Drug

“ A drug may be defined as a substance which modifies the functions of the body or of some organ without sensibly imparting nourishment. This action may be one of stimulation or of depression. A drug is taken for its medicinal action, a food adjunct for its modifying action on food. It is impossible to give a quite satisfactory definition, or to draw sharp distinctions. For example, tea, coffee, alcohol and tobacco are sometimes placed in one group, and sometimes in another, according to opinion of their action and the definition of the terms food adjuncts, drugs and poisons. ”

“ If the action of a drug on the organism is chemical, and if neither the drug nor the organism has changed, the action must be the same. If we still desire to bring about the action and if there is no better way to do it, we must use the drug, and there is still need for the druggist. As a matter of fact, the number of drugs at your disposal today is vastly greater than ever before, largely owing to the labor, and the ingenuity, of the analytical chemist. ”

“ Even more essential are drugs. You know, after all, it is no wonder so many drug fiends and drunkards are created by this life. Now, a doctor who is not over-scrupulous, and he would have to be not over-scrupulous to be here at all, would find a gold mine in the dispensing of drugs and the toning up of drug fiends and others who have been going the pace too rapidly. ”

“ Is it not rather the recognition by the living substance of the lifeless one? The whole theory of drug action is easily explainable on this hypothesis. Drugs—inert substances—do not act upon the living organism, but are acted upon, with a view to their expulsion from the living domain. ”

“ In a particular sense “drug” is often used synonymously for narcotics or poisonous substances, and hence “to drug” means to stupefy or poison. The word is also applied to any article for which there is no sale, or of which the value has greatly depreciated—a “drug in the market.” ”

“ They all believe in the principle of "curing one disease by producing another." In other words, their practice is, to induce a drug disease to cure a primary one, for this is exactly what is done when drugs are administered, in pathological conditions as we shall prove later on by testimony from authorities on medical practice. ”

“ On the other hand, the [Pg 141] majority of illnesses that do not get well without drugs will not get well at all. I have mentioned before the figures which seem approximately true in relation to the cure of disease by drugs. Drugs will cure about six or eight diseases out of about one hundred and fifty diseases known to science. Anybody who fails to give a drug for one of those six or eight diseases is criminally negligent. We should press that drug upon the patient. I do not want anybody to think that I do not believe in drugs. ”

“ Drug use is taken for granted in the future, and new uses are postulated as an outgrowth of a richness of drug experience not available to earlier science-fiction writers, who had neither the personal experience nor the wealth of published data that present-day writers may draw upon. ”

“ No advocate of the drug system has ever advanced a reason that would bear one moment's scientific examination, why poisonous substances should be administered to the sick, and no one will ever be able to give a satisfactory explanation of the theory that underlies the practice, for none exists. ”

“ These drugs, in addition to being harmful, affect the person using them in such a manner that he soon feels the need for the drug. Thus the drug habit is formed,—a condition which has wrecked thousands of lives. ”

“ He is worried and becoming exhausted. It becomes apparent that by continued maintenance of narcotic administration below the amount of physical body-drug-need the very factors are created which have been described as increasing body-drug-need. ”

“ The drug habit tends continually to lower the tone of the system. The more it is indulged in the more apparent becomes the necessity of continuing the downhill course. The majority of persons do not look beyond the fact that they seem to feel better after the use of a stimulating drug, or patent medicine. ”

“ With the return of health, vitality, and normal nutrition and elimination, his body requires still less drug and he voluntarily and without mental struggle and nervous strain reduces the amount of drug used. ”

“ The prevalent drug is heroin; the central figure is the junkie; and the literary emphasis is upon a life style of existential alienation—a Romantic submergence in the drug subculture.
2. The Rock 'n Roll Flower Children of the 1960's. The prevalent drugs are marijuana and LSD; the central figure is the youthful student hippie; and the literary emphasis is upon experiential politics and social philosophy—the emergence of a "counter-culture" which challenges the dominant culture. ”

“ It is only here and there that the practitioner of internal medicine has been sufficiently inspired by scientific interest to seriously consider narcotic drug addiction and to make a clinical study of its actual physical manifestations and phenomena. ”

“ Despite the abundance of scientific and sociological data relating to drug use, there appears to be an implicit taboo about drug data in the arts and in the mainstream culture. (I have received more helpful information about juvenile drug literature from high school teachers than from any of the sophisticated library sources.) ”

“ All drugs are more or less adulterated; and as not more than one physician in a hundred has sufficient knowledge in chemistry to detect impurities, the physician seldom knows just how much of a remedy he is prescribing. ”

“ The nature of such drugs as alcohol, opium and cocaine is to benumb sensation, so that pain is stilled, and the pain, or functional disturbance forgotten for the time, because the nerves are drugged into insensibility. The person feels better while under the influence of the drug, so thinks it is benefiting him.
2. There are people who imagine they have diseases which they do not have; since trained physicians occasionally err in diagnosis, it is not strange if the laity should do likewise. Such persons are always ready to aver that a certain medicine "cured" them. ”

“ In exact proportion as the drug of addiction is present in the body to neutralize or oppose some antidotal poison, is the patient free from withdrawal symptoms and from physical craving for the narcotic drug. ”

“ One of the most needed achievements in the line of practical remedy is the admission of narcotic drug addiction-disease to its legitimate place as an accepted part of the practice of internal medicine and the stimulating of education concerning it among medical practitioners, medical students and nurses. ”

“ Save in New York State, the man or woman with a sheep-skin—the doctor, the druggist, or the nurse—remains virtually a free-lance, permitted to create the drug habit in others or in himself or herself at will. ”

