Bandages and Adhesive Plaster

By Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein

Caring for wounds during the Civil War usually involved the use of dressings and bandages of some sort. At the first aid station an attendant would apply a bandage to stop the bleeding. This could be a rolled bandage of clean cotton or linen from a well-stocked medicine chest or wagon. Or, during a desperate battle with crowds of patients exhausting the supplies, the bandage could be a strip of the doctor's shirt.

Once the wound had been cleaned and any necessary operation performed, the wound was often covered with cerate (a beeswax ointment) and then a dressing made of lint (fibers scraped from old linen cloth) or raw cotton (sometimes baked until charred). Most doctors used a cold-water dressing, keeping the pad moist with cold water through frequent applications or a continual drip. Some used warm dressings, but these usually produced infection ("laudable pus"). On occasion some doctors used dry dressings with successful healing and fewer infections.

Dressings were held on the wounds with bandages. Many women, North an South, gave up sheets, bedspreads, skirts, and other material to be torn into strips and rolled for bandages, which were used in addition to manufactured bandages. While these bandages were clean after a fashion, they were never sterile. In many hospitals, bandages were washed and reused, often because of shortages, sometimes spreading infections. In other hospitals, doctors refused to ruse bandages because they suspected that reused bandages hindered healing. Although not elastic, bandages could also be used in the manner of modern elastic bandages to affix splits to broken limbs.

Civil War doctors also used "adhesive plaster." This sticky bandage was made by spreading a mixture of resin, olive oil, lard, and lead monoxide on this muslin. The dried bandage was then rolled for storage and transportation. It could be cut in strips of any length and width for a variety of uses, such as holding the edges of a wound together, holding dressings and bandages in place, and helping to stabilize fractures. However, adhesive plaster bandages could not simply be stuck on; they had to be heated to make them stay. Many doctors kept a can of hot water handy and put the back of the adhesive strip around it until it was sticky enough for use. The bandages could also be heated over the flame of a spirit lamp. If all else failed, rubbing the bandage between the thumb and forefinger might warm the bandage enough for use. Because of the problems of heating the adhesive plaster bandages and because they sometimes irritated the patient's skin, not all doctors used them.

Plaster bandages, such as are used to make casts, were uncommon and were not a regular part of the hospital supplies.

From: "The Encyclopedia of Civil War Medicine" by Glenna R. Schroeder-Lein

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Pfizer in the 1800's

From: pfizer.com

1849
With $2,500 borrowed from Charles Pfizer's father, cousins Charles Pfizer and Charles Erhart, young entrepreneurs from Germany, open Charles Pfizer & Company as a fine-chemicals business. A modest red-brick building in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, serves as office, laboratory, factory, and warehouse.

Their first product is a palatable form of santonin — an antiparasitic used to treat intestinal worms, a common affliction in mid-19th century America. Combining their skills, Pfizer, a chemist, and Erhart, a confectioner, blend santonin with almond-toffee flavoring and shape it into a candy cone. The "new" santonin is an immediate success and the company is launched.

1862
The first domestic production of tartaric acid and cream of tartar, products vital to the food and chemical industries, is launched by Pfizer.

As demand for painkillers, preservatives, and disinfectants soars during the Civil War, Pfizer expands production of tartaric acid (used as a laxative and skin coolant) and cream of tartar (effective as both a diuretic and cleansing agent) as well as other vital drugs to help meet the needs of the Union Army. Among these are iodine, morphine, chloroform, camphor, and mercurials, which, in addition to medicinal applications, are used in the emerging field of photography, the new medium photographer Mathew Brady employs to chronicle the Civil War.

1868
The expansion propelled by the Civil War continues and Pfizer's revenues double. The company now has a substantially increased product line and 150 new employees. To accommodate this growth, it buys and renovates a post-Revolutionary-era building at 81 Maiden Lane in Manhattan and moves its headquarters there. The site carries the Pfizer name for nearly a century.

1880
Using imported concentrates of lemon and lime, Pfizer begins manufacturing citric acid. Pfizer soon becomes America's leading producer of citric acid. As new drinks like Coca-Cola™, Dr. Pepper™, and Pepsi-Cola™ gain popularity, demand for citric acid soars. It becomes Pfizer's main product and the launching pad of its growth in the decades to follow.

1882
Spurred by America's westward expansion and its own growing number of clients west of the Mississippi, Pfizer opens offices and a warehouse in Chicago, Illinois, its first location outside of New York.

1891
On December 27, cofounder Charles Erhart dies and leaves a partnership worth $250,000 to his son William. However, the agreement stipulates that Charles Pfizer can buy William Erhart's share at half its inventory value — an option Charles Pfizer quickly exercises, consolidating ownership of the company in his hands.

1899
A leader in the American chemical business, Pfizer marks its 50th anniversary. Its portfolio includes a wide array of industrial and pharmacological products, anchored by citric acid, camphor, cream of tartar, borax, and iodine. The company has offices in New York and Chicago, and its contacts in the import-export business crisscross the world.

