The St. Johns herald., 1900-10-20
THE CALISAYA TOPER
A Habit That Is Getting a Strong
 Hold in Chicago
Use and Effect of the Powerful Drug When Taken as a StimuIant- Made from Peruvian or
 Cfnchona Bark.


 Calisaya has finally found its way into the drink of the Chicago high liver. The use of the drug in New York city as means of stimulating the stomach of dissipated men and women has al ready attracted attention from physis clans. Authorities of insane asylums have also begun to note the presence of the "calisaya victim," although iI is probable he las been more or less ill existence for great many years past. It is not so very long ago, says a writer in the Chicago Tines-Herald, that it was uncommon in the west to have drinking man order calisaya in connection with his liquor. In fact, he was ashamed to do so if he understood it's use, and generally took it in the privacy of his rooms or through the prescription of lenient physician. Now it is quite fad to mix the liquor and calisaya in the delusion that the body is being permanently assisted and the nerves protected from the evil eff feet of too much stimIlant. l saw the other day the brain of a man who had died from combination of too much whisky and calisaya. A local physician has also called my attention to two cases of men under his treatment for the purpose of being freed from the use of the powerful drug.
 Calisaya. or yellow cinchona bark, in ifc OY, tho system the heart and the brain at about the same time-not quite so quickly as small doses of arsenic would or med- ical doses of strychnia, but quick enough to produce at an early period some form of idiocy in the mind of the user. The thought centers of the brain are quite rapidly eaten out. A tissue is destroyed which under or dinary circumstances ought to last un- til man has passed his sixtieth year. The limbs begin to tremble as the use of the drug increases. There may be more or less uncertainty in speech. Thought, which at first has been quick ened by the influence of the calisaya, grows dull, and the liquor which is taken with it does not serve to quicken it. I am told that cloud seems to pass over the brain, and things are seen by the mental eye as through mist. Of course the drinker who needs his "brace" every 24 hours ascribes the first symptoms of disintegration to the liquor and bad stomach and takes more calisaya. But this simply serves to hasten his end with form of idiocy said to be not quite so painful as that from liquor alone. Men who eat heav- ilv, drink much and take but little ex- ercise are noted as the ones who now publicly absorb calisaya and point to it as a delightful innovation intro duced by their better educated broth CTS of the east. In time their doses of calisaya fail to produce the desired beneficial results. If medical assistance is then desired the victim has in most instances gone so far toward making a little something lower than beast of himself that it is only necessary to write out his death certificate and ascribe the cause to some other reason than yellow cinchona bark,
 Cinchona, or chinchona, is so called after the countess of Chinchon. Chin chon is community in Spain near Madrid. The countess was the vice queen of Peru, who, in 1858, was cured of fever by the use of cinchona bark, and who assisted in making the rem edy known, without regard to all the consequences. The bark from which the drug is made comes from genus of evergreen trees, natives of the Andres from Colombia to Bolivia, growing chiefly on the eastern slopes at an aver age altitude of from 5000 to 5000 feet. Here are found the sources of Peruvian or cinchona bark and quinine. There are about 10 species, but the cinchona bark of commerce is produced by about a dozen. The barks commonly found at any pharmacy are chiefly of three kinds-the ordinary Peruvian bark, calisaya and red cinchona. Ordinary cinchona bark is valuable as remeuy in levers and as a general tonic, but the alkaloids obtainable from the bark have in practice largely taken the place of the bark itself. If the calisaya toper could confine himself to medicinal doses he probably would never suffer any i'll effects, but he absorbs the drug in practically the same quantities as he does his whisky or brandy.
 asked Dr. Frank N. Doud, student of calisayic victims, what particular i'll effect local users of the drug would feel, aside from those nave mentioned. He said that they would be particularly liable to attacks of la grippe, and that this poison in their system would drive the la grippe to the head, with tenn porary or permanent insanity follow ing. A person addicted to the use Of calisaya is much more apt to take Ia grippe in it's severe or fatal form. Dr. Doud noted also that hard drinkers who suddenly ceased the use of liquor eventually take calisaya as a substi- tute and find that they have jumped from the frying pan into the fire. He deplores the use of calisaya in social drinking, because of it's damning eff feet upon the nerve centers. As the habit is rapidly growing in Chicago drinking circles we shall soon have for treatment the calisayic heart, the cali sayic stomach and the calisayic brain, with fit termination in calisayic in- sane asylum or cemetery.
 He Cau0hf On