p. 14 | MOST WIDELY USED DRUG by Daniel H. Kress, M. D.

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 10, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 44.

MOST WIDELY USED DRUG

By Daniel H. Kress, M. D.

THE SOURCES OF CAFFEIN, AND ITS HEALTH-DESTROYING EFFECTS — HARDENING OF THE ARTERIES AND PREMATURE OLD AGE FROM ITS USE

By Daniel H. Kress, M. D. New England Sanitarium, Melrose, Mass.

THE drug that is most freely consumed in America is not alcohol or tobacco; it is caffein. The use of alcohol and tobacco is confined chiefly to the male population, and largely to adults, while the use of caffein is found in old and young of both sexes. In speaking of caffein, we include thein, theobromin, and uric acid. All these are practically the same as far as their chemical combination and action are concerned.

SOME SOURCES OF CAFFEIN

Caffein is dispensed at our tables in the tea, coffee, and cocoa we drink. It is served in the meat we eat, red meat and white meat alike, in the form of uric acid; and it is sold at our soda-fountains.

More coffee per capita is used in America than in any other nations of the world. One half of the world's coffee crop comes to America. Each man, woman, and child consumes an average of fourteen pounds of coffee per annum. Each cup of coffee contains from three to four grains of caffein. It is served at our soda-fountains in coca-cola and about one hundred other soft drinks. These soft drinks contain approximately, on an average, the same dose that is dispensed in a cup of coffee. Aside from this, it is found in many or nearly all the headache remedies sold in our drug stores, and in the remedies prescribed by physicians.

TWENTY GRAINS DAILY

In the United States, an average of over two hundred and twenty pounds of meat annually for each person is eaten. Each pound of meat has concealed within its fibers from ten to fourteen grains of uric acid. This makes a daily average of about eight grains of caffein in the meat we consume. Add to this the caffein found in the tea, the coffee, and the soft drinks, and our average consumption of caffein per capita daily does not fall short of twenty grains. About four grains is usually prescribed by physicians as a dose. This means five doses daily.

A HEART IRRITANT

Caffein is termed a heart stimulant. Perhaps a better name would be "heart irritant." It increases the heart's action, making it more vigorous, and raises the blood pressure. In very large doses, the contractions of the heart follow each other so rapidly and are so pronounced that the ventricle has not time to fill, the blood pressure falls, and the heart stops beating. Deaths from this cause are not uncommon in those having heart-disease.

It is a brain irritant. In small doses it increases mental activity, and lessens the feeling of fatigue, and produces wakefulness. In larger doses, it causes feelings of intense fear and nervousness, which may even end in convulsions or temporary insanity.

Small amounts of caffein increase temporarily the irritability and working power of the muscles. In large doses, it brings on a condition of continuous contraction, or what is termed rigor. The muscle fibers become hard and contracted. It is this contraction of the heart muscles that causes death. Caffein is a dangerous drug for those who already have high blood pressure.

THE MOST HOPELESS CASES

In Paris, we are informed, coffee inebriates are regarded as the most hopeless cases for hospital treatment. The brain and nerve degeneration is usually so extensive that dementia and insanity are the rule, and recovery is the exception. Women, it appears, are the chief sufferers there, possibly on account of the more highly sensitive nervous organization, and because women as a rule use coffee and tea more freely than do men. The majority of those treated in the hospitals are said to be laundresses.

Recently the following case was reported: The wife of a rancher at Clearwater, California, was brought to a hospital suffering from caffein poisoning, and in a few days she died. Dr. Lindley, the head of the hospital, gave his report of the case as follows: "Her nervous system was wrecked from overindulgence in the drink. Before acquiring the coffee habit, she was strong and healthy. From drinking a cup a day in the morning, she began taking it at intervals throughout the day, until it acted on her system much as would opium or any other strong stimulant."

TEA AND COFFEE DRUNKARDS

While such cases are exceptional, chronic cases of caffein poisoning are common. Dr. Harvey W. Wiley, America's leading food expert, says: "This country is full of tea and coffee drunkards. Caffein has a direct tendency to create Bright's disease. Caffein is the essential alkaloid of coffee, as thein is of tea. Both are dangerous and detrimental drugs."

These drugs are taken usually when the user is fatigued. Possessing no nutritive value, they do not produce energy. They merely deaden the sense of weariness, and enable the one resorting to their use to squeeze out a few extra energy granules stored up in the already nearly depleted nerve cells. Fatigue is nature's signal of danger, indicating the need of rest and recuperation. Caffein pulls down the signals nature erects when in danger, but it does not remove the danger. It allows us to go on unwarned, but not unharmed. It gradually and insidiously brings about changes, in the glands of the body and the arteries, of a degenerating nature, and thus it shortens life.