A statement made by Charles Pfizer at the company's 50th anniversary celebration reveals where the company stands as it moves into the 20th century and into an increasingly competitive marketplace: "Our goal has been and continues to be the same: to find a way to produce the highest-quality products and to perfect the most efficient way to accomplish this, in order to serve our customers. This company has built itself on its reputation and its dedication to these standards, and if we are to celebrate another 50 years, we must always be aware that quality is the keystone."

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The Regimental Hospital

From: civilwarhome.com

Although Charles Johnson wrote this many years after the war, it is one of the best of the comparatively few accounts of military field hospitals. Johnson had enlisted as a boy of eighteen, and was assigned to hospital duty in the West; he was with Grant in the siege of Vicksburg and later took part in the expedition into the Bayou Teche country. His account goes far to explain the failure of medical services in the war and to place responsibility not on the medical officers but on the state of medical science at the time.

In the field the Regimental Hospital department was allowed two small tents for the officers, medicines, etc.; another small tent for the kitchen department and supplies, and a larger one for the sick. This last, known as the hospital tent, was about fourteen feet square and was capable of containing eight cots with as many patients.

In the field we almost never had sheets and white pillow cases, but made use of army blankets that were made of the coarsest, roughest fiber imaginable. In warm weather the walls of the tent were raised, which made it much more pleasant for the occupants.

However, the policy that obtained was to send those who were not likely to recover quickly to the base hospitals, though this was not always to the patient's best interests, for these larger hospitals were oftentimes centers of infection of one kind or another, especially of hospital gangrene, which seldom attacked the wounded in the field.

During a campaign our stock of medicines was necessarily limited to standard remedies, among which could be named opium, morphine, Dover's powder, quinine, rhubarb, Rochelle salts, castor oil, sugar of lead, tannin, sulphate of copper, sulphate of zinc, camphor, tincture of opium, tincture of iron, tincture opii, camphorate, syrup of squills, simple syrup, alcohol, whiskey, brandy, port wine, sherry wine, etc. Upon going into camp, where we were likely to remain a few days, these articles were unpacked and put On temporary shelves made from box-lids; and, on the other . hand, when marching orders came, the medicines were again packed in boxes, the bottles protected from breaking by old papers, etc.

Practically all the medicines were administered in powder form or in the liquid state. Tablets had not yet come into use, and pills were very far from being as plentiful as they are today. The result was that most powders- were stirred in water and swallowed. In the case of such medicine as quinine, Dover's powder, tannin, etc., the dose, thus prepared, was a bitter one. The bromides, sulfonal, trional and similar soporifices and sedatives, had not come in use, and asafetida, valerian and opium and its derivatives were about all the Civil War surgeon had to relieve nervousness and induce sleep.

Among the surgical supplies were chloroform, ether, brandy, aromatic spirits of ammonia, bandages, adhesive plaster, needles, silk thread for ligatures, etc. There were, also, amputating cases well supplied with catlins, artery forceps, bone forceps, scalpels, scissors, bullet probes, a tourniquet, etc. But while all the instruments were washed in water and wiped dry to keep from rusting, such an idea as making them aseptic never entered the head of the most advanced surgeon.
     
There was an emergency case, about the size of a soldier's knapsack, and, indeed, intended to be carried on an attendant's back like a knapsack. In this emergency case were bandages, adhesive plaster, needles, artery forceps, scalpels, spirits of ammonia, brandy, chloroform, ether, etc. This emergency case, or hospital knapsack, was always taken with the regiment when the firing-line was about to be approached, and where the First Assistant Surgeon was in charge and was ready to render first aid to any who might be wounded.

This first aid, however, never went further than staunching bleeding vessels and applying temporary dressings. Thus attended to, the wounded were taken to an ambulance, and in this conveyed to the field hospital in the rear, generally out of musket range, but almost never beyond the reach of shells and cannon balls.

Arrived at the larger field hospital the patient was cared for by the surgeons and male nurses. The wounds were examined and dressed, but never antiseptically, for no one knew the importance of antisepsis or how to put it in practice; consequently, every wound suppurated, and so-called laudable pus was welcomed by those in charge as an indication that the patient had reached one of the mile-posts that had to be passed on his road to recovery. Careful hand washing and nail scrubbing was never practiced before operations or in dressing recent wounds. And yet, for the most part, the wounds in the end healed satisfactorily. The fact that those receiving them were, in the great majority of cases, vigorous young men had much to do with the good results. Here it may be proper to say that in the Civil War by far the largest proportion of wounds were made with bullets from what were called minie balls. These were fired, in most instances, from single-shooters and muzzle-loaders, such as the Springfield rifled musket, the Enfield rifled musket, the Austrian rifled musket, etc. These bullets weighed an ounce or more, and the guns from which they were fired would kill a man nearly a mile away, and that they produced large, ugly wounds goes without saying.

When a minie ball struck a bone it almost never failed to fracture and shatter the contiguous bony structure, and it was rarely that only a round perforation, the size of the bullet, resulted. When a joint was the part the bullet struck, the results were especially serious in Civil War days. Of course, the same was true of wounds of the abdomen and head, though to a much greater degree. Indeed, recovery from wounds of the abdomen and brain almost never occurred. One of the prime objects of the Civil War surgeon was to remove the missile, and, in doing this, he practically never failed to infect the part with his dirty hands and instrument.

