With the origin and the use of drugs in the treatment of disease, most people are familiar. The purpose of this lesson, however, is to give brief but accurate information concerning the various chemical elements and compounds termed drugs or medicines.

Many of the medicines in common use are neutral, having no particular effect upon the body, and the effects attributed to them are largely imaginary. Out of the many thousands of chemical materials found in nature, there are, however, certain substances, groups, and compounds which have most marked and violent effect upon all forms of living protoplasm.

Ancient belief concerning medicine.

Life the result of chemical harmony

The general theory upon which the practise of medicine rests is that certain chemical substances which are not found in the animal body, and which have no natural place therein, have mysterious and beneficial effects; that they possess certain powers, among which are the rebuilding of diseased cells, and the purifying of diseased blood. This belief arose in a very remote age, when the mind was primitive; when man was ignorant, and controlled almost wholly by superstition - when every natural phenomenon was believed to be the work or whim of some god, and every disease was thought to be the work of some devil. Modern science has proved all this to be untrue. We know by the selective processes through millions of years of evolution that those chemical substances which work in harmony have become associated so as to form life. We know that life is merely an assemblement of organic matter, very complex and little understood; that it is eternally undergoing chemical changes governed by the natural laws of development and decay. We know that conformity to certain natural laws will produce physical ease, and that violation of these laws will produce disease. We know that ease is what we most desire, therefore the trend of thought, throughout the world, is to realize this desire by turning toward the natural.

The material upon which life depends.

True food furnishes the foundation or constructive material upon which all life depends. Nearly all other substances which affect the human body are merely disturbing elements that interfere with the natural chemical processes of life. To illustrate more fully these general principles, we will take, for example, the chemical changes that may take place in the hemoglobin of the blood. Hemoglobin is a proteid containing iron. It is a complex chemical compound and reacts with other substances very readily. In the lungs it combines with oxygen. In the muscles, this oxyhemoglobin is again received into the original body-substances. This life-giving process is only one of the many thousands selected by evolution from the millions of chemical changes possible in nature.

Effect of carbon monoxid upon the hemoglobin of the blood.

Drug theory declining.

When carbon monoxid, which is present in illuminating gas, is breathed into the lungs, it combines with hemoglobin, producing a compound which prevents the formation of oxyhemoglobin, thus stopping the process of oxidation in the body, and death is the result.

In proportion as science has shown the origin of life, and the methods by which it has been sustained and developed, the use of drugs as a remedial agent has declined. This line of reasoning followed to its logical end, points with unerring certainty to the total abandonment of the drug theory of treating disease except, perhaps, as anesthetics and disinfectants.

Treatment of disease by disinfection.

Patent medicines and the doctor's prescription.

The means of combating disease by disinfection is sometimes confused with the general system of drugging. The modern methods of preventing and of combating contagious diseases by disinfection are in harmony with the best known sanitary laws. These results depend, not upon the ignorant and the harmful theories on which general drug medication was founded, but upon the latest and the most scientific knowledge.

In the recent magazine exposures of patent medicines, the chief trend of argument was that these stock remedies were evil because the user took opium, cocain, or whisky without a doctor's prescription. This standpoint is more amusing than instructive. Just why a poison taken without a doctor's prescription should be dangerous, and its sale a crime, while the sale and the use of the same drug over a doctor's prescription should be highly recommended, is rather difficult to comprehend, and this the enterprising journals have not explained. The expose that is most needed is not of a few poisonous patent preparations, but of the fundamental folly of interfering with Nature's work by any form of poisoning. Poison is poison whether advertised in a newspaper as a "New Discovery," or prescribed by a reputable representative of the "Ancient Order of Medicine Men."

In a lesson of this kind it is impractical to classify all drugs accurately according to their chemical nature. For convenience of the student, however, the drugs commonly used in medicine will be divided into three groups, which have common representatives, and whose general effect upon the human body are well understood. These three groups are: a. Alkaloids and narcotics.

Effect of alkaloids upon the body.

b. Alcohols and related compounds.

c. Poisonous mineral salts and acids.