nishing of laudanum by their impoverished parents
to children employed in the cotton-mills of Lanca-
shire may make a plausible show of excuse ; but what
can be said in palliation of practices, as in some of
the lace-factories for instance, where the infant incum-
brances, fruits of the " impermissa gaudia" enjoyed
in their liaisons de convenance, are put upon Godfrey
as precedent to the stronger alcoholic tincture, by
which together they are used up in about six months ?
Dr. Harper says of the Fen districts, where laudanum
is given extensively, that the infant mortality is at an
excessively high figure, and his account is corrobo-
rated by the doctors and the clergy of the parochial
districts all over England.
13.^ pertinent case is from Prof Pitcher. J. W. A.,
a young man at the time and a midshipman in the
Navy (about 1825), had contracted the habit of intem-
perate drinking. His father, with the view to his
reclaiming, sent him into the Indian country in charge
of an attache of the American Fur-Company. Having
reached Sault de St. Marie he had an attack of de-
lirium tremens, and to get rid of the horrors of his
hallucinations he one day made a plunge into the
Falls. Rescued from this peril, he renounced whiskey
for eight years, or during his residence in this region,
having substituted in its place tobacco, of which he
used large quantities.