When Captain William M. Colby of my company was brought from the firing-line to our Division Hospital he was in a comatose state from a bullet that had penetrated his brain through the upper portion of the occipital bone. The first thing our surgeon did was to run his index finger its full length into the wound; and this without even ordinary washing. Next he introduced a dirty bullet probe. The patient died a day or two later.... These facts arc narrated to show the frightful handicap Civil War surgery was under from a lack of knowledge of asepsis and antisepsis; and it is needless to say that no reflection is intended to be made on our surgeon, for he was making use of the very best lights of his day, dangerous as some of these were....

I think wounds from bullets were five times as frequent as those from all other sources. Shell wounds were next in frequency, and then came those from grape and canister. I never saw a wound from a bayonet thrust, and but one made by a sword in the hands of an enemy. In another chapter a reference is made to a man who received a deep wound in the upper part of his thigh, which, after some days, proved fatal. Not long after the wound was received the parts began to assume a greenish tinge and this became of a deeper hue, and when after death the parts were cut down upon, a copper tap from an exploding Shell was found to be the ugly missile which had inflicted the injury that, in the end, proved fatal.

Where so many men are grouped together accidents of greater or less gravity are liable to occur. On the whole, however, our regiment was fortunate. We lost two or three by drowning and one by a steamboat explosion .... and I can recall but three who received accidental bullet wounds. One of these was a pistol shot of small caliber . . . , and the other was from one of the Springfield guns that was supposed not to be loaded. Looking back, I can but regard our record in this direction as especially fortunate, when the handling of so many loaded guns through so long a period is taken into account.

The only light vehicle in the regiment was our hospital ambulance, a four-wheeled vehicle with bed on springs and covered with strong ducking. The rear end-gate opened with hinges at its lower part for the convenience of putting in and taking out very sick or severely injured patients. The driver of our hospital ambulance was a soldier by the name of Throgmorton, who knew his business, and attended to it. He was an expert horseman, and kept the pair of bays under his care well-groomed and properly attended to in every way. They were, to a degree, spirited, and when the occasion called for it, were good steppers. Besides serving its purpose in conveying sick and wounded, our ambulance proved useful as a sort of family carriage, upon several occasions taking certain of us well ones "here-and-yon."

For service about the hospital men were detailed from the regiment to serve in the several capacities of nurses, cooks, and ambulance drivers, etc. Service of this kind was known as. "special duty," and not a few came to have duties. Especially was this true of the men who no little aptness in their new cared for the sick, some of whom developed quite a little insight into disease, and were frequently able to make tolerable diagnoses and prognoses.

Image: Regimental Dressing Station

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May 1, 1862, Hospital Ships

Tripler, Charles S., Surg., Army of the Potomac, Peninsular Campaign, Va.:

On May 1st, Mr. Olmsted, the secretary of one association, had a boat, the "Daniel Webster, No 1" in his possession; a steamer on which he could carry two hundred and fifty patients. At his request, I procured the "Ocean Queen", a steam of the larger class of seagoing ships, and turned her over to him. He agreed to fit her up in forty-eight hours after getting possession of her. It took rather longer than that, however, and then she carried but three-fifths of the number she should have carried.

Reprinted in "Civil War Medicine: Care & Comfort of the Wounded" by Robert E. Denney

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The Baroness Von Olnhausen Nurses At Alexandria

From: civilwarhome.com

One of the women who responded to Dorothea Dix's call for volunteers was Mary Phinney, who had married a German emigre, Baron Gustav von Olnhausen. On her husband's death she moved to Illinois, and from there went to nurse at the Mansion House Hospital in Alexandria. After the war she traveled in Germany, then returned to a nursing career. Her picture of conditions in the hospitals is doubtless exaggerated, yet that many of the doctors were incompetent and corrupt and that the regular medical service looked with disdain on women nurses is abundantly clear.

Miss Dix, who had been appointed by the President head of the army nurses, took me from Washington to Alexandria to the Mansion House Hospital. She told me on the journey that the surgeon in charge was determined to give her no foothold in any hospital where he reigned, and that I was to take no notice of anything that might occur, and was to make no complaint whatever might happen. She was a stern woman of few words.

There seemed to be much confusion about the Mansion House-which before the war was a famous hotel-and every part of it was crowded. She left me in the office and went in search of Dr. S. The sight of the wounded continuously carried through on stretchers, or led in as they arrived from the boats that lay at the foot of the street on which the hospital stood (this was just after that awful Cedar Mountain battle [August 1862), seemed more than I could bear, and I thought Miss Dix would never come. At last she appeared, with Dr. S., who eyed me keenly and, it seemed to me, very savagely, and gave me in charge of an orderly to show me to the surgical ward, as it was called. It consisted of many small rooms, with a broad corridor, every room so full of cots that it was only barely possible to pass between them. Such a sorrowful sight; the men had just been taken off the battle-field, some of them had been lying three or four days almost without clothing, their wounds never dressed, so dirty and wretched. Some one gave me my charges as to what I was to do; it seemed such a hopeless task to do anything to help them that I wanted to throw myself down and give it up. Miss Dix left me, and soon the doctors came and ordered me to follow them while they examined and dressed the wounds. They seemed to me then, and afterwards I found they were, the most brutal men I ever saw. They were both volunteers, and one was a converted Jew who was constantly proclaiming it.

