Habits that Handicap: The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the RemedyTowns, Charles Barnes
Science
Habits that Handicap: The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the Remedy
Towns, Charles Barnes
Alcoholism; Opium abuse -- United States; Tobacco use
The victim of drugs, whether he is rich or poor, old or young, good or
bad, deserves the public sympathy in a measure scarcely equaled by any
other class. These folk are sick folk in every way I can possibly think
of. I am attempting to see to it that they are protected by every
safeguard from being victimized. It is my hope that through continual and
untiring education I may force the state medical institutions throughout
the country to assume their rightful responsibility in providing proper
care for drug victims who have slight means or none. I purpose to work
toward the awakening of the medical profession to its responsibility not
only in regard to the growth of new crops of drug-users, but to the care
and relief or sequestration from medical practice of those among its own
members whose condition warrants action.
Perhaps this last step should be the first one to be taken. I have given
it much thought, and can see only one way out of the veritably infernal
tangle in which the medical profession has enmeshed itself. That would
involve a conference between delegates from the medical societies of the
various States to form a plan whereby the medical profession as a whole or
in groups might establish and support an institution or a number of
institutions. These should be backed by the most eminent and conscientious
men in the profession. They should be managed by men fully competent, and
should be open not only to physicians who need treatment and are unable to
pay for it at a private institution, but to all patients, in the certainty
that there they will receive the proper treatment, properly administered,
and at a reasonable charge. I purpose furthermore that every institution
under private management in the United States shall by law be held
responsible for its methods of treatment.
LEGISLATION TO REGULATE SANATORIUMS
There should be the most drastic legislation compelling all physicians and
institutions accepting this class of patients for treatment to report
periodically to the board of health which has jurisdiction in their
district whenever, after a three weeks' medical supervision, they still
require the administration of habit-forming drugs. It is only reasonable
that any institution accepting a patient for this treatment, and failing
to secure favorable results within a period of twenty-one days, should
report the case to the authorities, giving detailed reasons for the
failure of the patient to respond to treatment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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