Article March 16, 1899 Issue

Enslaved by Drugs

Denver Republican

People who fall into the practice of dosing themselves with drugs, do not realize how thoroughly they have become victimized by the fear of disease. The drug slave is as superstitious as a Kentucky colored " mammy."

Sometimes this fatal superstition will hold an entire family of otherwise intelligent people in the grasp of fear and it is pitiful to see their abject submission to pills, potions, tinctures, salves and syringes. They dare not eat, drink, sleep or walk without worshipping at the shrine of one or more of the gods in the pantheon of materia medica.

The writer had an opportunity recently of observing the daily order of this superstitious worship in a family where all are faithful believers. One member had to bathe his feet in cold water immediately on rising. Three members owned rubber tubes, which were inserted into the stomach through the mouth, and each morning these three members pumped water into their stomachs and pumped it out again. Another member had to take a liquid medicine after breakfast and another a pill. Around meal time all more or less participated in the incantations.

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