So I began my work, I might say night and day. The surgeon told me he had no room for me, and a nurse told me he said he would make the house so hot for me I would not stay long. When I told Miss Dix I could not remain without a room to sleep in, she, knowing the plan of driving me out, said, "My child" (I was nearly as old as herself), "you will stay where I have placed you." In the mean time McClellan's army was being landed below us from the Peninsula. Night and day the rumbling of heavy cannon, the marching of soldiers, the groaning of the sick and wounded were constantly heard; and yet in all that time I never once looked from the windows, I was so busy with the men.

One of the rooms of the ward was the operating-room, and the passing in and out of those who were to be operated upon, and the coming and going of the surgeons added so much to the general confusion. I doubt if at any time during the war there was ever such confusion as at this time. The insufficient help, the unskilful surgeons, and a general want of organization were very distressing; but I was too busy then and too tired for want of proper sleep to half realize it. Though I slept at the bedsides of the men or in a corner of the rooms, I was afraid to complain lest I be discharged. I was horribly ignorant, of course, and could only try to make the men comfortable; but the staff doctors were very friendly and occasionally helped me, and some one occasionally showed me about bandaging, so by degrees I began to do better. The worst doctor had been discharged, much to my joy, but the other one, despite his drinking habits, stayed on. After the morning visit it was no use calling upon him for anything, and I had to rely on the officer of the day if I needed help. I know now that many a life could have been saved if there had been a competent surgeon in the ward.

At this time the ward was full of very sick men and sometimes two would be dying at the same time, and both begging me to stay with them, so I got little sleep or rest. Moreover, I had no room of my own. Occasionally a nurse would extend the hospitality of the floor in hers, and I would have a straw bed dragged in on which to get a few hours' sleep. This, with a hurried bath and fresh clothes, was my only rest for weeks. It was no use to complain. The surgeon simply stormed at me and said there was no room;, while Miss Dix would say, "You can bear it awhile, my child; I have placed you here and you must stay." I was at that time her only nurse in the Mansion House. Later she succeeded in getting rid of all the others and replacing them With her own.

Alexandria, March, 1863
I thought it best not to trouble you with an account of how we have been living lately,-everything cut off, nothing but coffee (so poor and with hardly ever milk) and dry bread for breakfast; for dinner bread and meat (and such meat! always the tail or neck or some other nasty part), and at night coffee and bread again. Being hungry is nothing to being so insulted. We knew we had a right to all our rations; and while Dr. S. was here we always urged Mrs. B. to ask him, and so put us out of the power of these cooks. They hate us because we are decent women and will fight for the soldiers' rights, thus cutting off their resources. For some reason she never would; she thought he would believe us selfish or something.

One day it was past all bearing. I was positively so hungry I could have eaten cat's meat. I sat over the fire after supper, tired and hungry and wondering if the good I did was balanced by my suffering (more from insults than anything else), when all at once it struck me to go to Dr. Page myself. it was eight o'clock; I found him alone, and he listened to all my story. He seemed so surprised at it, said we had not even one privilege we were entitled to, called the Steward-who is just the meanest, hatefullest (oh, help me to a word, I don't care if it is profane) man that ever lived-and told him that in future we were to draw our own rations and have our own cook. I felt so elated, and when I announced it next morning the women actually embraced me. . . .

When our own battles were settled, then it was time, when good feeding had given us a little strength, to put in for our patients; so last Sunday morning I opened fire. Dr. C. has that department, so I attacked him; but. he was mad when I told him the patients would starve only for the nurses, who had to buy everything the sickest men ate. He denied it, and said he knew his nurse did not do it. So she was called, and said she did; then the others were called; and, at last, we had about every nurse and doctor in the house growling and snarling. Dr. C. said they had everything according to the new diet table; some of the doctors denied it and some of them backed him up; at last we all adjourned to some underground room (the bread-room) to read the table list, when it proved that they got nothing in the quantity even that was ordered there; and as to quality, Lord help them! How I wish you could have heard the row! It went on all day; even in the evening everybody was called up and talked to; and the result is that it has been a little better this week, though far from the mark, and soon (if it grows less every day) it will be back to the old standard, for that wretch H. or somebody will miss the money and get it back if possible.

So you see our path is not all rose-leaves, and you can see, too, one of the many impositions put upon the noble fellows who are throwing away their lives for such men as these. Are all men naturally bad? That's going to be the only religious question I shall study in the future. I guess this war will make me religious, for one. I am getting a good deal more patient and forgiving than I used to be, but I'll never forgive the Rebels who kill them.

