The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1918-01-24
DUPES OF DRUGS.
New York Investigation Develops
Horrible Revelations.

New York Investigation Develops
Horrible Revelations.
What an insidious and terrible
thing is the drug habit has been
demonstrated in the investigation
now being conducted in New York.
A score of fashionably dressed wo-
men, several of them heavy veiled,
voluntarily appeared before the in
vestigating committee appointed by
the authority of the New York legis-
lature and confessed that they were
drug addicts, adding that they had
been bled by unscrupulous physicians
and imposed upon in sanitariums
where they were not cured. A half
dozen men were on the witness
stand. one, mere boy, the others
in the prime of life. One nattily-
dressed business man of about fifty
five years of age left the investl-
cation hurriedly, explaining that he
had to go home and administer the
drug he craved.
One woman whose fingers were
encircled with rings, said that she
was forty years old, but that she
felt as if she had Lived century"
She has been taking morphine for
ten years, following an operation
after which she was given the drug
for ten weeks. She has tried "sty-
lish sanitariums" and been pro-
nounced cured, but the "old cravings
always have come back until she
would "suffer the tortures of the
damned" and beg for narcotics. AT
one sanitarium she was told that
she would be cured in two or three
weeks, but no help was derived.
Another witness, young, hand
some and apparently normal woman,
said that a few years ago her father
broke his leg. The physician to ally
the pain administered narcotics. The
daughter broke down from nursing
him and was accorded like treatment.
The mother then acted as nurse,
broke down, and was given dope" "
Father, mother and daughter today
are addicts and have wasted fortune
of 100000 in vain quest of a cure.
A professional woman "well known to
the public" prefaced her story with
a plea for "a civic and humanitarian
endeavor" to help the "persecuted
Victims of what she considered "a
definite disease" Narcotics ad-
ministered by physicians after a
delicate operation brought her into
slavery" That was in 1908. Two
years later she was told that she was
we'll. In 1912 she became i'll and
hotel physician was called in. He
suggested a hypodermic. She remon'
stated, telling him that she had beer
an addict. He said that there wa:
no narcotic in the drug he gave her
Nine weeks after she discovered that
she had been deceived. She develop
ed all the symptoms of the morphine
slave. She was told that the same
physician "had made addicts o.
scores Of men and women" She
went back. to New York latter three
years of unutterable torment" After
remaining in a hospital severa
months she came forth "a free wo
man, once again." Another woman
"elderly to the point of feebleness'
said she had been taking morphine
since 1889, averaging from 8 to II
grains per day. Have to take thai
much to feel normal you know" she
said. Once she was quite wealthy
but it has all gone to the doctors
and for the drug. She is practi
cally penniless now. The last doctor
she went to, when he found she hac
no money, took her diamond rings.
The National Committee for the
Study and Relief of Drug Addict:
says that narcotics play great par
in recruiting young girls for white
slavery and in keeping them there
It declares that this relation ha:
not been at all appreciated. The
inevitable and intolerable tormen
which follows denial of narcotic
drugs to one who has developed the
disease of narcotic addiction easily
becomes a weapon of coercion ane
bondage"
| George Weston, once movie pro
ducer of note, testified that in 1911
he fell 160 feet in an airplane, break
ings legs, arms and nose. Morphine
was given him and in two month:
h. Moo on odd;ct Ho wont from