The morning news., 1894-06-17
The BANE OF NARCOTICS.
Ingenuity Constantly at Work Devils
ing New Drugs.
Innocent Means by Which People Ac-
quire the Habit of Using Narcotics.
Doctors to Blame-Dr. L. B. Sperry's
Views.
From the New York sun.

/ able living by giving popular lectures on
/ the subject of narcotics. For more than
! twenty years he has been studying the
/ properties of such drugs and their effects.
| He began his work when the Minnesota
state board of education decided to pro-
| vide instruction on the evil effects of
! strong drink, and he was sent TO coach
/ the teachers and prepare the text books.
Aside from the moral aspect of the subject
he found that both teachers and pupils
were interested in the forms in which va
| rious drugs were prepared and the degrees
and differences in effect. in this way he
was led to give public lectures upon the
subject. Last week he talked before the
Brooklyn Young Mems Christian Associa-
! ton upon Seductive Drugs and Fashion
able Suicide"
While discussing the subject in gen
eral way, DR.. Sperry told Sun reporter
that corps of experts could not follow
| the rapidity with which narcotics were
put upon the market in novel and ingen-
| ious forms.
''We seem to be living in an age" he
said, when drunkenness has become
national disease and is paralyzing the en-
ergies of our people. / mean to apply the
! term drunkenness so as to include the
opium and chloral ha bits and the newer
and more fashionable habit of using the
thousand and one powders and fluids sold
at drug stores under the names of pyrines
and febrines, callsayas, etc. l would
| place the cigarette habit among the most
harmful, because it certainly leads to
mental exhaustion and thence to the use
of more powerful narcotics"
According to DR.. Sperry, the cunning of
| man seems to have been turned of late to-
| 1eo iOT rf IN, ,n-f1
| Gus forms When student at a medical
college he made a specially of chemistry,
and he now employs his spare time in ana
lying new headace powders, cough mix
lures, cigarettes, patent medicines and
candies, INST to see, " he explains, "how
the devil is keepine up with the times
1t was Charles Lamb who said "If
glass of ardent spirits stood before me,
and knew that eternal misery were the
price of drinking it, / could not let it
alone" Nowaday the art of Disgusting
the spirits has progressed so that person
may get the effects, and incidentally
the misery, later, without knowing
exactly what is happening. AS was re-
Gently shown by the health department of
New York, the most popular cough drops
sold to school children are those
which contain the most alcohol DIR.
Sperry says that this is also true of pow
ders and anodynes known as "bracers,''
and that very often the man who takes
Jhem to get over the effects of liquor,
drops the liquor altogether and acquires
the "bracer'' habit This is a mild form
of the morphine habit and after time
the craving is such that the pure drug
alone will furnish satisfaction. The all
night drug store is becoming a more dan
gerous evil to society than the all-night
saloon, DR.. Sperry thinks.
No two individuals are influenced in
precisely the same manner, and to pre-
cisely the same degree by any one of the
narcotics, and no two of the narcotics
produce precisely the same effect on any
one individual. The ingenuity of man is,
| therefore, very busy devising the form of
narcotic that will produce the most de-
sirable effect, An amount of opium-say
| two grains s-which produces in one per-
son profound Inconsistencies, closely
| counterfeiting sleep, may render another
person excitedly wakeful, while third
many not be noticeably influenced by it
| in any way. DIR. Sperry claims that
| physicians have been innocently to blame
| in two ways for the spread of the use of
| narcotics. In the first place, they start
| the morphine or liquor habit by prescrib-
ing anodynes containing the drug for in
! somnia and nervousness; in the second
| place, they have introduced persons di-
rectly to narcotism by utterly mistak-
| ing the composition and effects of new
! drugs said to be harmless.
IA few years ago." said Dr. Sperry
| 1.-THE best physicians of the country were
! in an ecstacy of delight over the discovery
! of chloral AT last they thought they
| had found drug that would soothe irri-
tated nerves and leave no unpleasant eff
fectS, something that would stimulate the
nervous system without deranglng any
OF the organs of the body. The discovery
had been known but a very short time
before chloral was commonly prescribed
by physicians all over the country. There
was terrible awakening when it was
| discovered that the choral habit followed
close upon the physicians prescription. 1
do not think the habit is quite so COM
mon as it was, because chloral fiends soon
take to opium to secure a more perfect
deadening Of the nerves The physicians
who indorsed its use as a method of allay-
| ing pain were nevertheless responsible
for the results. Afterward came the
! discovery of cocaine. and again it was
thought that the ideal drug had been
found for certain purposes. In precisely
the same way the cocaine habit followed.
| The difference is that the cocaine makes
its victims insane instead of producing
the long years of lingering suffering from
tue use of opium.
"Now we have physicians prescribing
new sedatiye powders which are intro
duced almost weekly. 1t is said that
these drugs leave no bad effects. | have
found that in most instances the effects
are not observable for some time A per-
son with a bad headache or troubled
with insomnia may take one of the many
powders that go under the name of
pyrines, etc, and experience very CRATE
ful relief. The pains disappear, long
and refreshing sleep follows, and the per-
son is ready for solid work The same
remedy, which can be purchased at all
drug stores without a physicians pre-
scription, is used again and again when
the nerves are to be quieted There can
be but one end, and that is a complete
shattering of the nervous system,
which leaves an easy route to tn Q
opium and morphine habits The adver-
tsements in newspapers, street cars. and
druggists windows would indicate that
there is an epidemic of mental and ner-
vous exhaustion among the American
people. The cause is not overwork, as
the advertisements say, but the careless
ness and ignorance of our people in using
alleged remedies which aggravate the
trouble and cause q general breaking
down. If il were possible to have a law
requiring an analysis of all these nervines
TO be printed on the labels, there would
be less talk about the disposition of the
people of this country to work themselves
into early graves.