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The Sanitary Commission To The Rescue

From: civilwarhome.com

The United States Sanitary Commission, the leading prilate relief organization of the Civil War period, was created-against strong opposition in the army-in June 1861. A distinguished Unitarian divine, the Reverend Henry W. Bellows, was President; the famous landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, was Secretary; and the Commission enlisted scores of physicians and literally hundreds of public-spirited men and women. Its object, wrote Mary Livermore, "was to do what the Government could not." The "could" here is, of course, relative; it was merely that governments had not yet conceived it their responsibility to take care of the health, comfort, and general welfare of soldiers.

The Commission did a little bit of everything. Its inspectors looked into the sanitary arrangements in camps-hence its name-and brought about reforms. It reviewed matters of diet, cooking, clothing; provided private aid to soldiers and to their dependents; took care of fugitives; collected and forwarded boxes of food to the soldiers-a combination, as we have said elsewhere, of YMCA, Red Cross, and USO-and helped out even with nursing and hospital care. At the time of the Peninsular campaign the Commissi . on obtained some hospital transports for the wounded.

We give an account here of the use of these hospital transports. Katharine Wormeley, who tells the story, was one of the many women who worked heroically for the Sanitary Commission. Born in England, the daughter of an admiral, she later distinguished herself in philanthropy and literature. She is remembered today for her remarkable translations of Balzac and of other modern French writers.

"WILSON SMALL," 5 June, 1862

Dear Mother:

I finished my last letter on the afternoon of the day when we took eighty men on the Small, and transferred them to the Webster.

We had just washed and dressed, and were writing letters when Captain Sawtelle came on board to say that several hundred wounded men were lying at the landing; that the Daniel Webster No. 2 had been taken possession of by the medical officers, and was already half full of men, and that the surplus was being carried across her to the Vanderbilt; that the confusion was terrible; that there were no stores on board the Daniel Webster No. 2 (she having been seized the moment she reached the landing on her return from Yorktown, without communicating with the Commission), nor were there any stores or preparations, not even mattresses, on board the Vanderbilt.

Of course the best in our power had to be done. Mrs. Griffin and I begged Mr. Olmsted not to refrain from sending us, merely because we had been up all night. He said he wouldn't send us, but if we chose to offer our services to the United States surgeon, he thought it would be merciful. Our offer was seized. We went on board; and such a scene as we entered and lived in for two days I trust never to see again. Men in every condition of horror, shattered and shrieking, were being brought in on stretchers borne by "contrabands," who dumped them anywhere, banged the stretchers against pillars and posts, and walked over the men without compassion. There was no one to direct what ward or what bed they were to go into. Men shattered in the thigh, and even cases of amputation, were shovelled into top berths without thought or mercy. The men had mostly been without food for three days. but there was nothing on board either boat for them; and if there had been, the cooks were only engaged to cook for the ship, and not for the hospital.

We began to do what we could. The first thing wanted by wounded men is something to drink (with the sick, stimulants are the first thing). Fortunately we had plenty of lemons, ice, and sherry on board the Small, and these were available at once. Dr. Ware discovered a barrel of molasses, which, with vinegar, ice, and water, made a most refreshing drink. After that we gave them crackers and milk, or tea and bread. It was hopeless to try to get them into bed; indeed, there were no mattresses on the Vanderbilt. All we could do at first was to try to calm the confusion, to stop some agony, to revive the fainting lives, to snatch, if possible, from immediate death with food and stimulants. Imagine a great river or Sound steamer filled on every deck,-every berth and every square inch of room covered with wounded men; even the stairs and gangways and guards filled with those who are less badly wounded; and then imagine fifty well men, on every kind of errand, rushing to and fro over them, every touch bringing agony to the poor fellows, while stretcher after stretcher came along, hoping to find an empty place; and then imagine what it was to keep calm ourselves, and make sure that every man on both those boats was properly refreshed and fed. We got through about 1 A.M., Mrs. M. and Georgy having come off other duty and reinforced us. We were sitting for a few moments, resting and talking it over, and bitterly asking why a Government so lavish and perfect in its other arrangements should leave its wounded almost literally to take care of themselves, when a message came that one hundred and fifty men were just arriving by the cars. It was raining in torrents, and both boats were full. We went on shore again: the same scene repeated. The wretched Vanderb ilt was slipped out, the Kennebec brought up, and the hundred and fifty men carried across the Daniel Webster No. 2 to her, with the exception of some fearfully wounded ones, who could not be touched in the darkness and rain, and were therefore made as comfortable as they could be in the cars. We gave refreshment and food to all, Miss Whetten and a detail of young men from the Spaulding coming up in time to I assist, and the officers of the Sebagoj who had seen how hard pressed we were in the afternoon, volunteering for the nightwatch. Add to this sundry Members of Congress, who, if they talked much, at least worked well. One of them, the Hon. Moscs F. Odell, proposed to Mr. Olmsted that on his return to Washington he should move that the thanks of Congress be returned to us! Mr. Olmsted, mindful of our feelings, promptly declined.

