Part 9

dangerous and has been known to produce sudden collapse. Megrimine is a warranted headache cure that is advertised in several of the magazines. A newly arrived guest at a Long Island house party brought along several lots and distributed them as a remedy for headache and that tired feeling. It was perfectly harmless, she declared; didn't the advertisement say "leaves no unpleasant effects"? As a late dance the night before had left its impress on the feminine members of the house party, there was a general acceptance of the "bracer." That night the local physician visited the house party (on special "rush" invitation), and was well satisfied to pull all his patients through. He had never before seen acetanilid poisoning by wholesale. A Chicago druggist writes me that the wife of a prominent physician buys Megrimine of him by the half-dozen lots secretly. She has the habit. On October 9, W. H. Hawkins, superintendent of the American Detective Association, a mar of powerful physique and apparently in good health, went to a drug store in Anderson, Ind., and took a dose of Dr. Davis' Headache Powders. He then boarded a car for Marion and shortly after fell to the floor, dead. The coroner's verdict is reproduced on page 35. {035} Whether these powders are made by a Dr. W. C. Davis, of Indianapolis, who makes Anti-Headache, I am unable to state. Anti-Headache describes itself as "a compound of mild ingredients and positively contains no dangerous drugs." It is almost pure acetanilid. In the "ethical" field the harm done by this class of proprietaries is perhaps {038}as great as in the open field, for many of those which are supposed to be sold only in prescriptions are as freely distributed to the laity as Peruna. And their advertising is hardly different. Antikamnia, claiming to be an "ethical" remedy, and advertising through the medical press by methods that would, with little alteration, fit any patent painkiller on the market, is no less dangerous or fraudulent than the Orangeine class which it almost exactly parallels in composition. It was at first exploited as a "new synthetical coal-tar derivative," which it isn't and never was. It is simply half or more acetanilid (some analyses show as high as 68 per cent.) with other unimportant ingredients in varying proportions. In a booklet entitled "Light on Pain," and distributed on doorsteps, I find under an alphabetical list of diseases this invitation to form the Antikamnia habit: [IMAGE ==>] {038} "Nervousness (overwork and excesses)--Dose: One Antikamnia tablet every two or three hours. "Shoppers' or Sightseers' Headache--Dose: Two Antikamnia tablets every three hours. "Worry (nervousness, 'the blues')--Dose: One or two Antikamnia and Codein tablets every three hours." Codein is obtained from opium. The codein habit is well known to all institutions which treat drug addictions, and is recognized as being no less difficult to cure than the morphin habit. The following well-known "remedies" both "ethical" and "patent," depend for their results upon the heart-depressing action of Acetanilid: Orangeine Bromo-Seltzer Megrimine Anti-Headache Ammonol Salacetin Royal Pain Powders Dr. Davis's Headache Phenalgin Cephalgin Miniature Headache Powders Powders A typical instance of what Antikamnia will do for its users is that of a Pennsylvania merchant, 50 years old, who had declined, without apparent Antikamnia {039}cause, from 140 to 116 pounds, and was finally brought to Philadelphia in a state of stupor. His pulse was barely perceptible, his skin dusky and his blood of a deep chocolate color. On reviving he was questioned as to whether he had been taking headache powders. He had, for several years. What kind? Antikamnia; sometimes in the plain tablets, at other times Antikamnia with codein. How many? About twelve a day. He was greatly surprised to learn that this habit was responsible for his condition. "My doctor gave it to me for insomnia," he said, and it appeared that the patient had never even been warned of the dangerous character of the drug. Were it obtainable, I would print here the full name and address of that attending physician, as one unfit, either through ignorance or carelessness, to practice his profession. And there would be other physicians all over the country who would, under that description, suffer the same indictment within their own minds for starting innocent patients on a destructive and sometimes fatal course. For it is the careless or conscienceless physician who gets the customer for the "ethical" headache remedies, and the customer, once secured, pays a profit, very literally, with his own blood. Once having taken Antikamnia, the layman, unless informed as to its true nature, will often return to the drug store and purchase it with the impression that it is a specific drug, like quinin or potassium chlorate, instead of a disguised poison, exploited and sold under patent rights by a private concern. The United States Postoffice, in its broad tolerance, permits the Antikamnia company to send through the mails little sample boxes containing tablets enough to kill an ordinary man, and these samples are sent not only to physicians, as is the rule with ethical remedies, but to lawyers, business men, "brain workers" and other prospective purchasing classes. The box bears the lying statement: "No drug habit--no heart effect." Just as this is going to press the following significant case comes in from Iowa: "Farmington, Iowa, Oct. 6.-- (Special to the Constitution-Democrat.)