PREFACE
This book has been prepared in response to a growing demand that the author group together under one cover some of the material collected out of a varied experience with many aspects and phases of narcotic drug addiction, and with activities in the attempted solution of its problems.
Some of this experience has been previously presented in many addresses before scientific and other societies and in articles in the medical press.
The author is not associated with nor interested in any hospital or institution active in the care of these cases for financial return or pecuniary benefit. He is not the exponent or mouthpiece or proponent of any special or specific “remedy” or “treatment” or method of so-called “cure.” He has no axe to grind.
He is not a “specialist” in the treatment of narcotic drug addiction. He is a practitioner of diagnostic and clinical medicine, in whose professional work the care of the narcotic addict has constituted much the smaller part of his activities and studies, and that part has been largely carried on without recompense and often at his personal expense.
Some years ago, through hospital affiliations and duties, the writer was brought to face this problem of opiate addiction and after a while saw in it very important and very interesting clinical problems of physical disease and physical reactions upon which he made observations and studies.
Hospital connections and the publishing of various articles have since that time brought him into association with practically all phases and aspects of activity in the consideration and handling of the narcotic drug problem. He has listened to discussions of the subject by promoters; by reformers of various sorts; by those engaged in legislative, judiciary, administrative, custodial, penological, sociological, psychological or psychiatrical, medical and other lines of work, and by narcotic addicts from all classes and types of people and their friends and relatives, etc., in groups, or as individuals.
Two vital elements seem to the author to have received insufficient consideration in the efforts to solve the narcotic drug problem. One of these elements is the sufferings and struggles and problems of the narcotic addict, and the other is the nature of the physical disease with which he is afflicted.
This book is an effort to accomplish two things, first to present the two elements above stated, and second to outline, discuss and correlate various elements and conflicting activities so that each of us can appreciate the relation of his own endeavor to the whole narcotic drug problem, can realize the comparative importance of his own observations, and can cooperate with the others for the benefit of humanity, for the welfare of society and posterity and for the increased health and happiness and economic usefulness of the individual.