We went to bed at daylight with breakfast on our minds, and at six o'clock we were all on board the Daniel Webster No. 2, and the breakfast of six hundred men was got through with in good time. Captain Sawtelle kindly sent us a large wall-tent, twelve caldrons and camp-kettles, two cooks, and a detail of six men. The tent was put up at once, Dr. Ware giving to its preparation the only hour when he might have rested during that long nightmare. We began to use it that (Tuesday) morning. It is filled with our stores; there we have cooked not only the sick-food, but all the food needed on the Government boats. It was hard to get it in sufficient quantity; but when everything else gave out, we broke up "hard-tack" into buckets full of hot milk and water a little sweetened,-"bread and milk" the men called it. Oh, that precious condensed milk, more precious to us at that moment than beef essence!

Tuesday was very much a repetition of Monday night. The men were cleared from the main-deck and gangways of the Daniel Webster No. 2 onto the Kennebec. The feeding business was almost as hard to manage as before. But still it was done, and we got to bed at 1 A.M. Mrs. M. and I were to attend to the breakfast at 6 next morning. By some accident Mrs. M., who was ready quite as soon as I was, was carried off by the Small, which started suddenly to run down to the Spaulding. I had, therefore, to get the breakfast alone. I accomplished it, and then went ashore and fed some men who were just arriving in the cars, and others who were in tents near the landing. The horrors of that morning are too great to speak of. The men in the cars were brought on board the Daniel Webster No. 2 and laid about the vacant maindeck and guards and on the deck of a scow that lay alongside. I must not, I ought not to tell you of the horrors of that morning. One of the least was that I saw a "contraband" step on the amputated stump of a wretched man. I took him by the arm and walked him into the tent, where I ordered them to give him other work, and forbade that he should come upon the ships again. I felt white with anger, and dared not trust myself to speak to him. While those awful sights pass before me I have comparatively no feeling, except the anxiety to alleviate as much as possible. I do not suffer under the sights; but oh! the sounds, the screams of men. It is when I think of it afterwards' that it is so dreadful....

About nine hundred wounded remain to be brought down. Mr. Olmsted says our boats have transported one thousand seven hundred and fifty-six since Sunday; the Government and Pennsylvania boats together about three thousand. Mr. Clement Barclay was with us on Monday night on the Vanderbilt. I believe he went with her to Fortress Monroe. He was working hard, with the deepest interest and skill. I went with him to attend to a little "Secesh" boy, wounded in the thigh; also to a Southern colonel, a splendid looking man, who died, saying to Mr. Barclay, with raised hand: "Write to my wife and tell her I die penitent for the part I have taken in this war." I try to be just and kind to the Southern men. One of our men stopped me, saying: "He's a rebel; give that to me." I said: "But a wounded man is our brother!" (rather an obvious sentiment, if there is anything in Christianity); and they both touched their caps. The Southerners are constantly expressing surprise at one thing or another, and they are shy, but not surly, at receiving kindness. Our men are a noble set of fellows, so cheerful, uncomplaining, and generous.

Remember that in all that I have written, I have told you only about ourselves-the women. What the gentlemen have been, those of our party, those: of the Spaulding and of the other vessels, is beyond my power to relate. Some of them fainted from time to time.

Last night, shining over blood and agony, I saw a lunar rainbow; and in the afternoon a peculiarly beautiful effect of rainbow and stormy sunset,-it flashed upon my eyes as I passed an operating-table, and raised them to avoid seeing anything I passed.

WORMELEY, "The Other Side of War"

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Bad Medicine: A History of Narcotics in Pharmaceuticals

From: adamjamesjones.blogspot.com

America is at the close of the 19th century. Pharmacology is a budding science, and pharmacies are rooting themselves along main street sidewalks.

Plush red leather stools crop in a row before a long wooden bar over which is painted the flowing words, Coca-Cola. At one end of the bar looms the soda fountain. Men and women smoke cigarettes and rest their elbows on the bar while beside them their children sit and swing their feet and sip from their penny-a-piece Cokes. Once or twice a father allows his son a drag from his cigarette.

Next to the soda fountain, in the pharmacy’s front corner closest the door, is the pharmacist and proprietor. He sits in a tall wooden chair behind a squat glass display case that doubles as a counter. A rash register sits atop the counter alongside the splayed medicine catalog that the pharmacist is hunched over, a pencil tapping the rim of his glasses. Below this, on three glass shelves within the display case, are the rows of pill bottles, lozenge packs, jars of white and brown powders, and green vials of syrupy liquids. Behind the pharmacist is another shelf, this one wooden and taller, stocked full of yet more assorted medicines.

Lining the walls of the pharmacy are the colorful posters and framed-flyers advertising those very bottles, packs, jars, and vials in the pharmacist’s shelves. One image by Lloyd Manufacturing Company depicts two children playing with Lincoln Logs beside the text, “Cocaine Toothache Drops. Instantaneous Cure! Price 15 Cents. For Sale by all Druggists.” Next to this is a banner for Bayer Pharmaceutical Products listing the company’s three flagship products: Aspirin (“for headaches”), Heroin (“for coughs”), and Heroin Hydrochloride (“water soluble”). Next, a plain black and white illustration of a flower backdropping a bottle of Pantopon ‘Roche,’ above the headline, “Injectable Whole Opium – From the Juice of the Poppy.”

