FAILURE OF THE REDUCTION METHOD
All this, moreover, is never, or almost never, to any purpose. As the uncomfortable patient will move if possible, it is naturally the business of the sanatorium to keep him from being uncomfortable. The method of reduction, therefore, is rarely carried out to the point where it would do any good, even if good were thus possible. But it is not possible. In the first place, lessening the dose is of little avail; there is as much suffering in the final deprivation of a customary quarter of a grain as of twenty grains. In the second place, it cannot be ascertained by gradual reduction whether there is any disability which makes morphine necessary, since no intelligent diagnosis can be made so long as a patient is under the influence of the smallest quantity of the drug. Obviously, the first step in taking up a case should be to discover whether any such disability is present, and, if so, whether it is one that can be corrected; otherwise it may be a waste of time to try to correct it. The true physical condition of the patient, which should be considered before a long course of treatment is undertaken, can seldom be discovered by the reduction method.
The best doctors have always felt that they could not afford to lend their names to any institutions or sanatoriums except those which restricted themselves to mental cases. Yet these home cures and sanatoriums, unscientific and ineffective as they were, have offered to the victims of the drug habit the only hope they could find. The investigations begun by Mr. Taft in the Philippines extended over considerable time and cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but, although furthered in every way by the whole world, they failed to discover a definite treatment for the drug habit. It was generally believed by physicians that there was no hope for the victims of it.
COST OF THE DRUG HABIT
It may be noted that I have not dwelt upon the expense of the habit. This consideration may be omitted from the case. To the average victim, the cost of his drugs, no matter what he may have to pay for them, seems moderate. He is buying something which he deems a vital necessity, and which, moreover, he places, if a choice be required, before food, drink, family, sleep, pleasures, tobacco—every necessity or indulgence of the ordinary man.
The real cost is not to the drug-taker, but to the world. If a human life be considered merely as a thing of economic value, an estimate may perhaps be made of the total loss due to the habit.
But the loss should not be reckoned in any such way. It should rather be reckoned by the great amount of moral usefulness and good that might be rendered to the world if these unfortunates could be freed from their slavery, and by the actual harm being done by them, especially by those that are now loosely classed as criminals and degenerates.
The retrieving of much of the waste of humanity may be accomplished by adequate treatment of the drug habit.