“ Although the mid-1960's saw the most concentrated use of drugs in the American culture recorded in our history, it was not until the present decade that writers began to deal with spiritual and psychological explorations of drug experience as a way of continuing that Romantic visionary quest through the interior flights of chemically-stimulated fantasy. ”

“ But the worst of it all is that through the carelessness of physicians, and sometimes through their criminal pretentions, habits are formed for certain drugs, such as cocaine, opium and its products, chloral and alcohol, which enslave their victims, weaken their vitality, and invite disease. I think I do not exaggerate it when I say that the drug habit, no matter how induced, is a menace to the American people. ”

“ Drugs whose effects are achieved through amplified or extended bodily sensation-response, perhaps analogous to marijuana in our society.
Drugs as Reality-Testers: Drugs which permit the user to penetrate the "real" realities beyond the surface manifestations of daily life. ”

“ If anything has been demonstrated conclusively concerning narcotics it is that the methods of the past, legal, administrative, and medical, have not solved the narcotic drug problem, nor controlled the narcotic drug situation, nor been successful in the handling of the narcotic drug addict. ”

“ For a time that attempt may prove successful, but the patient becomes a slave to his drug, and, till frost sets in, one of the most nauseous of all medicines has to be applied from week to week, and generally in increasing doses. ”

“ Consider the quantity of proprietary medicines taken in this country, some of them harmless, some of them good in some cases, some of them injurious, but generally taken without advice and in absolute ignorance of the nature of the disease or the specific action of the remedy. The drug-shops are full of them, especially in country towns ”

“ "Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief." ”

“ Many of these workers have considered the possibility that their results may have been influenced by suggestion, or of bias towards results which were to be expected theoretically, and some have show that effects similar to those following the adminstration of a drug may be the consequence of the administration of a wholly inactive substance which is supposed by the subject to be the drug in question. ”

“ Drugs cause physical and emotional dependence. Users may develop an overwhelming craving for specific drugs, and their bodies may respond to the presence of drugs in ways that lead to increased drug use. ”

“ During my early attempts with the commonly known and too frequently routinely followed procedures of sudden deprivation, gradual reduction and special or specific treatment, etc., my patients beginning with the best intentions in the world, often tried to beg, steal or get in any possible way the drug of their addiction. ”

“ Idiosyncrasies to Drugs.—In the absorption and the assimilation of drugs idiosyncrasies are often noted; in fact, they are so common that we can almost say that no one drug acts in the same degree or manner on different individuals. ”

“ Drugs classed as similar are by no means alike in action; laxatives, tonics, carminatives, diuretics are combined with distinct advantage, economy of dose, enhanced effect, potency not obtainable with the single drug. ”

“ Drugs as panaceas Annotation:Narrator is an advertising man who tells how, after a cigarettes-and-lung-cancer scare, researchers discover a cheap, allegedly harmless and non-addictive euphoric drug, and it goes on the market in chewing-gum form as a replacement for cigarettes. ”

“ There should be some way to dissociate entirely, conclusively and finally in the minds of the public the illegitimate and underworld traffic in narcotic drugs from the efforts of the honest physician to practice rational and scientific medicine in the help of the worthy and deserving addict. ”

“ The routine and unintelligent use of the products of these groups of drugs in the treatment of narcotic addiction—under the mistaken impression that they somehow or other have direct curative action upon the disease condition—has been the cause of a considerable mortality and an easily understood opposition among intelligent addicts. ”

“ I shall endeavor to show that the practice of administering drugs to cure disease is a fallacy, and in so doing, I am bound to incur the condemnation of my brother practitioners, who prescribe drugs, and the druggists who vend them. ”

“ Wherever this is the practice, medicine is sure to become a trade, and the people learn to expect drugging, and to consider it necessary, because drugs are so universally given to the patients of the man who gets his living by them. ”

“ One of the statements you hear most frequently is that drugs can never remedy disease, or help in remedying it. Now, I abhor the drugging system of the orthodox medical men; I have talked with them, and heard them talk with one another, and I know that they will mix up half a dozen different substances, in the vague hope that some one of them will have some effect. Even when they know definitely the effects they are producing, they are in many cases merely suppressing symptoms. ”

“ These four pages show at a glance the effects of the three most fascinating and seductive Drugs in the world—Tobacco, Opium, and Alcohol, and which physically, mentally, and morally injure or ruin the greatest number of mankind. ”

“ Vegetarianism, Homœopathy, and Hydropathy have diminished drugging; but if drugs are an antidote to Drugging diminished. disease, why lessen the antidote? If drugs are good things, is it safe to say that the less you have of them the better? If drugs possess intrinsic virtues or curative qualities, those qualities must be mental. Who named them, and what made them good or bad, beneficial or injurious to mortals? ”

“ Perhaps there is nothing more characteristic of the march of intellect of the present day, or more indicative of a healthy tone of mind, than the suspicion with which the public in general, and many physicians in particular, are beginning to regard the use of drugs as curative agents—that chiefest engine of the allopathic physician for the relief of suffering humanity. ”

“ It is convenient to divide drugs and other substances used in medicine into groups according to the part of the system on which they chiefly act, though, as stated above, many drugs act in more than one manner and could come under several groups. ”

“ In other words, drugs have an effect on the body—that we know. We know that certain drugs will put us to sleep, or cause us to vomit, or give us a headache, or take away a headache, or benumb a pain, etc. Everybody knows the effects of castor oil, pepsin, strychnine, salts, sugar of lead, laudanum, paragoric, camphor, iodine, linament, calomel, and certain other drugs in certain cases. ”

“ Still a third class ascribe the deterioration of the race to the increasing use of narcotics, and mainly of opium and tobacco. Every instance of present disease and the use of either of these drugs, in large or small quantities, are considered to be cause and effect. ”