DRUG ABUSES 461 



in legitimate rewards. The sphere of the physician is of largest prac- 

 tical utility to the community. He it is who, by long years of close 

 study, hospital teaching and personal experience, becomes gradually 

 equipped to fill the responsible post of conservator of public and 

 private health, of guide to the delicate human mechanism when dis- 

 ordered. His problem is a complex one for which he must furnish 

 the highest qualities of character, wisdom, tact, sympathy and personal 

 kindliness. He is the one who, even in those situations of gravity 

 when the onslaughts of disease can not be stayed, comes closer to the 

 heart, the soul and person than even the man of God. He should be 

 (and in this as in other ways he seldom fails) in all respects a man, 

 typifying the most estimable advisory qualities of friend, father, 

 brother. No household is safe without a wise family physician in 

 whom the members can repose confidence. He can, and does, furnish 

 far more than medical advice; he is the counselor in a thousand direc- 

 tions, whether in illness, sorrow, domestic catastrophe, mental shock, 

 perils of countless sorts and degrees. He can only display his resource- 

 fulness, his manifold capacities, if he be permitted free access to the 

 household to enable him to foresee, warn and thus prevent those calami- 

 ties which too often can not be cured. It is an inconsiderable part of 

 his duties to administer drugs, though these are among his keenest 

 weapons. He should possess the fullest knowledge of their uses and 

 employ them with skill and timeliness. 



How far could a crew of bankers, of clergymen, of merchants guide 

 and use a man-of-war? What sort of pictures could a man untrained 

 in pictorial art paint, were he provided with the full accoutrements of 

 a skilled artist? How long would a child alone continue to live in a 

 butcher shop stocked full for Christmas feasting ? These analogues are 

 mild compared with that of an ailing man or woman turned loose in 

 a chemist's shop to select remedies unaided. Yet many people take 

 advice and swallow drugs, deadly in ultimate intent, incited thereto 

 by each other, by the newspapers, by alluring labels on the bottles, 

 and still regard themselves as shrewd. They often do worse, if, fail- 

 ing good effects from these nostrums (and provided they survive) 

 turning to charlatans, who trade upon human credulity, themselves 

 not realizing that sick bodies always enshrine disordered minds. 



The sphere of the physician is not that of a merchant selling wares ; 

 he is the scientific and practical guide in times of physical danger. 

 His duties and responsibilities are theoretically, but not practically, 

 understood. The public expects of him who guides the helm in times 

 of disease and threatened death ethical qualities which he seldom fails 

 to furnish. If in his best judgment drugs are needed, he it is who 

 should select and change. He may be less wise than he might, or 

 even than he is estimated, but assuredly he is vastly better fitted at all 



