONGER THAN FOR LIQUOR.--This appetite is far stronger
and more uncontrollable than that for liquor, and we can spot its
victim as readily as though he were an ordinary bummer. He has a
pallid complexion, a shifting, shuffling manner and can't look you
in the face. If you manage to catch his eye for an instant you will
observe that its pupil is contracted to an almost invisible point. It
is no exaggeration to say that he would barter his very soul for that
which indulgence has made him too poor to purchase, and where artifice
fails he will grovel in abject agony of supplication for a few grains.
At th