HOW TO CURE DRUG FIEND
OF THAT PERNICIOUS HABIT
By DR. LEONARD KEENE HIRSHBERG
A. B., M. A., M. D. (Johns Hopkins University)
Los Angeles Herald, 18 February 1916
WHEN mortal man was endowed with free will, that
was the beginning of human creation. Much was left to him,
such as the cultivation, discipline, education and training in self denial
and control.
Just as the want of some perfection makes an evil, so the lack
of eternal vigilance in the matter of the appetites and the will
means a defective moral and physical being.
A man given to taking heroin, cocaine or any other habit-forming
drug must be reclaimed at any cost, even though he be the
fiend Incarnate. It is estimated that the excellent
national law recently put into effect has thrown from 40.-
000 to 100,000 persons addicted to drugs upon the tender mercies of
the merciless world.
Who is to save them, and how?
There are not dispensaries, hospitals or institutions enough
to do so. It is, therefore, up to each of us to do our little mite.
The First Steps
Once you are presented with the Christlike opportunity of restoring
one of these abased persons to health and happiness, give him or her
at once a drastic eliminant such as live compound cathartic pills; half a dozen
hours later a tumblerfull of citrate of magnesia or a tablespoonful
of sulphate of magnesia in water.
A well known anti-narcotic mixture contains one ounce of
the fluid extract of hyocyanus, one ounce of the fluid extract of
zanthoxylum, and two ounces of the tincture of belladonna.
After the purgation has taken effect six drops of this mixture
in capsules is given every hour for six hours.
Sometimes physicians allow the victim to take his drug at the
same time in a smaller dose. However, I always stop it forthwith.
After this first six hours, eight drops of the mixture are given
hourly for another six hours, when it is jumped to 10 drops.
This is continued at six-hour intervals until the two-drop increase
reaches 18 drops.
When signs of belladonna disturbance, such as misty vision,
dry lips and mouth and widely dilated pupils appear it means
that some reduction must be made in the number of drops.
A Final Cure
Five more compound cathartic pills with five grains of blue mass
must be again administered 12 hours after the original dose
with a repetition six hours later of the saline drink to wash the
mercury out.
Meanwhile, the drops are given every hour unless the belladonna
symptoms have shown themselves. The whole process of cathartics
and salts are also given a third time until the 36th hour.
If the drug has not yet been stopped, one-sixth of its original
dose should be the maximum amount now given. This Is to
be absolutely the last dose of that habit-creator.
The triple effervescent bromide tabloids, together with one sixtieth
of a grain doses of strychnine have to be employed
at times with the other treatment. Notwithstanding all of this, it
may be possible to dispense entirely with the belladonna mixture
and use these two all through the treatment. The
blue mass and cathartic pills are most helpful in all treatments.