Antimacassar

“ Macfadyen has found that by crushing the microscopic cells of that bacillus, in a manner to be presently explained, the intracellular juices can be obtained apart from the living organism, and that these juices are highly toxic. By injecting them in small and repeated doses into a living animal its blood serum is rendered powerfully antitoxic and bactericidal. That is to say, it becomes an antidote alike to the living typhoid bacteria and to the poison which may be extracted from them. ”

“ When a medical man is called upon to treat a serious case, and instead of boldly addressing himself to the task of combating the symptoms by injecting the antidote irrespective of the quantity he may require until it has conquered the snake-poison, becomes nervous and ceases to inject, when, after what in ordinary practice would be a dangerous dose, he sees but little effect, or if from the first he injects small doses at long intervals, the cause of failure surely lies with him and not with the antidote, which rarely fails where it is properly applied. ”

“ Accordingly, when one knows what poison has been given him, it is not difficult, if recourse be had in time, to cure it, by giving the herb that is antidotal to such poison. At times it has happened that pressure has been put upon the person suspected of having committed the evil to make him bring the antidote, by which it has been remedied. ”

“ We know, however, from the statements of Professor Taylor, [1] certainly by far the first English authority upon the subject, that peculiarities of constitution, or, as they are termed, "idiosyncracies," frequently assist or impede to a very extraordinary extent the action of such drugs. The constitution of Madame R** appears to have been thus idiosyncratically disposed to favour the action of antimony. There can be no doubt that the action of the poison upon her system was very greatly in excess of that which under ordinary circumstances would have been expected from a similar dose. ”

“ Rumphius describes the Dutch soldiers as suffering severely from the effects of this poison in the wars conducted by them, about the middle of the seventeenth century, at Amboyna and Macassar, until a remedy was discovered in the emetic qualities of the Radix toxicaria or bakung. The assertion of the discovery of a remedy throws a doubt upon the whole, for it is surely altogether unreasonable to expect that clearing the stomach by an emetic should prove an antidote to a subtle poison taken into the circulation, and acting upon the nervous system! ”

“ Dr. Maclagan, professor of medical jurisprudence in the University of Edinburgh, was then called to give the result of the chemical examination of the various organs of the body of Mrs. Pritchard, which had been retained for analysis. Antimony, corresponding to one-fourth of a grain of tartar emetic, was found in the urine, in small quantities in the bile and blood, and as much as four grains in the whole liver. Evidence of the presence of antimony was also found in the spleen, kidney, muscular substance of the heart, coats of the stomach and rectum, the brain and uterus. ”

“ The libel alleges that the drugs are in the possession and custody of the Wholesale Drug Exchange, a body corporate, at a numbered place in the city of Washington.
The drugs, it is alleged, are intended to be used for the cure and mitigation and prevention of diseases of man. They are described as follows: 'Twenty packages, more or less, of said drug, labeled and branded as follows, 'Antikamnia Tablets, contain 305 grains of acetphenetidin, U.S. P. per ounce guaranteed by the Antikamnia Chemical Company, under the food and drugs act, June 30, 1906, U.S. Serial Number 10. ”

“ In no other way can the atrocious mistakes that doctors make in prognosis be accounted for. _How many, many times _doctors have declared that a given case must end in death, and they are so cocksure that they are right that they leave the patient to die; some sort of a fake, mountebank or fanatic comes in, the drug disease wears off and in a few days the patient is well. That is exactly the sort of a case Dr. Deaver describes. The faker gets busy with drugs that antidote the morphine poisoning, and occasionally a patient gets well in spite of all. ”

“ However, the samples analysed did point to the apparent source of the fakes and it is unlikely that a larger sample size would have changed the outcome.
Further evidence was also obtained of the potential harm of these criminal products, both to individual patients and public health. A wide diversity of potentially dangerous wrong active ingredients has been described from fake artesunate tablets. The presence of unexpected pharmaceuticals, such as chloramphenicol and metamizole, may lead to inexplicable clinical syndromes such as bone marrow failure. ”

“ Earnestly believing that the continued toleration of secret, semisecret, unscientific or untruthfully advertised proprietary medicines is an evil that is inimical to medical progress and to the best interest of the public, we declare ourselves in sympathy with, endorse and by our best efforts will further, the work which has been, and is being, done by the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association in the attempt to eliminate this evil. ”

“ In many respects the methods of the proprietors of “headache powders” and “anti-pain pills” are less offensive to one’s sense of professional decency than the course pursued by the Antikamnia people. The former have at least never recommended their products as “ethical proprietaries”; they have not used medical men as their unpaid agents; the claims made for their products have been no more exaggerated; and they have not found it necessary, from the requirements of the Food and Drugs Act, to substitute acetphenetidin for acetanilid to avoid giving the lie to their former claims. ”

“ This is as much as has occurred to me to write of Conspiracies, and if I have discussed those only where the sword was used and not poison, it is because both result in the same effect. It is true that those using poison are more dangerous because they are more uncertain; for everyone does not have the opportunity (of employing this means) , and it must be reserved for the one who does have, and this necessity of reserving it for some makes it dangerous. ”

“ So great is the danger of such injurious results, few careful practitioners have cared to adopt the heroic "antipyretic" medication recommended by experimenters, preferring to allow their patients to burn with fever, mitigated only by such simple means as are commonly employed by nurses, than to require them to combat the poisonous influences of a drug in addition to the morbid element of the disease. ”

