The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-05-05
 BREAKING TUE SHACkLES s
 
 EDWIN E. BOWERS, MID @ In the Associated Sunday Magazine E.
BY EDWIN F. BOWERS, MD
the Associated Sunday Magazine
ES


 of your acauaintances, friends, or | business associates in this country. is shackled to a drug ShackIed as was | the murderer of old to the corpse of i his victim. It is actually corpse to l which he fs. chained-a corpse of his | high ambitions. his hopes. and lis business integrity.
 Among the men, women. and even little children of this country there are over one million such victims And their pftiful ranks are being I added to at the rate or one hundred thousand g year.
 For we are now consumipg mora 1 hablt forming drugs than all Europe combined. Our opium consumption Is far greater. per capita than that 1 of Chinarlopg looked upon as the worlds worst of all drug-sodden countries Since 1860 there has been ezn increase of 351 per cent. in the importation and consumption of opium in a1I it's forms as against 13S per cent increase in population. been an annual ixmp portatIon and com sumption in America of four hundred thousand pounds of opium, 75 per cent of which is made into morphin- It is estimated that so per cent of 1his morph1n is used by victims of Khe morph7aa habit Also 50,O00 otinces of cocaine are used iI1icit1y, and in addition to this, hundreds of pounds, 1s even tonss 5of other hypnotics are used We have digged for ourselves this deep and sIippery-saded pit. to s71k3iI into which is as easy as lying. But once in. there are few indeed who climb back to the bright light of npfnaltty again without soul- shastsning struggle
 Tl11s most vicious of all vices q ms it's slave from every stratum Of so- ac1etyfroIn the palace on Euclid savenue or Beacon HfII, to the slun of lthe Barbary Coast or Bell street The beautiful. highly-educated society girl and the gutter-rats gangster: the X prudish New England mother, with a.. couple of centuries or culture be- hind her. and the thick-hpped negro of the Alabama plantationssear of mental deveIopments all are yas- seIs of that grim OverIords Druggery S the Great
 Over two per cent of all the people. 31n this great land bow in allegiance 3to this nlzghtiest Of emp erorsHan era- peror to whom fealty may not be for E sworn except by the Via. Cruxis over beds Of thorns and red-hot coals. siand by caverns where the ravenous Cerberuses of Inferno Turk to drag s tn e1n down. 'Facilis est descensus Y Avsrni IT Easy the descent into Hades. To make this descent more rapfd and certain unscru up uIous= iseoundrels. willing dukes. and poor Ignorant char1atans have conspireds a1fth thes very Evil One himself tit would almost seem
 Even sphysicians and nurses have l been responsible for the creation of fthe drug habit in thousands Of vic tiTns Until a very few years ago, it used to be the custom-now happily Eonored more fn the breach than in the observance--for doctors, fn1ernes and nurses to resort to the hyper derrnic for every slight excuse4or for no excuse The patient had but Ito complain of pain or distress and. without tryin g-much less exnaust ingotner measures for accomplish sling inc same relief, the every ready s5hypo would be produced. So by the time a fracture, or bad case of sartic1l3ar rl1eunatzsna was discharged. ssseH cursd, he was as firmly bound in the subtle. threads of q drug habit las vas Gullfver bound by the Lil-:
 To their credit be it recorded that doctors and nurses are now infIntte- 7y more chary of giving drug ease than they were. While narcotic drugs are perhaps the most be1e- ficfent gifts of prodicaI nature used under proper conditiorls-1f is now recognized that they ulHy. on eccasions become amcng the most ter ,rfoIe scotirges that harass humanity But the most subtle and far-r reach ing of all the devious Inethods em- ployed to kill the man in a human be- ing is the widespread sale of patent medicines. adr9itly advertised to cure almost every disease that aff1icfs long suffering flesh, While an honest, we'll -n1eaning bottle of paxent soope's ~ used to be satisfied to depend for it,s kick" upon it's high content of cheap alcohol. favored and co1ored to meet the educated tastes of patent rnedi- s rine habituates, it has, of late years, become. more refined and spirituele. sss Where the patent medicine manu- 4acturers, formally squandered four or five cents for the alcoholic in- gradients Of their ''Eafxerss ar Re5uvinators.' they now get even more pronounced results-and a snllch naore permanent de1r. arld-by & droppins out the alcohol, and incor- porating instead one or two cents worth Of cocaine, morphine, or some other pernfciOus and dangerous habit forming drug. And the returns. are much more certafn-which greatly reduced the selling cost-becauss yvk1ent patent medicine user grad, uates into a dope fiend the remedy becomes indispensable
 or late years heroine has. beco1n. fJuite a favori1e kicker in paten
 medicines-p particularly in cougt
 mixtures. This is a derivative o
 opium, three times as strong as nor
 phine, and was first advertised abou W fifteen years ago as a non-habft Forming substance having all the use kul qualities of the dangerous habit forming drugs. Many doctor found otIt~-too late in some instance that this was rnis-statem ent
 Not alone. accordingly 10 cIarlata1 Daainass is flesh cured by these n os arums, but the Jaded spirit is re juvenated, melancholy is relieved, an
 depression overcome. And well the, might be-with a cocaine or opium
 derivative content running from one sixteenth to one-qnafter grain to tn,
 dose.
 The Terrors oE Cocaine.
 Cocaine is the one drug, the actio, of which is almost invariably ex