The Van Buren Press

Secret Use of Chloroform by Women.

How to enjoy the pleasures of inebriety, and yet to escape the shame of discovery, is a problem which women-especially those of the respectable, not to fashionable, class-have long endeavored to solve. The disreputable woman only yields to the fascinations of gin and boldly avows her drunkenness; but the reputable woman repudiates the coarseness of undisguised liquor and dreads the disclosure of her intemperate propensities.

Various aids to drunkenness have from time to time been adopted, and have enjoyed a temporary popularity. Not to give more than a passing mention to those familiar beverages of abnormally thirsty chambermaids-eau de Cologne and bay rum--there are numerous preparations of sarsaparilla which, ten or fifteen years ago, were the peculiar delight of intemperate but strictly moral women. Bitters succeeded to the place made vacant by the abandonment of sarsaparilla, which had gained an unsavory reputation by the careless frequency with which it was exposed to the gaze of masculine intruders into the boudoir. In its turn, however, bitters became too notoriously a panderer to female thirst to be longer a safe resource, and it became necessary to seek some new and unsuspected stimulant.

At one time there was a prospect that hasheesh would come into general use, but the introduction into the market of a spurious article produced the desired symptoms of intoxication, brought the Oriental drug into complete disgrace. In the absence of anything better, opium, the use of which is only less difficult of concealment than that of alcohol, would doubtless have gained new devotees, had it not been discovered that chloroform was precisely the safest and most convenient agent with which female respectability could intoxicate itself.

The extent to which the habit of the secret use of chloroform prevails to day among all classes of women, from the inmates of the several haunts of Green street to the belles of Fifth avenue and the pupils of fashionable boarding schools, is known to a few except the apothecaries who supply the deadly drug. For deadly it is; and though its poison is as swift as the cobra's, it is at others slow in its vengeance, reaching through years of misery, but always sure and inevitable. We hear with terrible frequency of sudden deaths from chloroform, "taken to allay a headache;" but we do not hear of the wreck of the brain and the ruin of the nervous system which its habitual use surely brings about.

The swiftness with which it produces its dreamy intoxication, and the few apparent traces which it leaves behind, make it a favorite with women who know nothing of its ungovernable force, of its cumulative effects and its terribly dangerous nature. Its use is far more to be deprecated than that of alcohol or opium, the effect of which can easily be foretold. Chloroform, on the contrary, is as subtle and sudden in its wayward vengeance as the most treacherous and dangerous of the women who use it. The dose that was seemingly innocuous yesterday, may, if repeated, bring swift and resistless death to-day; and, though the penalty should be delayed, it is certain to be inflicted sooner or later.

When a year or two ago, a writer charged American women with drunkenness, the charge was easily repelled; for the delicate organization of the refined lady instinctively and notoriously shuns the rude grasp of alcohol. The charge that chloroform is largely used by women is, however, lamentably true. It is generally used in ignorance of its nature and ultimate effects, but the sad disgraceful fact that it is habitually employed to an alarming extent, as an aid to female drunkenness, cannot be gainsayed.-N. Y. World.