“ Depending, as they do, for their success on the lure of some subtle drug concealed under a trademark name, or some opiate not readily obtainable under its own label, these are the most dangerous of all quack medicines, not only in their immediate effect, but because they create enslaving appetites, sometimes obscure and difficult of treatment, most often tragically obvious. Of these concealed drugs the headache powders are the most widely used, and of the headache powders Orangeine is the most conspicuous. ”

“ An antitoxin or antidotal substance is the recognized mechanism of their production in most diseases admittedly developing these characteristics. I have adopted the hypothesis, therefore, that an antidotal substance is manufactured by the body as a protection against the poisonous effects of narcotic drugs constantly administered. Such a substance, manufactured in the body, being antidotal to morphine, might well possess toxic properties of its own, exactly opposite in manifestation to those possessed by morphine and other opiates. ”

“ Now, if the cells in your body make antitoxin when you have diphtheria, it is probable that antitoxin is the very thing needed. And if you can help these cells by giving them antitoxin, ready-made, does it not seem a reasonable thing to do? People who give the name of poison to a substance which is known to have saved many lives are not worthy of attention. Anything may prove a poison if taken in excess; too much play will prove a poison, and too much work also. ”

“ Why and how does one attack of a certain disease protect against another? When a person is taken sick with one of these diseases, the cells of his body immediately begin to make a substance called antitoxin. We learned something about antitoxin when we were studying diphtheria. In diseases like scarlet fever, measles, and smallpox, in which one attack protects against another, the antitoxin that is formed in the body when you are sick stays there for a long time, in some cases as long as you live. While this antitoxin is present in the blood, the cause of the disease cannot live in the body ”

“ Every time an unbroken protein is introduced into the body it carries with it, and as a part of it, a poison. From the very careless, rash, and unwarranted way in which ‘vaccines’ of most diverse origin and composition are now used in the treatment of disease, this matter certainly cannot be understood or its danger appreciated by those who subject their patients to such risk. It should be clearly understood that all proteins contain a poisonous group—​a substance which in a dose of 0.5 mg. ”

“ At the end of twenty days’ injections they found they could obtain such a large quantity of anti-rabic substance in the serum of an animal, that even 1 part of serum to 25,000 of the body weight would protect an animal. This process differs from that of Pasteur in so far as that in place of promoting the formation of the antidote within the body of the patient, by a process of vaccination with progressively stronger and stronger virus, this part of the process is carried on in an animal, Babes using the dog and Centanni the sheep, the blood serum of which is injected. ”

“ Almost every virulent poison known to man is found in allopathic prescriptions. It is now positively proved by the Diagnosis from the Eye that these poisons have a tendency to accumulate in the system, to concentrate in certain parts and organs for which they have a special affinity and then to cause continual irritation and actual destruction of tissues. By far the greater part of all chronic diseases are created or complicated on the one hand by the suppression of acute diseases by means of drug poisons, and on the other hand through the destructive effects of the drugs themselves. ”

“ Kennedy quickly drew from his pocket the vial which I had seen him place there in the laboratory early in the day. From the doctor's case he selected a hypodermic and coolly injected a generous dose of the stuff into her arm.
"What is it?" asked the doctor, as we all watched her face anxiously.
"The antitoxin to abrin," he replied. "I developed some of it at the same time that I was studying the poison. If an animal that is immune to a toxin is bled and the serum collected, the antitoxin in it may be injected into a healthy animal and render it immune. ”

“ As a preventive against tetanus, in man or in animals, the antitoxin has proved of the very utmost value. This has been shown in a striking way in America. “One of the wounds most commonly followed by lock-jaw is the blank-cartridge wound of the hand common on the glorious Fourth of July. The death-rate from these wounds is appalling. An active campaign has been conducted throughout the medical profession to reduce this mortality. All over the country, surgeons and medical journals have advised the injection of tetanus antitoxin in every case of blank-cartridge wound. ”

“ In the early stages of a disease so insidious as cancer there are always sufficient grounds to base diametrically opposite views of the cause producing the patient's symptoms. In the case of the emperor, of Germany, Mackenzie chose to take the more hopeful view, stating at the time of his first visit to Berlin that it was impossible to decide on the nature of the disease. The English physician doubtless found on reaching the German court that he was the object of some jealousy, and this feeling was rapidly intensified by the aggressive manner which he assumed in self-defence. ”

“ No man can fight two enemies better than one, and, to give drugs to a system already struggling to regain its normal condition, is like tying the hands of a man who is beset by enemies. The truth is, that the real nature of disease is misapprehended by the popular schools of medicine, and until broader views obtain a lodgment among them, it is useless to hope for any alteration or improvement in the antiquated system of drugging. ”

“ Respondent's interest in avoiding the unwarranted administration of antipsychotic drugs is not insubstantial. The forcible injection of medication into a nonconsenting person's body represents a substantial interference with that person's liberty. ”

“ I shall say nothing of the secrecy of the poison method, of the chance which still exists, in spite of modern diagnosis, that the illness induced by it will pass for one arising from natural causes. This is ground traversed so often that its features are as familiar as those of one's own house door. Nor shall I say anything of the ease with which, even in these days, the favourite poison of the woman murderer, arsenic, can be obtained in one form or another.
One hears and reads, however, a great deal about the sense of power which gradually steals upon the poisoner. ”

“ Macfadyen's main bacteriological work was on the intracellular juices or endotoxins of certain bacteria. While some germs such as those which produce diphtheria and tetanus give off poisons as they grow, others, such as those responsible for cholera and typhoid fever, retain their poisons, which are therefore known as endotoxins. In order to obtain these endotoxins Macfadyen froze bacteria by means of Sir James Dewar's liquid air to a temperature of - 190° C, and then ground up the bacteria thus rendered brittle. ”