Druggist

“ When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, which Drug-power mental heals; and according to this faith will the effect be. Even when you take away the individual confidence in the drug, you have not yet divorced the drug from the general faith. The chemist, the botanist, the druggist, the doctor, and the nurse equip the medicine with their faith, and the beliefs which are in the majority rule. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The many widely advertised drug cures derive their prosperity from the desperate desire of the narcotic addict to be cured of the condition which may at any time cause him intense physical suffering. The worst evil of the narcotic situation in the past few years, and especially since the enforcement of restrictive legislation, without provision for complete investigation of the whole situation, for education, and adequate treatment of disease aspects, is the rapid growth and spread of criminal and underworld and illicit traffic in narcotic drugs. ”

“ Serious consideration of drug addiction as a problem of clinical and internal medicine, and of experimental laboratory research is a comparatively new thing to a majority of the medical profession, and of course also to legislators and administrators. We should all remember that no matter how strong we are in our beliefs and theories, there are many others whose experiences and results have caused them to hold just as strongly to opposite theories and beliefs, and that we are all on trial for the validity and extent of practical application of our beliefs and theories. ”

“ The many wrecks of addicts to be seen trying through insufficient supply of narcotic drug, self-poisoned with other drugs which they have purchased, alcohol, bromides, coal tar products, cocaine, and of late hyoscine—their addiction disease unrelieved and undiminished—are sufficient argument against mere reduction of dose, below physical body need. ”

“ The fact that a patient is using an opiate drug, and that he uses, within reasonable limits, a larger or smaller amount of that drug, is a matter of very minor importance as compared with his general functional, nutritional, and metabolic efficiency. This is true as a general proposition in the handling of any case of narcotic drug addiction, and is vastly more true in the handling of cases of other conditions or diseases, operative or otherwise, that are complicated by narcotic drug addiction-disease. ”

“ The tendency of the psychologist and psychiatrist is to analyze him from the viewpoint of mental weakness, defect or degeneration, and to so classify and regard him. The average practitioner of internal medicine, and even the recognized leaders and authorities in this field of medical science will tell you that narcotic drug addiction is a condition to which they have given but little attention and have no clean-cut ideas of its physical disease problems. ”

“ To express this somewhat differently—a narcotic drug addict is an individual in whose body the continued administration of opiate drugs has established a physical reaction, or condition, or mechanism, or process which manifests itself in the production of definite and constant symptoms and signs and peculiar and characteristic phenomena, appearing inevitably upon the deprivation or material lessening in amount of the narcotic drug, and capable of immediate and complete control only by further administration of the drug of the patient’s addiction. ”

“ It has yet to be demonstrated that there is any warm-blooded animal, which following sufficiently prolonged and constant administration of opiate drug, is immune to the development of the symptomatology and constant physical phenomena of addiction-disease.
Color, nationality, social or economic position, age, mental and moral attributes of whatever sort are no bar to the development of the condition. These may influence, of course, the conduct and incidental manifestations of the individual addicted, just as they do in any other condition. ”

“ We shall save much public money, and personal effort and time, and shall save the narcotic addict much suffering and discouragement, and shall add much to human health, competency and happiness when we realize these facts as applied to addiction-disease, and proceed upon them in a spirit of broad humanity and of rational clinical study and remedy of obvious disease symptomatology. Narcotic drug addiction-disease is a definite, and in most cases arrestable disease. ”

“ The drugs chiefly used are cocaine, opium, laudanum, morphine and heroin. These drugs are much more destructive than alcohol. Cocaine and heroin are the worst. It is very difficult to stop using any of them once the habit has been formed. Nearly every "fiend" dies directly or indirectly from the effect of his particular drug. Every one weakens the body so that there is not much resistance to offer to acute diseases. Every one destroys the will power so that a cure is exceedingly difficult. ”

“ The medical profession furnishes more than its proportion of drug addicts. They know the danger of the drugs, but familiarity breeds contempt. If the public but knew how many of their medical advisers, who should always be clear-minded, are befuddled by drugs, there would be a great awakening. One eminent physician who has now been in practice about forty-five years and has had much experience with drug addicts, has said that according to his observations, about one physician in four contracts the drug habit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are very many addicts who have, out of their past experience and study upon themselves, competently controlled their own narcotic-drug-disease during treatment for other conditions, operative or medical. The number of narcotic addicts is not few who have been cared for [Pg 91] medically with nursing attention, or have undergone operations for the remedy of various surgical conditions, have recovered, convalesced and been discharged without the physician or surgeon becoming aware that his patient was addicted. ”

