HEALTH AND WELL-BEING 75 



Jrugs are never to be used in any form save as prescribed 

 by a physician, and are always to be shunned the same as 

 other poisons. 



Perhaps one of the most notable outgrowths of the great 

 world war of this generation has been the restrictions imposed 

 by the warring nations upon traffic in intoxicating drinks. 

 In Russia this at one time amounted to a prohibition of the 

 manufacture and sale of vodka, the national drink. The 

 government of China years ago awoke to the debauching 

 effect upon its people of the extended use of opium. But it 

 has been within the last few years only that conditions have 

 become favorable for the stamping out of its unspeakable 

 evils. 



Through national legislation known as the Harrison law 

 (1914), the American people have at last resorted to drastic 

 measures to restrict the increase in a traffic in narcotics that 

 had come to number its victims in all parts of this country 

 by the thousands. It not only impoverishes them as indi- 

 viduals, but it wrecks them in body and mind, and their 

 degeneracy constitutes a standing menace to the peace of 

 society. This law seeks so to control the dispensing of the 

 more powerful narcotics and habit-forming drugs (except 

 alcohol) that their use shall be solely for medical pur- 

 poses and not at all for dissipation. Society has not hesi- 

 tated here to deny to the individual the right to ruin himself, 

 becoming a burden to his family and to the community 

 rather than a constructive factor in both. It has under- 

 taken to punish those who seek profit in this traffic regard- 

 less of individual and public welfare. 



The activities of very many of the organs of the body are 

 maintained by impulses from nerve centres not controlled 

 by the will, and these activities are sustained independently 

 of any attention or thought on the part of a person. A great 

 many of a person's voluntary acts and efforts, too, may be.- 



