The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1896-02-11
GREAT QUANTITIES USED.

GREAT QUANTITIES USED.
One will not find it an easy matter to
determine just how much cocaine is used
in Chicago, but the quantity is immense,
because it is fad with physic ians just
now and every drug store has it in stock
in larger, or smaller quantities.
Physicians have always been faddists,
Sandrago taught Gil Bias that water and
blood letting were the everything OF
medical art. II 1t is scacrely a quarter of
century since medical science WAS drlv-
en- from it's putatiye impregnable for
tress OF bleeding for every i'll of human
ity. Calomel and jalap ran apaee with
that practice; so that between the deple-
ton of both, lucky indeed was the pa
tient who might recover. 1t Is fact OF
history that George Washington was muir
dered by his physicians, and not taken
away by the cold that beset him. When
that WORTHLESS 81 and abominable drug,
chloral, was discovered medicalsmen went
fairly wild over it. There is scarcely an
Ill to which flesh Is heir that it failed to
relieve or cure, according to their pro-
nouncements. The newspapers and the
medical journals were filled with praises
of it's alleged curative powers. There be
recourse to it, presumably because they
read nothing and have yet to learn tie
we'll established fact that it does not
possess a single remedial virtue. 1t is
soporific, pure and simple, and cannot
produce sleep if the patient be in pain of
any kind. Yet one of tile very popular
nostruIns of the day contains so per cent
of this Internal drug. Within avery re-
cant date most efficient newspaper man
nf (shIobon hr0nni,t fn hia dootb
through this diabolical agency. Choral
'tiends' abound all over the land. Chi
cago is full of them. Not day passes
but that / encounter them upon the
street. They are especially numerous in
higher social life. These unfortunate vio-
Tins of medical ingnorance are so many
in favor of more restrictive
laws in relation to the use and abuse of
toxic drugs
IS IT OF REAL, VALUEs
Cocaine is the successor to ohloral.
While considering the claims of this
drug to public favor I have sought in
vain to find a single ailment that it's adj
niirers have not promised to cure through
its operations. What good it may effect
outside of surgery is deucedly problemat-
AoesAs ~ ohO Acbl dOAy Ullshu III tbuletl duu
ophthalmic surgery and especially in the
latter, it is particularly valuable. Ply
5lolanS are prone TO give it in hay fever
by Installation. No authenticated in
stance is OF record where it afforded other
than the merest temporary relief in such
cases, while personally know of many
who were made confirmed cocaine
'fenuS" as the result of this presorip-
zion. do not deny that remedial virtue
exists in cocaine as a medicine; but |
10 insist that too much is claimed for it,
and that it is given rashly, foolishly, al
most crimina1ly in many, many instances.
Dentists make cocaine "iendS' by their
reckless administration of the alkaloid;
make them and physicians make
them. That there are not more, and God
knows there are enough of them in CHI
cago, is due not to the forethought or
care of the medical Corps, hut to an i'm
punity which large percentage OF men
and women seem 10 have against the on
of toxics Of all kinds. |
meet cocaine fisnds" in all my walks
and rounds. see them drive by il car
riages of their own; | meet them on the
street cars, in the theatres, the churches
aye, now and then I see them in The pull
pit. The eye that has been educated
through suffering, as mine has been, new
or fails to discern the victim of cocaine.
The dilated pupil. cadayerous visage,
drawn and jerky mouth, the wavering,
nervous movements, are sure evidences
of the poison of the hellish drug The
habit is not confined to any age or to one
sex. Had the inclination and did the
conventions OF newspaper ethics permit /
could shook the public by reoitals of in
liyidual instances Of physical and men,
tai wreckage right here in Chicago
through the workings of this sinister
drug. Cocaine ''fiends' usually add
some other poison to their daily habit, as
opium or whiskey. The reason for this
is that cocaine is in no sense a narcotic
Or soporific, although one may super
induce coma by excessive indulgence in
the drug. This is not sleep as sleep is
understood to be, nor is the alkaloid by
any means reliable when thus taken in
EXCESS. Whether taken by snuffing or by
through the mucous mem.
oranes, or directly into the circulation by
means of the hypodermic syringe, or into
The stomach, in either of these four ways
The effect wears off in from thirty to six
~ minutes. As in the case of choral,
hasheesh, etc., the dose has
% be steadily increased, for the reason
that the bodily cells, habituating them
selves to its presence, a larger quantity is
needed to produce the des ired result.
While the dose varies from 1-2O of grain
10 l grain, am acquainted with sfflends'
who use as much as 200 grains and up
wards daily. Because it must be taken
10 frequently, because the effects wear
If SO quickly, the habitue must needs
ook to ohloral, or opium in one of it's
,orms, or alcohol, TO assist him to sleep.
The menace of this drug is terrible. I |
10 not believe it is possible for one to use
it steadily for two years without having
! permanent brain lesion. It has speci-
io action upon the arterial walls of the
brain, and frequently the victim dies as
The result of a rupture of one of those
blood vessels. One of two faces is certain
10 chance to the cocaine habitue-he is
sure to go mad Or to find e speedy grave.
That there is delectation in the use of
this drug in the first stages of the habit
goes without saying. If the afflicted one
we're not lifted and sustained in some
way by it he would soon renounos it,
The excitation is in all cases exhilarating
until time does the work of reconoiling
the nerve cells to the presence of the
deadly salt. Then comes that terrible
law OF retribution. The body ia emaciat-
ed and enervated, the mind weakens the
moral nature collapses, and the poor
victim of somebody's crime is wreck of
manhood, whose hulk can never be re-
stored.
INVESTIGATION NOW IN ORDER.
What has ALWAYS puzzled me ia that in