Drugs

“ So it comes to this, that during three thousand years remedies have been accumulating until between two and three thousand drugs are recorded in the archives of the medical profession, and yet we have the admission of some of the highest authorities on the subject that the nature of disease is still a mystery, that the "modus operandi" of drugs is equally obscure, and that in consequence there is profound uncertainty as to the relation of drugs to the diseases for which they are prescribed.
Can one cause cure another. Can a poison expel a poison? ”

“ If they conclude that drugs are wholesome, let them by all means be swallowed; but if they are proved to be injurious, deleterious and unnecessary, then away with them;—if opiates are innocuous let them be retained, but if they congest the liver, sicken [38] the stomach, and paralyze the actions of the vital organs, the sooner they are erased for ever from the Hygienic Pharmacopeia the better—let them gracefully retire before the improved system of hot stupes, fomentations, and the abdominal compress. ”

“ In this connection I cannot refrain from alluding to one of the greatest dangers of drugs, and that is, their indiscriminate use by the laity. The fakers that pretend to find sovereign remedies for every disease, through the medium of the newspaper and the periodical, of the postal card and the circular, inflame the minds of the people and induct them into indiscriminate drugging. ”

“ It is indeed high time that the medical profession raised, with one accord, its voice in solemn protest against the use of all nerve-obtunding and felicity producing drugs, which are all, without exception, toxic agents, working mischief and only mischief in the human body."—Dr. ”

“ Where the patient suffers from an incurable malady, the use of drugs is not only excusable, but commendable; but instances are all too frequent where the malady is not incurable, but only puzzling and beyond the average practitioner’s power of diagnosis, so that he covers up his ignorance by the administration of pain-deadening substances. ”

“ Among the poisons which must be kept out of the body should be mentioned habit-forming drugs, such as opium, morphine, cocain, heroin, chloral, acetanilid, alcohol, caffein, and nicotin. The best rule for those who wish to attain the highest physical and mental efficiency is total abstinence from all substances which contain poisons, including spirits, wine, beer, tobacco, many much-advertised patent drinks served at soda-water fountains, most patent medicines, and even coffee and tea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Alonzo Clark, who for years stood at the head of his profession as a consulting physician in New York City, is quoted as saying, “All curative agents, so called, are poisons, and, as a consequence, every dose diminishes the patient’s vitality.” I doubt whether this view of drugs would be seriously contested by any of his professional brethren of good standing.
The venerable Professor Joseph M. Smith, M.D., said: “All medicines which enter the circulation poison the blood in the same manner as do the poisons that produce the disease. Drugs do not cure disease.” ”

“ But like that great student of human nature he could not help exclaiming, though in undertone, "'who can minister to a mind diseased.' This is indeed one of the stubborn cases that I often have to deal with—administer drugs and pills ad infinitum when the gentle pressure of a sympathetic hand or the soft tender glances of a bright eye would act more effectually than all the compounds which the London dispensaries can boast of." ”

“ Drugs which hide such signals from us are a more than doubtful benefit. If it were possible for us to suppose that a fraction of a grain of cocaine could afford to exhausted nerve centres, and muscles, the nutriment which they require for their restoration, and at the same time eliminate the poisonous waste products, then it would be reasonable to prescribe the drug for use by all who are overworked, and perhaps suffering from the malnutrition consequent upon, 'nervous dyspepsia,' as well as mere want of rest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Habitual users of drugs or drink are literally human derelicts. The symptoms of their true condition are submerged, and to clear them of [Pg 210] their concealed weaknesses it is necessary to lift them like a barnacle-ridden hulk into the dry-dock for investigation and repair.
I regard as a preferred risk among the victims of the drug habits those who have acquired it through the administration of a narcotic by physicians in time of pain or illness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But neither this combination of drugs nor any other combination known to man can prevent persons, after they are free from their addiction—be it alcohol or morphin—from going out and repoisoning themselves by taking again the drug which has poisoned them and led them on to their habitual intoxication. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ First of all, let it be clearly understood that the addiction which I shall discuss is limited strictly to opium and its derivatives; first, because my own experience is limited to this group and, second, because much that I shall have to say does not apply to all so-called habit-forming drugs to an equal extent, and to some of them not at all. Addiction as thus limited is as true a disease as any with which the human body is afflicted. ”

“ No work could be of more importance to the world of sufferers than one which would put the use of these potentially beneficent, but, alas! often injurious, drugs upon a respectable basis, so that the man who must be given the relief which they alone can offer may no more hesitate to tell his neighbor that he is taking morphine than he now will hesitate to tell his neighbor that he is taking blue mass pills or citrate of magnesia. ”

“ The explosive upsurge in the use of mind-altering drugs by middle-class Americans in the past decade has been a conspicuous and much-discussed phenomenon of our times. Beginning in the mid-1960's and peaking, perhaps, about 1970, the use of marijuana, LSD, and even heroin has taken on the character of an epidemic, not only among the young but among many citizens of mature years. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The drugs mentioned in this drug act and which are often used in patent medicine nostrums are, chloral hydrate, cocaine, heroin, chloroform, alpha or beta eucaine, opium, morphin, alcohol, cannabis indica, or any derivative or preparation of any such substance contained therein.
There are many other drugs sold on the market containing syrups or flavoring materials which may do harm—which may upset the baby's digestion.
Mothers avoid patent medicines. Consult your physician. Never give a baby any sort of medicine to induce sleep. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the past, therefore, professional science-fictionists almost automatically chose a cautionary position for stories embodying drug-related themes, the drugs being symbolic of decay rather than growth, and it is only in the last few years that some writers have felt free to depict the use of certain mind drugs in a positive—even evangelical—light. ”

“ It is not inconceivable that any inhibiting poison or toxin is capable of producing its own addiction-mechanism, and it has seemed to me that my own clinical familiarity with the action and reaction of narcotic, inhibiting, or addiction-forming drugs and of addiction-mechanism upon circulation, glandular and intestinal and other function has been of no little assistance in the interpretation, control and remedy of other chronic intoxications. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every drug capable of producing an artificial exhilaration of spirits, a pleasure which is not the result of the natural play of the vital functions, is necessarily mischievous in its tendencies, and its use is intemperance, whether its name be alcohol, tobacco, opium, cocaine, coca, kola, hashish, Siberian mushroom, caffeine, betel-nuts, mate or any other of the score or more enslaving drugs known to pharmacology. ”

“ 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. ”