Part 23

“Or his physician,” suggested Dr. Strong. “I’ve seen cases of people drinking twenty to twenty-five glasses of that ‘harmless’ stuff every day. Of course, they were on the road to nervous smash-up. But the craving for it was established and they hadn’t the nerve to stop.”

“The soda-fountain as a public peril,” said Mr. Clyde, with a smile.

“There’s more in that than can be smiled away,” retorted the doctor vigorously. “What between nerve-foods that are simply disguised ‘bracers,’ and dangerous, heart-depressing dopes, like bromo-seltzer, the soda-fountain does its share of damage in the community.”

“What about soda-water; that is innocent, isn’t it?” asked Mrs. Clyde.

“Yes. If the syrups are pure, soda-water is a good thing in moderation. So are the mineral waters. But there is this to be said about soda-water and candy, particularly the latter—”

“I’ve always said,” broke in Grandma Sharpless, “that candy-eating would ruin any digestion.”, “Then you’ve always been wrong, ma’am,” said Dr. Strong. “Candy, well and honestly made, is excellent food at the proper time. The trouble is, both with candy and with the heavy, rich soda-waters, that people are continually filling up with them between meals. Now the stomach is a machine with a great amount of work to do, and is entitled to some consideration. Clyde, what would happen to the machines in your factory, if you didn’t give them proper intervals of rest?”

“They’d be very short-lived,” said Mr. Clyde. “There’s a curious thing about machinery which everybody knows but nobody understands: running a machine twenty-four hours a day for one week gives it harder wear than running it twelve hours a day for a month. It needs a regular rest.”

“So with the machinery of digestion,” said the doctor. “The stomach and intestines have their hard work after meals. How are they to rest up, if an odd lot of candy or a slab of rich ice-cream soda come sliding down between whiles to be attended to? Eat your candy at the end of a meal, if you want it. It’s a good desert. But whatever you eat, give your digestion a fair chance.”

“You can digest anything if you use Thingumbob Pills,” observed Mr. Clyde sardonically. “The newspapers say so.”

“That’s the kind of doctrine that makes dyspeptics,” returned Dr. Strong. “The American stomach is the worst-abused organ in creation. Saliva is the true digestive. If people would take time to chew properly, half the dyspepsia-pill fakers would go out of business. If they’d take time to exercise properly, the other half would disappear.”

“Liver pills were my regular dependence a few years ago,” remarked Mr. Clyde. “Since I took up hand-ball I haven’t needed them. But I suppose that half the business men in town think they couldn’t live without drugging themselves two or three times a week.”

“Undoubtedly. Tell the average American any sort of a lie in print, about his digestion, and he’ll swallow it whole, together with the drug which the lie is intended to sell. Look at the Cascaret advertising. Its tendency is to induce, not an occasional recourse to Cascarets, but a steady use of them. Any man foolish enough to follow the advice of the advertisements would form a Cascaret habit and bring his digestion into a state of slavery. That sort of appeal has probably ruined more digestions and spoiled more tempers than any devil-dogma ever put into type.”

“Castor-oil is good enough for me,” said Grandma Sharpless emphatically.

“It’s good enough for anybody—that is to say, bad enough and nasty enough so that there isn’t much danger of its being abused. But these infernal sugar-coated candy cathartics get a hold on a man’s intestinal organization so that it can’t do its work without ‘em, and, Lord knows, it can’t stand their stimulus indefinitely. Then along comes appendicitis.”

“But some of the laxative medicines advertise to prevent appendicitis,” said Mrs. Clyde.

Dr. Strong’s face was very grim. “Yes, they advertise. Commercial travelers, because of their irregular habits, are great pill-guzzlers as a class. Appendicitis is a very common complaint among them. A Pittsburgh surgeon with a large practice among traveling men has kept records, and he believes that more than fifty per cent of the appendicitis cases he treats are caused by the ‘liver-pill’ and ‘steady-cathartic’ habit. He explains his theory in this way. The man begins taking the laxative to correct his bad habits of life. Little by little he increases his dose, as the digestive mechanism grows less responsive to the stimulus, until presently an overdose sets his intestines churning around with a violence never intended by nature. Then, under this abnormal peristalsis, as it is called, the appendix becomes infected, and there’s nothing for it but the surgeon’s knife.”

“Would you have people run to the doctor and pay two dollars every time their stomach got a little out of kilter?” asked Mrs. Sharpless shrewdly.

“Run to the doctor; run to the minister; run to the plumber; run anywhere so long as you run far enough and fast enough,” answered Dr. Strong with a smile. “A mile a day at a good clip, or three miles of brisk walking would be the beginning of a readjustment. Less food more slowly eaten and no strong liquors would complete the cure in nine cases out of ten. The tenth case needs the doctor; not the newspaper-and-drug-store pill.”

“But all patent medicines aren’t bad, are they?” asked Mrs. Clyde. “Some have very good testimonials.”

“Bought or wheedled. Any medicine which claims to cure is a fraud and a swindle.”

“Don’t tell me, young man!” said Grandma Sharpless. “You doctors are prejudiced against patent medicines, but we old folks have used ‘em long enough to know which are good and which are bad. Now I don’t claim but what the Indian herb remedies and the ‘ready reliefs’ and that lot are frauds. But my family was brought up on teething powders and soothing syrups.”

“Then you’re fortunate,” said Dr. Strong sternly, “that none of them has turned out to be an opium fiend.”

The instant he said it, he saw, with sharp regret, that his shaft had sped true to the mark. The clear, dark red of a hale old age faded from Grandma Sharpless’s cheeks. Mr. Clyde shot a quick glance of warning at him.

“And speaking of Indian remedies,” went on the doctor glibly, “I remember as a boy—”

“Stop a minute,” said Grandma Sharpless steadily. “The truth isn’t going to hurt me. Or, if it does hurt, maybe it’s right it should. I had a younger brother who died in a sanitarium for drug-habit when he was twenty-four. As a child he pretty nearly lived on soothing syrups; had to have them all the time, because he was such a nervous little fellow; always having earache and stomach-ache, until he was eight or nine years old. Then he got better and became a strong, active boy, and a robust man. After his college course he went to Philadelphia, and was doing well when he contracted the morphine habit—how or why, we never knew. It killed him in three years. Do you think—is it possible that the soothing syrups—I’ve heard they have morphine in them—had anything to do with his ruin?”

“Why, Mrs. Sharpless,” said the other, very gently, “I can only put it before you in this way. Here is one of the most subtle and enslaving of all drugs, morphine. It is fed to a child, in the plastic and formative years of life, regularly. What surer way could there be of planting the seeds of drug-habit? Suppose, for illustration, we substitute alcohol, which is far less dangerous. If you gave a child, from the time of his second year to his eighth, let us say, two or three drinks of whiskey every day, and that child, when grown up, developed into a drunkard, would you think it strange?”

“I’d think it strange if he didn’t.”

“Apply the same logic to opium, or its derivative, morphine. There are a dozen preparations regularly used for children, containing opium, or morphine, such as Mrs. Winslow’s ‘Soothing Syrup,’ and Kopp’s ‘Baby Friend.’ This is well known, and it is also a recognized fact that the morphine and opium habit is steadily increasing in this country. Isn’t it reasonable to infer a connection between the two? Further, some of the highest authorities believe that the use of these drugs in childhood predisposes to the drink habit also, later in life. The nerves are unsettled; they are habituated to a morbid craving, and, at a later period, that craving is liable to return in a changed manifestation.”