Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Science
Maintaining Health (Formerly Health and Efficiency)
Alsaker, Rasmus Larssen
Diet; Hygiene
Unfortunately the medical profession is careless and is responsible for
the existence of many of the drug addicts. A patient has a severe pain.
What is the easiest way to satisfy him? To give a hypodermic injection
of some opiate. The patient, not realizing the danger, demands a
pain-killer every time he suffers. He soon learns what he is getting and
then he goes to the drug store and outfits himself with a hypodermic
outfit and drugs, and the first thing he knows he is a slave, in bondage
for life. This is no exaggeration. There are hundreds of thousands of
victims to the drug habit who trace their downfall to the treatment
received at the hands of reputable physicians, who do not look upon
their practice with the horror it should inspire because it is so
common. Doctors do not always bury their mistakes. Some of them walk
about for years.
In spite of laws against the sale of various drugs, they can be
obtained. There are doctors and druggists of easy conscience who are
very accommodating, for a price.
There is no legitimate need for the use of one-hundredth of the amount
of these drugs that is now consumed. A local injection of cocaine for a
minor operation is justifiable, but none of the habit-forming drugs
should be used in ordinary practice to kill pain, for the proper
application of water in conjunction with right living will do it better
and there are no evil after effects. Massage is often sufficient.
To show a little more clearly how some people become addicted to drugs,
let us consider one of the latest, heroin: A few years ago this drug,
which is an opium derivative, was practically unknown. It is much
stronger than morphine and consequently the effect can be obtained more
quickly by means of a smaller dose. Physicians thought at first that it
was not a habit-forming drug, for they could use it over a longer period
of time than they could employ morphine, without establishing the
craving and the habit. So they began to prescribe heroin instead of
morphine, and many a morphine addict was advised to substitute heroin.
All went well for a short while, until the victims found that they were
enslaved by a drug that was even worse than morphine. Now, thanks
chiefly to the medical profession, it is estimated that we have in our
land several hundred thousand heroin addicts. Sallow of face, gaunt of
figure, looking upon the world through pin-point pupils, with all of
life's beauty, hope and joy gone, they are marching to premature death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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