"Three years ago Thompson was a strong man. Now he is without money,
health, home or friends."
(Chicago Tribune.)
"I began taking Birney's Catarrh Cure (says Thompson) three years ago,
and the longing for the drug has grown so potent that I suffer without
it.
"I followed the directions at first, then I increased the quantity until
I bought the stuff by the dozen bottles."
A famous drink and drug cure in Illinois had, as a patient, not long
ago, a 14-year-old boy, who was a slave to the Birney brand of cocain.
He had run his father $300 in debt, so heavy were his purchases of the
poison.
Chicago long ago settled this cocain matter in the only logical way. The
proprietor of a large downtown drug store noticed several years ago
that at noon numbers of the shop girls from a great department store
purchased certain catarrh powders over his counter. He had his clerk
warn them that the powders contained deleterious drugs. The girls
continued to purchase in increasing numbers and quantity. He sent word
to the superintendent of the store. "That accounts for the number of our
girls that have gone wrong of late," was the superintendent's comment.
The druggist, Mr. McConnell, had an analysis made by the Board of
Health, which showed that the powder most called for was nearly 4 per
cent, cocain, whereon he threw it and similar powders out of stock. The
girls went elsewhere. Mr. McConnell traced them and started a general
movement against this class of remedies, which resulted in an ordinance
forbidding their sale. Birney's Catarrhal Powders, as I am informed, to
meet the new conditions brought-out a powder without cocain, which had
the briefest kind of a sale. For weeks thereafter the downtown stores
were haunted by haggard young men and women, who begged for "the old
powders; these new ones don't do any good." As high as $1.00 premium was
paid for the 4 per cent, cocain species. To-day the Illinois druggist
who sells cocain in this form is liable to arrest. Yet in New York,
at the corner of Forty-second street and Broadway, I saw recently a
show-window display of the Birney cure, and similar displays are not
uncommon in other cities.
Regarding other forms of drugs there may be honest differences of
opinion as to the limits of legitimacy in the trade. If mendacious
advertising were stopped, and the actual ingredients of every nostrum
plainly published {044}and frankly explained, the patent medicine trade
might reasonably claim to be a legitimate enterprise in many of its
phases. But no label of opium or cocain, though the warning skull and
cross-bones cover the bottle, will excuse the sale of products that are
never safely used except by expert advice. I believe that the Chicago
method of dealing with the catarrh powders is the right method in
cocain- and opium-bearing nostrums. Restrict the drug by the same
safeguards when sold under a lying pretence as when it flies its true
colors. Then, and then only, will our laws prevent the shameful trade
that stupefies helpless babies and makes criminals of our young men and
harlots of our young women.