6. VICTIMS RAPIDLY INCREASING.--"From my experience," said a leading and
conservative druggist, "I infer that the {443} number of what are termed
opium, cocaine, and chloral "fiends" is rapidly increasing, and is greater
by two or three hundred per cent 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 the same time he resorts to all kinds of
miserable and transparent shifts, to conceal his degradation. He never buys
for himself, but always for some fictitious person, and often resorts to
purchasing from distant po