A woman dangles tauntingly a vial of morphine above her crying infant. “Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup. For Children Teething.”

A second mother looks down warmly down upon her newborn. Here Pabst Extract alcohol tonic proclaims, “The joys of motherhood are increased tenfold when both mother and babe enjoy perfect health. Called upon to bear a double burden, the expectant mother must have additional nourishment not supplied by other foods.”

In elegant text, Parke, Davis & Company promote their codeine and cannabis-laced drops by declaring simply, “We suggest Cosadein to Relieve Coughs.”

Back at the soda bar, unconsciously the children swing their dangling feet faster and faster from on top their stools as the Coca-Cola, containing approximately nine milligrams of cocaine per glass, surges through their veins.1 Next to them their parents cough and their eyes water as their Dr. Batty’s–brand Asthma Cigarettes (“Effectively Treats: Asthma, Hay Fever, Foul Breath, and All Diseases of the Throat.”) puff and cloud about their faces.

Behind his counter, the pharmacist circles the medicines in the catalog that need refilling, then brings the pencil back to his eyeglasses and resumes tapping. His knees are shaking. He eyes the children along the soda bar and attributes his anxiety to their rising squeals. He reaches into the glass shelves below him, and takes another sip of Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup.2

Addicted America
Over the centuries, Americans have acquired their medicines primarily through three sources: Natural home remedies; drug companies that produce, advertise, and ship prescription drugs to doctors and pharmacies; and patent drug companies that produce and sell over-the-counter medicines directly to the public.3 During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the most popular of the three sources was the patent drug company, and for good reason. Laden within the best-selling, over-the-counter drugs sold by such patent companies as Bayer were the narcotics opium, cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol, just to name a few. The population could not get enough of them, and from 1859 to 1903 the revenues earned by patent drug companies rose from $3.5 million annually to $74.5 million.4 In the early years of the 20th century, and to little surprise in retrospect, America was home to a thriving culture of addicts, a great portion of them confused by their affliction for their diligent use of “doctor recommended” medicines.

In more recent decades, given their accessibility and the growing numbers of addicts and related fatalities– especially those fatalities involving celebrities – prescription drugs have found themselves scrutinized under a harsh medical and legal light. A new drug culture has emerged, one that includes the doctors treating prescription drug abuse, the members of law enforcement working to fight it, and the often well-meaning people who are suffering from it. It is a culture disturbingly similar to the very one produced more than a hundred years ago by the patent drug companies. Then, as it is now, every party – the doctors, the cops and lawyers, and the abusers themselves – were all left asking the same question: How did it ever get to be so bad? And since then, the answers have hardly changed.

This essay is not meant to be a condemnation of drug companies a hundred years ago or drug companies now. Rather, this essay will explore the fascinating history of narcotics in American medicine. In the text to follow, we shall see how virtually every illicit substance – from heroin to cocaine, from methamphetamine to marijuana – traces its lineage through addicted America to the doctors and pharmacies of yesteryear. Even hallucinogens like LSD and MDMA, which have yet to prove any bona fide medicinal benefits, originated in tests aiming to cure cerebral or psychological disorders. Then, briefly we will explore the events that helped bring the dangers of such narcotic-based medicines into public awareness, and the policies enacted to pull those drugs – and the addicts tied to them – under control. And finally, we will examine the lessons learned by those previous generations of patent drug abusers and apply them to the problems surrounding prescription drugs today.

Here we will discuss the medicinal backgrounds of each drug, one by one. We will do it with one foot in the present and one eye to the future, just like all investigations of past epidemics should be conducted, lest history ever repeat itself. Or, at least in the case of addiction, more than it already has.

Opium
By far the most frequently used base narcotic in American medicine – both in the past and present – is opium. Even during colonial times, opium was slowly becoming viewed as a panacea for its treatment of headaches, nausea, depression, diarrhea, gout, and many more common ailments. It was granulated for oral use, powdered finely and then sprinkled into open wounds, and tinctured and mixed with other liquids, most commonly alcohol – a common pain-reliever known as laudanum often enjoyed by Benjamin Franklin.5

At the beginning of the 19th century, the world was still many years away from fully understanding the true nature of opium consumption, despite its wide usage. That began to change in 1821 when Thomas de Quincey published his seminal work, Confessions of an English Opium Eater. The book propelled de Quincey to international fame for its revelations on opium dependency. In it, the author describes his introduction to the drug in its laudanum form while studying at Oxford University – the euphoria and even good fortunes surrounding his initial courtship with the drug, and then the nightmare plummet that followed with addiction. In his chapter titled, “The Pains of Opium,” de Quincey outlines some of the horrific symptoms accompanying his growing dependency, including insomnia, visions, fevers, and bone-rattling pain. But, ironically and unfortunately, it was the preceding chapter, “The Pleasures of Opium,” that seemed to have more of an effect on the reading public. In the chapter, de Quincey describes eight whole years of tranquil (de Quincey invented the word tranquilizer) association with the drug, eight years in which he felt the “hopes of his youth” and saw his writing ability and career prospects continue to brighten. One of the most famous passages from the book reads:

