The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-02-25
EFFORTS ID CURE
 COCAINE TENDS Use of the Drug Racks the
 Brain to Pieces IS A STRONG STIMULANT, At first DeIusions Are Marvellous and the Victim lmagines All Kinds }. of Thlngs-Habit Is Often
 Concealed.
IS A STRONG STIMULANT,

New York, February 24-(Special)- Cigarette smoking never in this world caused a death," remarked a New York expert on nervous diseases. Reports to that effect are almost invariably cooked up by sensitive relatives to save their own or the dead persons reputation. Practically all the deaths so frequently mentioned as occurring from cigarette smoking may be guaranteed to be due to the misuse of cocaine or opium in some form"
 The cocaine eater has become of late years an especial object of medical solici- ture. He is not easily detected by out ward symptoms He guards his secret morbidly, his anxiety not to betray him self being pathological symptom.
 Yet the man who takes the massive dose eventually betrays its use in the blood1-ssness of his complexion, his star ing eyes, and, sometimes, by his peculiar jerky gait, as though his foot struck the ground before it was expected to.
 Cocaine. unlike opium. which deadens the sense and sensiblitles, Is mental stimulant, so powerful that it fairly racks IL. It increases the power of mental associa- tion. writer starting upon a theme while under the influence of cocaine feels the desire to branch off upon a thousand tangents. Every other impression in his brain becomes brilliantly relative to the main thought Yet in the cold gray dawn of the morning after, the product of his fantasy is igble-redolent only of delirium.
 The cocaine eater at certain stages of his debauch feels a sudden energy for all sorts of wonderful undertakings. He could and would move mountain Noth- ing is impossible. But the stimulus to great deeds expends Itself in the delicious dream which often becomes modified into a conviction that the deeds have actually been done Under the influence of the drug, the victim is often known to con fuse other persons property with his own. He is also quite likely to neglect promises and business negotiations, supposing that they have been already fulhllsd.
 Deuslons Are Marvellous.
 Cocaine delusions are marvellous. The chief neurologist of the New York Post Graduate Hospital and Medical school, in charge of the clinic for nervous diseases, tells of patient whom he came upon sitting on a floor of a room with a pair of pincers in his hand with which he picked off imaginary bugs as they dropped from the ceiling. Another patient, once a newspaper writer, who applied to the dispensary of the Post-Graduate hos pital, asking to be saved from the de- mon that had him. and who was subse- quently cured by the morphine treatment, used to fire his pistol at ina ginary, nov ing, soft black shapes which threatened to oVerwhelm him. woman who came into the hospital showed the effects of the drug in it's further stages. Her face was drawn into strained lines and her eyes were wide and staring, though she had ada pted itself to 1t so that 1t was like a machine energzed by poison and work ing only under it's stimulus. This Is in- variably the phenomenon to occur when the body is accustomed by degrees to any drug or poison At first intrusion of the foreigner the system revolts and sends warning to the reason in the shape of nausea, headache or. digestive derange- mcnt If this Is disregarded and the enemy admitted again and again, the physical being finally makes truce with the invader-accepts it's terms, even at the price of health and hapipness, if only to insure it's own existence.
 Druggists Worried.
 Druggists, before restrictive laws were passed, used to be worried by a regular clientele of customers who bought their cocaine in powders ranging all the way from half a grain to ten-grain doses, or in capsules, or in crystals, or in tablets Some used it hypodermically, making a solution with water. Physicians have been habitues of the drug to a larger extent than the members of any other profession both because they have been tempted by curiosity and because they