DISPLACING ALCOHOL

It has been advocated that coffee-houses be opened to counteract the use of alcoholic beverages. In England, less alcohol is consumed per capita at present than ten years ago; but with the decline in the consumption of alcoholic beverages, there has been a corresponding increase in the consumption of tea, coffee, and cocoa. During the past year, about seven pounds per capita was used of tea alone. While the visible effect differs from that of the use of alcohol, the degeneracy it produces is just as marked.

In Ireland, concern is at present felt regarding the prevalent use of these beverages. In a report of the inspectors of the national schools of Ireland, Mr. J. P. Dalton says: "Of the many abuses that require correction, one in particular must be vigorously combated if the race is to be preserved from deterioration. The use of tea is now carried to such dangerous excess that it ranks before alcohol as an enemy of the public health."

It is impossible to take into the human system, day after day and year after year, a poison such as caffein, without in time destroying the living cells with which it is in continuous contact, and bringing about degenerative changes.

THE WEAR ON THE KIDNEYS

Caffein is eliminated chiefly through the kidneys, and the additional burden thrown upon the kidneys in its elimination wears them out prematurely.

To the prevalent use of coffee, tea, cocoa, and meats may be partially ascribed the rapid increase in the mortality from kidney diseases, especially in our large cities. In Chicago, during the past thirty years, there has been an increase of over one hundred and sixty per cent in the mortality rate from this disease. This percentage possibly holds good in other large cities where caffein is so freely consumed.

HOLDING IN AND WHIPPING

The cerebral congestion, high blood pressure, headache, and other unfavorable and disagreeable symptoms arising from the free consumption of meat, tea, and coffee, call for a drug that will exert an opposite influence. This is found in the coal-tar products known as acetanilid, phenacetin, and antipyrin. While caffein stimulates the heart's action, these act as heart depressants. They lower the blood pressure, and relieve the headache due to caffeinism. These drugs are widely dispensed in headache remedies, but they are dangerous. Sudden deaths from their use are not uncommon, especially in cases where the heart is already in a weakened state.

To whip up a tired horse, and prod him on, and at the same time hold him in by the bit, is a foolish procedure, but no more so than it is to resort to the drugs named to counteract the evils resulting from the use of caffein.

CAFFEIN AND THE TOBACCO HABIT

There can be no question but that the use of coffee, tea, and meat leads to the use of cigarettes, and tobacco in its various forms. Of the thousands who have applied to me for aid in getting rid of the tobacco habit, I have found in nearly every case, they were

free users of meats or coffee or both. Those who use meat and coffee most freely were also the greatest slaves of tobacco. The explanation is this: Meat, coffee, and tea are served merely at meal-time. The stimulus received by their use soon wears off, and the demand for another uplift returns; and as the user can not resort to meats or coffee so frequently to obtain this, the discovery is made that it may be obtained from tobacco. Hence recourse is had to cigarettes, and tobacco in general. Because of the public prejudice, women do not commonly resort to tobacco for relief, hence they drink coffee or tea more freely.

In the treatment of the tobacco habit, I have found it necessary to place the patient on a fleshless and coffeeless régime. In every case, when this régime was followed, the desire for tobacco lessened and ultimately disappeared. So long as our modern table food and beverages remain as they are, tobacco will be consumed.

A MENACE LIKE THE SALOONS

In England, during the seventeenth century, coffee and tea houses were opened. In time they became as much of a public nuisance as are our saloons and tobacco stands. Legislative action had to be taken to close them up and save her people from general physical and moral degeneracy. As far as the deteriorating effect upon the human organism is concerned, it matters very little which one of these drugs,—uric acid, caffein, nicotin, or alcohol,—is used. The immediate effect is the same, and the aim in resorting to them is always to obtain momentary stimulation, or that feeling of exhilaration or well-being which all should possess. No one has a right to take any drug for the purpose of making himself feel better than he is, for this is self-deception.

PREMATURE OLD AGE

There are multitudes traveling the path which leads to premature old age and an early death, believing they are on the very highway to happiness and health. “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” “Wine,” we are told, “is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.”

What applies to alcoholic beverages applies with equal force to the other beverages named. Whosoever is deceived by any of these “is not wise.” “Be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.”

There is a remedy for this world’s ills. It is found in the Spirit of God, the fruits of which are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. The Spirit of God imparts health and vitality. Coffee, tea, tobacco, and other drugs so freely dispensed, are the devil’s substitutes for the Spirit of God. The one gives peace. The others say “Peace; when there is no peace.”