*i 30 per cent.
10
Nil
... Accurate information about opium
con-
過
5; 2
Perloration of intestine
+
pyeestery
womnaga
9; 90 per cent.
:
Statement showing the admission and mortality of prisoners, to jail as well as to hospital with a special reference to opium smokers and eaters, in Mandalay Central Jail during the period 1906 to 1910 both years inclusive.
Lagun
Convicts admitted
"
other
than
opium eaters
and smokers
of
Serial
Year.
enters
and
admitted smokers
to jail.
with percentage
papulation.
"ONT
1900
1,098
Z8
念
over the
Number of opium
ealers and smokera!
admitted to hospital with
percentage
over the
opium eating population.
345; 32 per cout... 10; 31 per cent .....
Complaints for which opium eaters
and smokers were admitted.
Total deaths among
the convicts other
than opiam caters and smokers with
percentage over the
hospital
araissions.
7; 2 per cont4
-Total deaths among opium eaters and smokers with percentage.
REMARES.
Gastroenteritis
TaRouters
Diarrhast
2
1907
086
25
308; 31
14
... | 15; 60
25
25
308; 27
***
*་
4; 16
13
1909
1,029
27
399; 39
3
1908
1,144
9
*
.:.
25; 93
14
*
* 1 * * ****
30; 8
...
* 3 per cent,
sumers cannot be
obtained from re
cords for this year.
Diarrhea
2010/
21; 37
Fever of uncertain origla
Dysentery
latestinal catarrh
Diarrhma. Indigestion
- Mનું મં
Bound warto
Malaria erinED
Epilepsy Erysipelas ***
Potter are
1910
1,030
57
163; 16 .
i
Tuberculosis of bone
Aukylostoma Dysentery
Pneumoola
6:24 per cent.
Superintendent of Central Jail, Mandalay.
P. K. TARAPORE, Captain, I.M.S.,
11
No. 1078, dated the 27th May 1911.
From--CAPTAIN W. S. JAGOB SHAW, M.B., I.M.S., Superintendent, Lanatic Asylum, Rangoon,
To-The Inspector General of Civil Hospitala, Burma,
With reference to paragraph 1 of your letter No. 5084-Confidential; dated 12th May 1911,
I have the honour" to state :-
1. The numbers of admissions to this Asylum during the past six years, in which the gauge of the insanity' has been traced to opium, morphia or cocaine are shewn in the subjoined
table.
Year..
1905
Opium.
1.
1906
***
***
1
1907
***
1908
1909
**
1910
***
Morphia.
1
Cocaine.
1
1
1
***
1
1
2
***
2
2
kek
L
5
+M
**
***
3
5
480
1*།
2. I have no experience of the effects of any of the substitutes for cocaine, and in fact none of cocaine alone. It appears to me that morphine injectors take to cocaine later on. Almost all the cases of cocainism that I have seen have been complicated with morphinism, and I have come to look upon cocaine as the exciting cause of the mental breakdown in these cases. I have seen no cases of acute morphia or cocaine intoxication in this Asylum; all the cases I note are of the chronic type.
As far as I can judge morphinism is particularly common among the Chinese in Rangoon, though, as you will see from my figures, I have not felt justified in giving it as the cause of insanity in many cases, in fact I have only done so in the cases of patients who have a history, or show signs, of long use of the drug and in a few cases when they evinced a craving för morphia after admission. It is difficult to obtain proof of excessive indulgence in most of these drugs. Morphia is the easiest to detect as it is generally taken hypodermically, the site of injection is generally the thighs, and the craving for the drug is intense as a rule. On the other hand cocaine is generally taken by the mouth, though I have had one case where the drug was taken hypodermically. Again there does not seem to be any intense craving for cocaine when the patient is deprived of it.
Opium whether smoked or eater does not appear to be a niarked cause of insanity in Burma and I think it is never an' exciting cause, but that on account of the state of malnutrition produced by its continued and excessive use it predisposes to insanity from any exciting cause such as shock, cocaine, etc., in' the same way as it does to certain microbic infections. Phthisis is very common among the victims of the optum (or morphia) babits.
Morphia (and opium) produce their mental effects slowly (except of course in cases of idiosynerday) and the insanity produced-does not tend to dementia with nearly the same rapidity and certainty as does that due to cocaine. Still, as I have stated, cocaine is generally used in the later stages of the morphia habit, and it is difficult to distinguish the effects of one drug from the other. If the cocaine habit is proved, as a rule the prognosis is bad as regards recovery from the attack.
3. To answer the question you ask. My experience is that morphia taking appears to predispose to cocaine, and hence incurable insanity; therefore I presume that it is doing the greatest amount of barm. Cocaine appears to be rarely taken alone. There can be no doubt that the victims of the morphia habit exhibit great loss of will-power and a tendency to petty
orime.
Report by Lieutenant Colonel L. F. Childe, L.M.S., dated 26th May 1911, on the drug habit in Bombay with reference to opium and cocaine.
With regard to opium and morphia, I have found that these drugs are chiefly used by persons who have taken them in the first instance on account of some disease, and that thus the drug habit has been gradually established. For example persons suffering from diabetes, asthma, chronic bronchitis, neuralgia, chronic diarrhea, etc., are likely to have opium prescribed for them and so may become opium-eaters; and I bave seen such instances both
in hospital and private practice. Also some natives of Bombay take a small quantity of opium daily as a stimulant, much as Europeans may take a little alcobol; as far as I have seen opium taken in this way appears to do no harm, and such opium-takers do not increase their dose or become slaves to the drug.
2. With regard to morphis I have not seen it used hypodermically by Indians, but I have met with several such cases among Europeans, and they have usually ended fatally and
Faw
Med
Partle
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