Grocery Store Commodities That Belong with the Druggist
Warnings from Eminent Authorities Against Their
Use—Burning Up Three Panama Canals
By DAVID PAULSON, M. D.
Medical Superintendent Hinsdale Sanitarium, Hinsdale, Illinois
DR. EVANS, formerly health commissioner of the city of Chicago, wrote recently these sane, sensible words, which deserve careful and thoughtful consideration: "In order that no misunderstanding may arise, I should say that physiologists regard coffee, tea, tobacco, and whisky as drugs in the same sense that opium and cocaine are. . . . The craving for tea and that for whisky, the hunger for a cigarette and that for a dose of morphine, are of the same kind. Each comes of an inborn willingness to cheat in playing the game of life."
SHOULD BUY IT FROM THE DRUG STORE
So every grocer who sells tea and coffee is in the drug business. These articles should be bought from the drug store, the same as other drugs; for, according to Dr. Evans, "coffee is a drug. Those addicted to its use are drug addicts. It is much the most widespread form of drug addiction. The largest number enjoy their cup of coffee, and they care not at all whether it harms them. . . . Does the daily use of coffee as a beverage, continued for a series of years, do harm? — Yes. A horse cannot be whipped daily for years without being harmed. A man cannot be nagged continuously for years without being harmed. The very fact that when fatigue is slowing muscles and brain cells down, coffee will whip them on — the very fact that under the stimulus of coffee, capacity is unduly excited — is proof that harm will come if the process is kept up for a series of years. . . . It is the old question of the cost of something for nothing. When, through the influence of coffee, you become able to do, and do more than you would otherwise, you must settle, sometime or other. That is just ordinary sense."
RED LIGHT OUT AND SWITCH OPEN
Dr. Wiley, of pure food fame, says: "Fatigue is the signal of danger, showing need of rest and recreation. Caffeine extinguishes the red light, but does not close the switch."
Dr. Dixon, commissioner of health for the great state of Pennsylvania, says: "Neither coffee nor tea is to be considered a food. Both are stimulants, and it is this which is responsible for their popularity. As with all other stimulants, there is a continual tendency to overindulgence, because a moderate allowance after a time fails to give the necessary incitement to the nervous system. While the mind is often stimulated to good work for a short time by coffee or tea, any stimulus which they give is transitory, for there is a period of depression following the use of all stimulants. Experiments have shown that overindulgence in both has a tendency in the long run to dull the working of the mind."
But there are many who feel they must have something warm to drink at mealtime. For such Dr. Dixon recommends hot water, or the "cambric tea" — hot water with milk and sugar — of our childhood days.
BURNING UP THREE PANAMA CANALS
Henry Ford, noted automobile manufacturer, and uncompromising enemy of the cigarette evil, quotes statistics to show that we are spending in this country more than a billion dollars every year for tobacco; that we are expending for this evil annually about three times the entire cost of the Panama Canal, or twice the amount spent by the entire country on railroad travel. But the heaviest end of this awful curse is in the blighted manhood, the ruined nerves, the shattered brains, of millions of our boys who have in recent years acquired the accursed cigarette habit.
Has your boy begun to use cigarettes? Plead with God for his deliverance. If he does not use them, show your thankfulness by doing what you can to save some other boy from this devilish curse. No one wants the cigarette fiend in this life, and there will be no place for him in heaven; so the cigarette evil damns not only this life, but the life hereafter.
Caffeine extinguishes the red light, but does not close the switch.
While the nicotine curse falls heaviest on the child's immature nervous system, it does not help the adult. It is only a hindrance to him. Every sensible doctor advises his patients to discontinue the use of tobacco immediately upon the first symptom of heart trouble, kidney disease, high blood pressure, or nervous breakdown. If it is so important to do this after the disease has begun, would it not be far better to have broken off the tobacco habit five years before, and thus helped to prevent the disease?
I have seen a father teach his boy to fly a kite, to ride a bicycle, and to pray; but I have yet to see any man in his right mind teach his boy to use tobacco. That is convincing evidence that away down deep in his heart, no man is proud of the fact that he is a slave to this defiling and disease-promoting habit.
