Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1886-10-14
PHYSiC-TlPPLERS.
Plea for Temperance in the Use Of
Medicinal Preparations.

A Plea for Temperance in the Use Of
Medicinal Preparations.
| One of the most interesting of the
| papers read before the State Sanitary
| Convention was in the form of 4 warn
ing against intemperance in the use of
drugs. The writer, DIR. Frank Wood
bury, of this city, has permitted the
publication of this noteworthy contri-
button to popular knowledge in adj
vance of the annual report of the con-
vention, and it is certainly worthy of
careful study. The habit of taking into
the system drugs of whose ultimate
effects the partaker is either ignorant
| or supremely careless has grown very
common of late among a large class of
people who are usually credited with
more than ordinary intelligence. DR..
| Woodbury's experience leads him to
| the conclusion that it has attained to
such considerable proportions as to
command attention and consideration
from all medical practitioners. He
finds the physic-tippler and medicine
bibber everywhere-not the SOLICITORS
and over-anXious citizen, who, with
every slight cold or sore joint, rushes
off to a doctor for a course of cOnstitu-
tiOnal treatment, nor altogether the
devotees of narcotic and stimulant
drugs, but great mass of people who
use almost every description of real or
pretended medicament without knowl-
edge and without stint. Even the COM
paratively harmless and innocuous soda
water fountain has been diverted to the
use of the physic-tippler, for upon in
qliry DR.. Woodbury. found that power
full tinctures, extracts and eliXirs, as
well as potassium and sodium bromide,
soda mint, sodium bicarbonate, acid
phosphate and aromatic spirits of am
monia, were regularly served out to
patrons of saltwater fountains in the
drug stores. Probably very few of
these customers could give logical or
pathological reason for this form
of indulgence in extemporized
mixtures. which might or might
not prove harmless, but which,
in any case, could not be classed as
remedial agents. For decentralization
is a danger against which the physi-
clan guards no less carefully than
against the earlier stages of an acute
disease. He knows when to admins
ter and when to withhold. But the
slave of habit of dragging often per-
sists until an enfeebled digestion and
collapsed nervous system sound inn
perative notes of warning.
In the immense increase noted of
late years in the preparation of mar
cotic and alkaline drugs, as we'll as in
the continuous acceSsionS to the
amount of money invested in making
patent medicines, DR.. Woodbury. finds
reasons for believing that the practice
of medicine -bibbing is more than keep
ing pace with the growth of wealth
and population. Especially has there
been increase in the demand for those
drugs that act specifically upon the
nervous system. But few years ago
the bromides were little known or
used; at the present time it is esti-
mated that over two hundred tons are
annually used in this country. Choral
hydrate has been in use but fifteen
years, yet its consumption in Europe
and America now amounts to many
hundreds of tons each year, while of
the opium products, of ether, chloro-
form and the iodides, there is a con-
slant flow from a severely-taxed yet
apparently exhaustless source of sup
ply. DIR. Woodbury. tells of a formula
for mixture containing choral which
he saw conspicuously posted behind a
druggists counter. 1t was found on
inquiry that the posting was merely
matter of convenience, since the calls
for the mixture were exceedingly fire.
quent. Alcoholic mixtures he learned
were similarly redemanded, often for
months after the occasion for their use
had passed away. Intemperance in
drugs and medicines, it appears, is no
less common than are other forms of
self-indulgence. philadelphia Record.