Greetings! In today’s class, we shall discuss how tobacco leads toward alcohol, and also we shall learn how some pain-killing remedies can be harmful.

Group Four, Tobacco Leads Toward Alcohol

The use of tobacco tends to create an appetite for alcoholic beverages – and lead toward morphine and cocain. “Men who have had the drinking habit have almost invariably been first addicted to tobacco. Out of seven hundred convicts in New York state prison, who were examined a few years ago, six hundred were confined for crimes committed while under the influence of liquor, and five hundred said they were led to drink by tobacco.”

Cigarette Fiends Often Become “Dope” Fiends & Alcoholics Are Usually Smokers

“Also many cigarette fiends become late ‘dope’ fiends, and young men who were wont to take too much alcohol were also frequently very hard smokers, mostly cigarettes. In other words, the use of tobacco in young boys and… young men is conducive to bad morals in all lines, and the greatest disturbance to mental efficiency seems to occur in those who use cigarettes.”

Alcoholic May Turn to Tobacco, Tea, Coffee, or Other Drug

“With prohibition it is a question whether the individual who has this strong desire for alcohol will get and take some other drug, or whether he will become a hard smoker, or an excessive eater of sugar or an excessive drinker of coffee or tea. At any rate, he is likely to develop some abnormal excessive habit. The advantage of prohibition is that the young individual cannot well acquire the taste or desire for alcohol. The future lessening of crime by prohibition that prohibits cannot at the present time be forecasted.”

No Alcohol or Tobacco to Morphine Patients

“All these patients need iron, and they may need organic extract treatment. Sometimes they develop a very great appetite, and the amount of food that they take should be regulated. All alcohol should be withheld from these morphine addicts, and they should be cured of the tobacco habit, as each one of these habits stimulates other habits, and the better they are cured of all habits, the less likely are they to return to the morphine habit.”

Group Five, Painkilling Remedies Harmful, & Lead Toward Dope

This section deals with pain-killing remedies, hypnotics, habit-forming nostrums, and many “patent medicines,” from two standpoints:

1.) The direct harm done by them to the body;

2.) Their tendency toward the use of more pronounced narcotics. In this class are: Cough cures, sleeping powders, headache powders, soothing syrups, certain cathartics, aspirin.

There is a strong element of danger in the use of all pain relievers, whether they be opium, morphine, cocaine, heroin, or their derivatives, or hashish made from the locoweed, cigarettes made from the Mexican marihuana, or the plain everyday sleeping powders, headache-powders, soothing syrups, or aspirin so commonly used for the relief of pain and many other things.

One writer has said: “Drugs given to stupefy, whatever they may be, derange the nervous system.” That is a guiding principle. In other words, all drugs which numb the nerves, by doing so, injure the nerves, and so derange the nervous system. I feel contrained to speak a few words of caution concerning the use of aspirin, headache and sleeping-powders, and other “patent” medicines.

“Patent Medicines”

“Among the addicts are many who were started on their road to addiction through the use of such ‘patent medicines’ as cough cures, cathartics, headache powders, and soothing syrups. If you are using a ‘patent medicine,’ you should examine the label carefully to find out whether it contains morphine, heroine, cocaine, laudanum, or paregoric….If you are using a ‘patent medicine’ containing any of these drugs, he is stated on the sure road to addiction, for thousands upon thousands have gone this way before.”

“Almost one-tenth of the causes of (drug) addiction are traceable to the use of ‘patent’ medicines.”

Let us consider a statement by a leader of the White Cross work for the state of California, in a very enlightening little book on drug addiction- “Battling the Wolves of Society”:

“Patent medicines have always been and still are prolific causes of drug addiction. The various nostrums for hay fever, asthma, colds, consumption, etc., contain opium, morphine, codeine, or other narcotic drugs. Some treatments for the tobacco habit have been found to contain dope.”

“Many of the popular nostrums called patent medicines, and even some of the drugs dispensed by physicians, act a part in laying the foundation of the liquor habit, the opium habit, the morphine habit, that are so terrible a curse to society.”

The Way Aspirin Kills

“The way aspirin kills is by deadening pain. Make no mistake about pain. It is unpleasant but beneficent. It is a red flag set up by nature to warn us that something has gone wrong. Aspirin pulls down that flag and makes people think that everything is all right- till often it is too late to make it right.

“Thousands and thousands are dying every year from pneumonia, tuberculosis, and heart disease for no other reason than that aspirin lulls them into a false sense of security. It conceals the symptoms; it waves aside the sore throat, the slight cough, the headache, as a thing of no consequence till it gets a grip that no medical skill can break.”

“I am copying from ‘Pharmacotherapeutics,’ a standard book on drugs:

” ‘Aspirin, although commonly well born in moderate doses, is distinctly depressant to the heart. Great cardiac weakness and a tendency to collapse may follow the administration of a dose representing less than half the quantity of sodium salicylate previously and subsequently well borne by the same patient. Children are particularly subject to this cardiac depression; thus in a girl of twelve years with scarlatinal arthritis, alarming symptoms were caused by nine grains of aspirin given in the course of fifteen hours, although there was no evidence of endocarditis of pericarditis, and recovery of cardiac vigor ensued on withdrawal of the drug. The cardiac depression may not be immediately evident; but continued resort to aspirin may so weaken the heart, that in an emergency, or under the additional depression of an acute infection, as influenza or pneumonia, it fails to respond. Death may thus be in an indirect effect of aspirin poisoning. Moreover, an aspirin habit is easily set up by its use for relief of recurrent headaches and neuralgic pains.”

Quotes to Note: 

“The inclination to use poisonous drugs, which kill, if they do not cure, needs to be guarded against. Matters have been laid open before me in reference to the use of drugs. Many have been treated with drugs, and the result has been death. Our physicians, by practicing drug medication, have lost many cases that need not have died if they had left their drugs out of the sick-room.”  The Place of Herbs in Rational Therapy, pg. 10

“The intricate names given medicine are used to cover up the matter, so that none will know what is given them as remedies unless they consult a dictionary.” The Place of Herbs in Rational Therapy, pg. 11

To learn how to live healthfully without drug medication, please get a copy of the How-to-Live series!  The wisdom of the Great Physician is revealed within. Click here to get your set – today!

Grab a friend and share the wealth, from what you’ve learned in the School of Health! In our next class, we shall discuss more about the negative effects of patent medicines, and conclude our segment on, The Root of Intemperance.  Until then, God bless!

  Previous Class: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6