CHAPTER XXV 



DRUGS AND PATENT MEDICINES 



236. Stimulants and Narcotics. Man has learned not only 

 the action of substances upon each other, such as bleaching 

 solution upon coloring matter, washing soda upon grease, 

 acids upon bases, but also the effect which certain chemicals 

 have upon the human body. 



Drugs and their varying effects upon the human system 

 have been known to mankind from remote ages ; in the early 

 days, familiar leaves, roots, and twigs were steeped in water 

 to form medicines which served for the treatment of all ail- 

 ments. In more recent times, however, these simple herb 

 teas have been supplanted by complex drugs, and now medi- 

 cines are compounded not only from innumerable plant 

 products, but from animal and mineral matter as well. Qui- 

 nine, rhubarb, and arnica are examples of purely vegetable 

 products ; iron, mercury, and arsenic are equally well known 

 as distinctly mineral products, while cod-liver oil is the most 

 familiar illustration of an animal remedy. Ordinarily a com- 

 bination of products best serves the ends of the physician. 



Substances which, like cod-liver oil, serve as food to a 

 worn-out body, or, like iron, tend to enrich the blood, or, like 

 quinine, aid in bringing an abnormal system to a healthy con- 

 dition, are valuable servants and cannot be entirely dispensed 

 with so long as man is subject to disease. 



But substances which, like opium, laudanum, and alcohol, 

 are not required by the body as food, or as a systematic, 

 intelligent aid to recovery, but are taken solely for the stimu- 

 lus aroused or for the insensibility induced, arc harmful to 



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