The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-05-05

definite sojourn. All men are brave and noble. and all women beautiful and true.
 Among the educated, the intoxtcat- ed. drug-pro5ecte spirit thunders at the doors of high Olympus it flaunts love and makes merry with even the Fates themselves. A fever of sxaIta- ton sweeps through the storehouse of memory. The visionary dreams in epic poems-Homeric in their scope. of all the ages, from Plauttnus and Plato to William James. His lam guage is the souorous thunder of AeschyIEs and Sophocles. Metaphor and hyperbole are to him common speech. He thinks in dithyrambs, and his periods are operations, His tongue drips phrases, sweeter than the honey of Hybla.
 But the cold gray dawn of critical analysis shows his literary eTusfon, musical composition. or his address to haive been monotonous drivle or nonsense of drug-stina ulation- He has flung loose the rein of Reason on the neck of Ruih--aad is gaIloping straight to Perdi ton.
 And then 1t is usually too late to check his headIong course. When to be evident, the habit has fastened itself upon the very soul and is not to bW wrenched loose and cast out without a battle royal.
 The psychological effect Of cocaine is perhaps its most conspicuous and are, almost without exception notort- ous liars Their moral sense is de- stroyed in proportion to their subjec- stion to the habit Their appreciation of, and respect for right and wrong are atrophied and shrive11ed. Where
 
 their drug -engendered needs, they are absolutely without scrupIe. They will steal even murder, if necessary, in order to obtain the narcotic.
 The moral degradation of an addict r--and this applies to all habit-forn- ing drugs, including alcohol while long recognized, has only recently been explained on scientific grounds. We now know that the moral sense departs first because it came last in our evolutionary development The higher cells of the brain-the corti- cal celIs-in which reside the attri- butes that have been nurtured by the gregarious and social life of the race in which the Golden Rule and the ssmine and thine" have their ex- istence- are the first to be drug-dm- paired.
 We stumbled upon this in studying the moral degeneracy of paretics- those afflicted with softening of the brain-in " hich we found that there was distinct correspondence be- tween the loss in moral rone and the degree of degeneration in the cortica1 cells Experience has d8monstr ated a physchica1 degeneration in these same cells of drug add1cts, proving the payscioIog1ca1 basis for their moral loss. Which seems to sub stantiate Browning's assertions that ..lJo soul helps body more than body helps soul" The sensations Allowing the use of cocaine very slightly, according to the individual. The exaltation, which is it's first effect, may, and frequently does, take the form of lswild frenzy sometimes accompanied by the fantastic hallucinations and delusiuns that are associated with Eacute mania
 This is followed by profound de- preston, which furnishes the potent and al1-compeI1fng reason for con tinuing the use of the drug--attempt- ing to overcome. ternporarily. the thing that overcomes it.
 Occasionally. the addict 1mag1neE l that certain people are abusing or 1 prosecuting them, and this excftes his murderous attacks upon uTisuspecting l and entirely innocent victims. This lis particularly true of the negro in the south, whose nervous organism lis very unstable when drug-exciting. He becomes a veritable f1ends h1stins for blood. Many terrible tragedies have occurred because of this. l An interesting phenQmenon con lnected with the action Of cocaine on 1.-the nervous system Is the tenacity oi 1 life of one under the influence of the I drug. Readers Of this magazine vii recall in Push the Health Button l a description of pr. Crile's method oi I cutting off <anoci association''-pre
 
 I cocaine into the course of the nerves l located near the seat of an operation ! We saw how this procedure inhibited the passage of the nerve impulse, anC I prevented thei transmission of thu I sensation Of pain-thereby overcon ing tsshock...i
 The same thing is true in attempt $ ing to .'stop a cocaine-crazed maniac
 Unless pierced directly through tn, l brain or heart, a shot that would xiii or disable normal man will hav
 absolutely no effect upon him. In
 deed, so grave is the menace that thi I resistence induces, that certain off cia1s experienced in these cases, hay taken to carrying weapons of mucl z greater power and heavier cahbre. Cocaine Sniffers
 The ''sniffingss of cocaine by tn
 negro is an important cause Of tn
 alarming increase in crimes Sagatns } women in the South. The stin,uIatin and exciting effects of the drug trans ] form it's victims into satyrs. And tn 2 pitiful part of it is that they are n more responsible. for their best1al act while under the influence than is tiger for killing, or a snake for striL ling. Into their poison flung imagine
 tions no question creeps of right ( 5 Iwrong; and of the gravity of the: 3 outra ge they have no realization.
 This country is rapidly awakenin to the peri1s Of permitting the cocair habit to further develop, and striT ; gent measures are now urged in cI ] der to stamp out the evil. That th z problem is of extreme difficulty ca ! be readily appreciated when it is rt called that an ounce of cocaine--a , amount so trif1ing that it can be cal
 ried in the smallest pocket of a man
 clothes--is sufficient for one thot l sand average doses. This amount : rarelY exceeded in a month, by eve