“Run to the doctor; run to the minister; run to the plumber; run anywhere so long as you run far enough and fast enough,” answered Dr. Strong with a smile. “A mile a day at a good clip, or three miles of brisk walking would be the beginning of a readjustment. Less food more slowly eaten and no strong liquors would complete the cure in nine cases out of ten. The tenth case needs the doctor; not the newspaper-and-drug-store pill.” “But all patent medicines aren’t bad, are they?” asked Mrs. Clyde. “Some have very good testimonials.” “Bought or wheedled. Any medicine which claims to _cure_ is a fraud and a swindle.” “Don’t tell me, young man!” said Grandma Sharpless. “You doctors are prejudiced against patent medicines, but we old folks have used ‘em long enough to know which are good and which are bad. Now I don’t claim but what the Indian herb remedies and the ‘ready reliefs’ and that lot are frauds. But my family was brought up on teething powders and soothing syrups.” “Then you’re fortunate,” said Dr. Strong sternly, “that none of them has turned out to be an opium fiend.” The instant he said it, he saw, with sharp regret, that his shaft had sped true to the mark. The clear, dark red of a hale old age faded from Grandma Sharpless’s cheeks. Mr. Clyde shot a quick glance of warning at him. “And speaking of Indian remedies,” went on the doctor glibly, “I remember as a boy—” “Stop a minute,” said Grandma Sharpless steadily. “The truth isn’t going to hurt me. Or, if it does hurt, maybe it’s right it should. I had a younger brother who died in a sanitarium for drug-habit when he was twenty-four. As a child he pretty nearly lived on soothing syrups; had to have them all the time, because he was such a nervous little fellow; always having earache and stomach-ache, until he was eight or nine years old. Then he got better and became a strong, active boy, and a robust man. After his college course he went to Philadelphia, and was doing well when he contracted the morphine habit—how or why, we never knew. It killed him in three years. Do you think—is it possible that the soothing syrups—I’ve heard they have morphine in them—had anything to do with his ruin?” “Why, Mrs. Sharpless,” said the other, very gently, “I can only put it before you in this way. Here is one of the most subtle and enslaving of all drugs, morphine. It is fed to a child, in the plastic and formative years of life, regularly. What surer way could there be of planting the seeds of drug-habit? Suppose, for illustration, we substitute alcohol, which is far less dangerous. If you gave a child, from the time of his second year to his eighth, let us say, two or three drinks of whiskey every day, and that child, when grown up, developed into a drunkard, would you think it strange?” “I’d think it strange if he didn’t.”