“ Testimony of physicians coming in contact with the addicts and statements of addicts themselves show that those afflicted with this disease express every desire to secure humane and competent treatment and cure and that most narcotic drug users are willing to undergo physical torture and often do voluntarily undergo such torture, in an effort to be rid of their so-called habit. ”

“ To intelligently discuss the reason for the prevalence of drug addictions in this country would necessitate an exhaustive study of national psychology.
“Patent medicines containing small quantities of habit-forming drugs have wrought great havoc with us, for any medicine, containing any quantity of any habit-forming drug, contains it in habit-forming quantity if the dosage is regular. It is not the quantity, but the regularity of dosage which produces drug habits. ”

“ It seems strange that a condition of as powerful influence over body function and metabolism as is exerted by the addiction mechanism of narcotic drug-disease should not long ago have received exhaustive and complete clinical and laboratory study along the lines of its manifestations and influences, as well as along the line of reduction and deprivation of the drug of addiction. ”

“ 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 the conduct of a surgical case or a serious medical case, the indication of paramount importance is recovery from the condition for which the patient applies to the surgeon or physician. All other conditions present should be handled in such a way as to interfere as little as possible with the successful accomplishment of the main issue. The proper control of narcotic addiction-disease mechanism and of its influences upon the patient addicted is the important problem presented by narcotic addiction as met in the field complicating surgical and general medical conditions. ”

“ In a majority of cases by experienced choice of clinical procedure, combined with judgment and technical skill, the arrest of addiction-mechanism and the restoration of the narcotic addict to health and freedom from both opiate need and thought of opiate drug is a matter of assured accomplishment attended by little if any nervous strain and physical suffering. ”

“ Of primary importance, then, if a physician, institutional or practitioner, is to have any success in handling a case of opiate addiction-disease, is his attitude towards his patient—divesting himself of all conception of habit, appetite or vice as explanation of characteristic physical manifestations and symptomatology, and approaching the patient as a man with a definite disease requiring and deserving intelligent clinical handling. The patient will be the very first to mark a physician’s shortcomings. ”

“ The remedy is plain, and the necessity for immediate activity is obvious. Education—scientific medical and lay, administrative and public health education is the lacking element or factor in the solution of the many sided narcotic drug problem. Appreciation of addiction-disease and what it may mean in the individual should be as widespread and as comprehensive as possible and at the earliest possible moment. ”

“ His acquired tolerance for the drug has brought about so great a physical change that deprivation or even reduction of dosage is intolerable. Hundreds of cases where physicians had experimented with the drug with these disastrous results have been brought to my attention.
No one shows less foresight, less appreciation of the danger of tampering with drugs, than the physician himself. I am constantly amazed by the fact that any doctor will take even the slightest risk of becoming a drug-user. That many voluntarily incur the peril passes my understanding. ”

“ The regulation of the narcotic drug traffic of the underworld or “underground” is not the business of the medical profession, and the burden of responsibility for it should not be placed upon the shoulders of the medical profession or the consequences of it made to react upon the head of the honest physician and innocent addiction sufferer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The victims of drug habits who have been led into them through the mistaken methods of the doctor, who first administers the drug to ease acute physical suffering, and by the proprietary medicine or drug store preparation passed out as cure-alls with an indifference to or ignorance of consequences which must remain incredible to those who understand, is infinitely more numerous than the growing group of drug takers led into their addictions by the tendency towards dissipation. ”

“ I believe we would have saved many people from the hell of narcotic drug addiction. I believe if it had not been for the use of the word “habit” that the medical profession would long ago have recognized and investigated this condition as a disease. A man, physician or layman, believes that he can control a habit when he would fear the development of a disease. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Narcotic drug addiction-disease in the man who is vicious or criminal or defective or degenerate should be treated as narcotic drug addiction-disease, as any other disease is treated in the same individual. ”

“ Authoritative bodies with sufficient power and independence might easily institute unbiased review of what is written, and trial and proving out of what is stated by various writers, and give out their findings for the guidance of future work and action. Hospitals and public institutions for the handling of narcotic addicts may be erected. Without comprehension of addiction-disease and full and complete familiarity with its manifestations, the possession of those who work in them, will they accomplish anything of good? ”