He is about fifty years of age, and
has been a soldier, and after leaving the Service, a gardener. Indeed,
he is now, or was recently, foreman market-gardener at Hadleigh. He
married a hospital nurse, and found out some years after marriage that
she was in the habit of using drugs. This habit he contracted also,
either during her life or after her death, and with it that of drink.
His custom was to drink till he was a wreck, and then take drugs,
either by the mouth or subcutaneously, to steady himself. Chloroform
and ether he mixed together and drank, strychnine he injected. At the
beginning of this course, threepennyworth of laudanum would suffice
him for three doses. At the end, three years later (not to mention
ether, chloroform, and strychnine), he took of laudanum alone nearly a
tablespoonful ten or twelve times a day, a quantity, I understand,
which is enough to kill five or six horses. One of the results was
that when he had to be operated on for some malady, it was found
impossible to bring him under the influence of the anaesthetic. All
that could be done was to deprive him of his power of movement, in
which state he had to bear the dreadful pain of the operation.
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