HYPNOTICS
While I have only touched upon the opium group and cocaine, I wish to put myself on record now as saying that there is no class of drugs so sure in the end to bring about a deterioration of the physical being as the frequent use of the hypnotic group, or coal-tar products, the sleep-producers. I have never seen more pitiable cases than those who have come to me after they had been taking regularly, during a considerable period, some cure for sleeplessness. This habit not only produces an extreme neurotic condition, but changes the entire temperament of a person. It will turn the most beautiful character into an extreme case of moral degeneracy.
Insomnia, headaches, and such ailments spring from a disorganized physical condition. Trying to alleviate them by the use of powerful drugs does not remove the cause, but compounds the physical disabilities which produce these unfortunate physical results. Some day I hope to see as stringent a legal regulation of the sale of these drugs, used for this common purpose, as there now is of opium and its products and cocaine.
SLEEPING-POWDERS, OR HYPNOTICS
The time cannot be far distant when both Federal and State governments will recognize the danger that lies in the unrestricted sale by druggists and the uncurbed administration by physicians of sleeping-powders, or hypnotics. It cannot be denied by any one who is thoroughly familiar with the subject of habit-forming drugs that in such substances may lie a peril comparable to that inherent in cocaine and opium compounds. Hypnotics of many varieties can be obtained at any drug store in the United States without a doctor’s certificate. The sale of bromides is absolutely unrestricted. The many and varied coal-tar products, of which veronal is the leader, with trional, suphonal, medinal, as close followers, and the numerous proprietary remedies, such as somnose, neuronidia, bromidia, Peacock’s bromides, etc., may be mentioned as preparations which are widely advertised and openly and energetically sold, and all of which are definitely dangerous.
COAL-TAR PRODUCTS
Preparations for headaches and neuralgia are notably dangerous. There can be no doubt of the necessity for legal restriction of the sale of anti-kamnia, phenalgin, orangeine, Koehler’s headache remedy, shac, all coal-tar products notable for their production of anemia and depression, and undoubtedly responsible for the presence of many men and women in the mad-houses of the land. The chemist whose genius is responsible for the introduction of caffeine to overcome the depressing effect of some of the other component parts of these preparations has put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the pockets of the manufacturing druggists and has saddled the world with a great and unnecessary weight of physical and mental degeneration.
THE PERIL OF THE DRUG-STORE