--Mrs. Hattie Kick, one of the best and most prominent ladies of Farmington, died rather suddenly Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock from an overdose of Antikamnia, which she took for a severe headache from which she was suffering. Mrs. Kick was subject to severe headaches and was a frequent user of Antikamnia, her favorite remedy for this ailment." There is but one safeguard in the use of these remedies: to regard them as one would regard opium and to employ them only with the consent of a physician who understands their true nature. Acetanilid has its uses, but not as a generic painkiller. Pain is a symptom; you can drug it away temporarily, but it will return clamoring for more payment until the final price is hopeless enslavement. Were the skull and bones on every box of this class of poison the danger would be greatly minimized. With opium and cocain the case is different. The very words are danger signals. Legal restrictions safeguard the public, to a greater or less degree, from their indiscriminate use. Normal people do not knowingly take opium or its derivatives except with the sanction of a physician, and there is even spreading abroad a belief (surely an expression of the primal law of self-preservation) that the licensed practitioner leans too readily toward the convenient narcotics. But this perilous stuff is the ideal basis for a patent medicine because its results are immediate (though never permanent), and it is its own best advertisement in that one dose imperatively calls for another. Therefore it behooves the manufacturer of opiates to disguise the use of the drug. This he does in varying forms, and he has found his greatest success in the "cough and consumption cures" and the soothing syrup class. The former of these will be considered in another article. As to the "soothing syrups," {040}designed for the drugging of helpless infants, even the trade does not know how many have risen, made their base profit and subsided. A few survive, probably less harmful than the abandoned ones, on the average, so that by taking the conspicuous survivors as a type I am at least doing no injustice to the class. Some years ago I heard a prominent New York lawyer, asked by his office scrub woman to buy a ticket for some "association" ball, say to her: "How can you go to these affairs, Nora, when you have two young children at home?" "Sure, they're all right," she returned, blithely; "just wan teaspoonful of Winslow's an' they lay like the dead till mornin'." What eventually became of the scrub woman's children I don't know. The typical result of this practice is described by a Detroit physician who has been making a special study of Michigan's high mortality rate: "Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup is extensively used among the poorer classes as a means of pacifying their babies. These children eventually come into the hands of physicians with a greater or less addiction to the opium habit. The sight of a parent drugging a helpless infant into a semi-comatose condition is not an elevating one for this civilized age, and it is a very common practice. [IMAGE ==>] {040}I can give you one illustration from my own hospital experience, which was told me by the father of the girl. A middle-aged railroad man of Kansas City had a small daughter with summer diarrhea. For this she was given a patent diarrhea medicine. It controlled the trouble, but as soon as the remedy was withdrawn the diarrhea returned. At every withdrawal the trouble began anew, and the final result was that they never succeeded in curing this daughter of the opium habit which had taken its hold on her. It was some years afterward that the parents became aware that she had contracted the habit, when the physician took away the patent medicine and gave the girl morphin, with exactly the same result which she had experienced with the patent remedy. At the time the father told me this story his daughter was 19 years of age, an only child of wealthy parents, and one who could have had every advantage in life, but who was a complete wreck in every way as a result of the opium habit. The father told me, with tears in his eyes, that he would rather she had died with the original illness than to have lived to become the creature which she then was." The proprietor of a drug store in San José, Cal., writes to _Collier's_ as follows: [IMAGE ==>] {041} "I have a good customer, a married woman with five children, all under 10 years of age. When her last baby was born, about a year ago, the first thing she did was to order a bottle of Winslow's Soothing Syrup, and every {042}week another bottle was bought at first, until now a bottle is bought every third day. Why? Because the baby has become habituated to the drug. I am not well enough acquainted with the family to be able to say that the weaned children show any present abnormality of health due to the opium contained in the drug, but the after-effects of opium have been thus described.... Another instance, quite as startling, was that of a mother who gave large quantities of soothing syrup to two of her children in infancy; then, becoming convinced of its danger, abandoned its use. These children in middle life became neurotics, spirit and drug-takers. Three children born later and not given any drugs in early life grew up strong and healthy. "I fear the children of the woman in question will all suffer for their mother's ignorance, or worse, in later life, and have tried to do my duty by sending word to the mother of the harmful nature of the stuff, but without effect. "P. S.--How many neurotics, fiends and criminals may not 'Mrs. Winslow' be sponsor for?" This query is respectfully referred to the Anglo-American Drug Company, of New York,' which makes its handsome profit from this slave trade. Recent legislation on the part of the New York State Board of Pharmacy will tend to decrease the profit, as it requires that a poison label be put on each bottle of the product, as has long been the law in England. An Omaha physician reports a case of poisoning from a compound bearing the touching name of "Kopp's Baby Friend," which has a considerable sale in t