Immature Development and Family Degeneracy, i ig

as to utter an articulate sound. The mother during
her gestation (as was in evidence) had taken to mor-
phine, using a drachm a day in the months just pre-
ceding her demise. The child, born before the habit
had become fixed, showed a normal development and
the aspect of general health. A confirmatory case is
by H. Vanarsdale, M.D., of New York. In this in-
stance the parties, both of them, were healthy and
robust by original constitution and by habits of life
too, with the exception that the woman had for a
very considerable period been in the practice of using
morphine regularly and to great excess. An iiifant
born subject to the liabilities had only a very imper-
fect physical organization with weak intellectual in-
dications.
12. Pestilent as opium is upon the brain developed
in its maturity, yet more pernicious, times over, is
the reaction when it falls upon immature years.
Whether the child suck in the poison mediately
through the natural lacteal channels, or whether it
receive the same pure and undiluted as measured
out by the teaspoon, contamination is equally assured.
" Mourir en fleur ou vivre bien petit" — such is the
slippery tenure of life, such the inexorable necessity
imposed. In view of such prospects, what shall be
thought of a fashion obtaining among families of dis-
tinction in China, that of encouraging boys yet within
the age of puberty in' the use of the opium-pipe, with
the fallacious expectation that such habit may per-
chance exert a resistive force against appetites and
indulgences of a more sensual character? The fur-



I20 Opium.
