MEDICINE AND DRUGS 



3718 



MEDICINE AND DRUGS 



EDICINE AND DRUGS. Men, 

 women and children have to be fed; else they 

 die. They cannot stand like a rock or house, 

 nearly unchanged for months or years. Unless 

 they daily rebuild their bodies by eating parts 

 of animals and plants and by drinking water, 

 human creatures soon go to pieces. 



But we do not need the same food at all 

 times. When we are thirsty we need cool 

 water; when we are cold we need to be warmed 

 by hot food and drink.. When we are young 

 we live mostly on milk, but when we grow up 

 this is not sufficient; we need other food as 

 well. When we are sick we need to eat things 

 different from the things we take when we are 

 well very strange things, sometimes. Among 

 these strange things are the parts of plants or 

 animals or minerals that we call medicines or 

 drugs. As long as he is physically whole a man 

 does not need a wooden leg, but if a cannon 

 shot has carried away his foot it is very much 

 easier to walk with a false foot of wood fas- 

 tened to his stump than to walk with a crutch. 



When Medicines Are Beneficial. So it is in 

 sickness. The healthy man does not need 

 drugs, but in illness they sometimes help. For 

 instance, in the front of everyone's neck, below 

 the Adam's apple and beneath the skin, is a 

 little bunch of flesh called the thyroid gland. 

 Out of it comes a juice like the sap of a tree. 

 That juice flows into the blood and is carried 

 all over the body. It makes our bodies grow 

 and keeps our skin, hair and nails healthy. 

 Sometimes the thyroid gland does not work 

 and this juice is not supplied to the body. 

 Then the skin gets dry and cracked. The hair 

 falls out, the nails break off, and the whole 

 body becomes stunted and weak. About thirty 

 years ago it was found that when a man sick 

 with this disease was given some of the thyroid 

 gland taken from the sheep eating the glands 

 in little dried pills the sheep's gland filled the 

 lack in the sick man's body and he got well. 

 His bald head sprouted new hair, his skin grew 



soft and natural, and everything began to go 

 right again. But as long as he lived he was 

 forced to eat a little of a sheep's thyroid every 

 day; else within a few days he was sick again. 



This sheep's thyroid is a medicine (or a drug 

 the two words mean the same), and it is one 

 of the very few medicines yet discovered which 

 really cure the disease for which it is taken. 

 Yet in one sense even this drug does not cure 

 but only holds the disease in check. One or 

 two drugs are better still. They really cure. 

 Quinine, for instance, is a drug which cures 

 malaria. Malaria is a fever caused by a minute 

 animal which gets into the blood through the 

 sting of a mosquito. This animal is so small 

 that many of them could stand side by side on 

 the point of a pin. The mosquito's sting is 

 hollow and the malaria "germ," as it is some- 

 times called, swims out through the hollow end 

 while the mosquito is biting us and into our 

 blood, where it has broods of young which at- 

 tack and eat the blood until we get sicker and 

 sicker. 



Now about the time .that the first settlers 

 came to America it was found (some say by 

 the monks) that the bark of a tree growing in 

 Peru contained a bitter substance, quinine, 

 which cured malaria if the bark was made into 

 a sort of tea and given the sick man to drink. 

 When the juice of the bark gets into the blood 

 of anyone who is sick with malaria, it poisons 

 the malaria germs and kills them so that the 

 sick person can get well. Nowadays we do not 

 give the bark itself but boil out of it a white, 

 bitter powder which looks like table salt. This 

 is what kills the malaria germ. The rest of the 

 bark is of no use, to speak of, and we throw 

 it away. 



Quinine is one of the best of medicines be- 

 cause it kills the malaria germs without doing 

 any important damage to the patient while on 

 its way to kill the germ. Most medicines are 

 more or less harmful to the sick person as well 

 as to his disease. In other words, most medi- 



