MEDICINE AND DRUGS 



3719 



MEDICINE AND DRUGS 



cines are more or less poisonous and have to 

 be used in very small amounts and for a few 

 days only; otherwise, they may produce another 

 sickness as bad as the one they were given to 

 cure. 



The poppy, whose brilliant flower we all 

 know, yields a juice which when dried will put 

 one to sleep and stop almost any pain. But it 

 is also a poison, and if it is taken for more than 

 a few days it poisons the body so that new 

 pains are produced by the drug itself. These 

 pains call for more opium to stop them, then 

 more pain is produced and so on till the body 

 gets what we call a "drug habit" a craving 

 for the drug. This is very hard to get over, as 

 the body gets so dependent on the drug that it 

 cries out in pain whenever the drug is stopped. 

 Thus in time a person may die of the very 

 medicine given him as a cure. 



The leaves of the purple foxglove, a well- 

 known flowering plant, make a medicine that 

 is of great use to people who are sick because 

 their hearts do not work well. 'Used at the 

 right time and in the right amount, this medi- 

 cine makes the sick heart do its work better 

 for months or even years. But if too much of 

 this foxglove leaf is taken, it will kill the 

 patient within a few hours. Most medicines are 

 like this in case they do any good at all. They 

 are poisons if taken in too large amounts or if 

 taken for the wrong disease or for too long a 

 time. 



How the Body Makes Its Own Medicine. Our 

 bodies often make medicines inside themselves 

 after they get sick, and most diseases get well 

 in this way without any outside medicine at 

 all. It is the greatest mistake in the world to 

 suppose that whenever we are sick we need 

 medicine. Very few diseases are to be cured 

 and not many to be helped materially by any 

 of the medicines yet discovered. Among the 

 few really curative medicines are those formed 

 by the body itself. Sometimes the body forms 

 more than it needs for its own use. Then we 

 can take some of the extra supply for the use 

 of other people whose bodies do not form 

 enough. 



When a person is just getting over the dis- 

 ease that we call diphtheria, his blood contains 

 an extra supply of the medicine which his body 

 has just made to cure itself. If, then, we take 

 some of his blood and give it to another per- 

 son still very sick with diphtheria and not 

 having in his own blood enough medicine of his 

 own to cure him, we may be able to help him 

 win the victory over his disease. It is simpler. 



however, to give a horse diphtheria and from 

 his blood get the medicine for men. Horses 

 bear diphtheria very easily if it is given them 

 in the right way. They hardly feel sick at all. 

 Yet their blood makes quarts of the medicine 

 to cure diphtheria in human sickness. By draw- 

 ing off a small quantity of the horse's blood, 

 now and then, for a few months after he has 

 had his diphtheria, we can get quite a store of 

 medicine and keep it in bottles ready to be 

 given as soon as a child falls sick with diph- 

 theria. 



Even this medicine one of the most perfect 

 yet found is sometimes a little poisonous and 

 once in a great while very poisonous indeed. 



Vaccination. Vaccination means giving a 

 person another disease like the smallpox which 

 we want to prevent but so mild that the vac- 

 cination itself does not make us very sick. 

 It is only a sore arm for a few days and then 

 we are all right. Yet this trifling disease makes 

 so much medicine in our own blood so much 

 of the medicine that prevents smallpox that 

 for years afterwards there is still enough left 

 in the blood of anyone who has been vaccinated 

 to prevent his catching smallpox. This means 

 that if the smallpox germ happens to get into 

 our bodies it is killed off at once by the medi- 

 cine which our bodies have made and kept 

 flowing in our blood. 



So we can protect people against the disease 

 called typhoid fever by giving them a very 

 small dose of dead typhoid germs. Even dead 

 typhoid germs make us a little sick for a day 

 or two. In that time enough medicine for 

 typhoid is produced in our bodies to last us 

 for one or two years and to kill off any typhoid 

 germs that we may take into our stomachs in 

 that time with our water and our milk. 



Medicines Dug Out of the Earth. Most of 

 the drugs now used come, as has been stated 

 above, from plants and from animals. But 

 some are metals dug up out of the earth. Mer- 

 cury, for instance, which we all know from 

 seeing it in the tubes of thermometers, is a 

 very powerful medicine against diseases caused 

 by germs which grow in a spiral like a cork- 

 screw germs called spirochaetes. But mercury 

 is also a powerful poison and cannot be given 

 long without doing more harm than good. 



Ordinary iron is a good medicine for some 

 of the diseases which makes people's blood thin 

 or watery and their faces pale. It often fails 

 to cure, but one of the good things about iron 

 is that it is almost impossible to get poisoned 

 by it in any serious way. 



