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Only the physician knows how prone people are to take something and 
how they hesitate to do something. 
The history of medicine itself is one long search for panaceas, for 
“cures.” We are only beginning to realize that the search is futile. We 
more and more see that the proper method of securing survival of the best 
is to annihilate the pests and parasites that prey on us. Just as weeds and 
pests do not thrive under clean culture, in the same way disease germs do 
not thrive in a clean city among clean people; quack remedies are as 
useless in the city as they are useless on the farm. 
There are always some who will survive most adverse conditions ; 
this can be seen in the crowded unsanitary cities of Chinat and India, and 
in our own slums. But such a type is not what the believer in a better 
humanity has in mind. People who constantly battle with infection have 
so little mentality left that they are but little above unreasoning brutes. 
Fittest to live under an unsanitary environment, abnormal in the light of 
man’s past history, does not mean best mentally. 
Man in his search for cures in time has found means for relief. He 
has discovered a series of substances that give ease; they may be grouped . 
under the name of narcotics. 
Many plants have such properties, from the poppy with its opium and 
codeine and morphine, down to mild ones like hops. In time man has 
learned to prepare alcohol, varying in strength from mild, as in fermented 
milk and fermented honey and fruit juice, up to distilled alcohol in its 
pure form. 
Alcohol is an old remedy. It constantly appears in new disguises, 
under the fanciful name of some nostrum or patent medicine. Recently a 
number of so-called synthetics have come into use, made from coal tar. 
Their number is constantly increasing. An individual in search of ease 
soon learns which suit best; unfortunately many are of the habit-forming 
kind. 
NARCOTICS OF THE METHANE SERIES.2 
Hydrocarbons: Pentane, Octane. 
Hydrocarbons, unsaturated: Amylene, Pental. 
Alcohols: Methyl, Ethyl, Propyl, Butyl, Amyl. Amylene hydrate. 
1Even the supposed adapted or immune Chinese have their lls and their means of transient 
relief. Now that the opium trade is imperilled they will likely resort to the white man’s remedies, 
alcohol and tobacco and synthetics. 
‘This list was compiled from Cushney. 