“Oh! Just, subtle, and mighty opium! That to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for ‘the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel,’ bringest an assuaging balm; eloquent opium! That with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath; and to the guilty man, for on night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure of blood…”6

In the first few years to follow the book’s publication, it was these positive appraisals of opium that resonated with the public more than those bad, and laudanum’s popularity actually increased in America. Aspiring artists were inspired by opium’s apparent boost to de Quincey’s career, as well as those subsequent boosts promulgated by poets Theophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire, and began to view laudanum as the great writer’s muse.7 And of course, convenient for them and other inspired users, opium was an increasingly omnipresent feature in American drugstores and catalogues. All throughout the 19th century, citizens living across the expanding United States frequently drank laudanum. The drink even had a boom in the frontier west, where such notorious figures as Doc Holliday and Urilla Earp were said to be addicted self-medicators.

Opium would continue its steady rise in popular medicine throughout the early and mid 19th century. Additional, more flavorful, variations of the narcotic were developed, including Quaker’s Black Drop, an opium-based lozenge, and Dr. Barton’s “brown mixture,” which combined opium with licorice.8 But in the tail-end of the century, a series of dramatic events – some of them unforeseen, others long-in-coming – rocked the nation and changed American medicine – and opium’s stronghold within it – forever.

The first and most powerful event was the outbreak of the Civil War, which in effect helped introduce the United States to morphine and the syringe. The first, morphine, was developed in 1803 by German chemist Friedrich Sertuerner when he isolated the pain-relieving alkaloid from opium.9 Sertuerner named his analgesic after Morpheus, the Greek god of dreams and sleep.10 Morphine was instantly praised for its rapid effectiveness in treating pain and for inducing relaxation in surgery patients. It was also at first thought to be non-habit-forming, and by as early as 1832 firms such as Merck, Sharpe and Dohme in Philadelphia were manufacturing morphine salts for sale to the general public.11 But in 1853, another ground-breaking invention was unveiled to both doctors and consumers alike: the hypodermic needle. Using a syringe, morphine could now be injected directly into the bloodstream and course its way to the brain in a fraction of the amount of time at that of oral consumption. Amusingly enough, syringes were also thought to reduce the risk of addiction since the drug bypassed the digestive tract.12

So it was that between 1861 and 1865, as hundreds of thousands of Americans lay dying in battlefields, or else agonizingly maimed in army hospitals, morphine injections soon became as commonplace as marching formations and rifle smoke. Throughout the duration of the war, an estimated 400,000 soldiers in the Northern Army alone found themselves addicted to morphine.13 Morphine addiction became popularly known as, “the soldier’s disease,” and upon returning home these addicted ex-soldiers were thought to spread the demand throughout the citizenry.14 A near-identical epidemic struck Europe a few years later during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.15 Before long, “the soldier’s disease” became ““morphineomania.”

In the 1870s mass shipments of morphine and raw opium reached American shores with unheralded regularity, and soon there arrived yet another invention poised to secure its place in American medicine cabinets. In 1874 the London chemist C. R. Wright boiled morphine in order to synthesize yet another potent opium derivative: diacetylmorphine. The chemical is later refined by German company Bayer, and eventually introduced to consumers under the brand name Heroin.16 Heroin is marketed to drug stores as a cheap and remarkably effective over-the-counter drug capable of curing all forms of aches, pains, nauseas, bronchial problems, sleep disorders, and even “over reliance on morphine.”17 The drug quickly becomes Bayer’s best-selling product, dwarfing even Aspirin, and the company is soon offering Heroin as a powder, in lozenge form, in salts, tablets, and, eventually, in liquid vials for hypodermic injection. Naturally, Americans succumb to a new style of addiction. In 1879, after observing the rampant overuse of heroin injection, Dr. Robert Bartholow wrote an article titled The Hypodermic Method, in which he declared:

“The introduction of the hypodermic has placed in the hands of man a means of intoxication more deductive than any which has heretofore contributed to his craving for narcotic stimulation. So common now are the instances of habitual use, and so enslaving is the habit when indulged in by this mode, that a lover of mankind must regard the future with no little apprehension.”18

Other events surrounding opium’s ascension within American pharmacology and addiction include the Cholera and dysentery epidemics that spread from Europe to eastern America late in the century and which were treated with morphine, as well as the aggressive advertising campaigns and anti-legislation lobbying efforts conducted by the patent drug companies.19

Over a hundred years later, even more opiate-based medicines have been developed, relentlessly advertised, lobbied for, and once again over-used by patients who find them the easiest, albeit temporary, ways to relieve symptoms big and small.

Cocaine
In the mid 1800s, European scientists isolated the active constituent of the coca leaf, Erthroxlyn coca, and later named the substance cocaine. Almost immediately, pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Parke & Davis seized upon this fast-acting and relatively-inexpensive stimulant and began developing new products around it. Sales soared. The population devoured cocaine and hailed it as a wonder drug. Merck and other companies marketed cocaine as a cure for sinusitis, lethargy, reoccurring pains, and alcoholism and opium-dependency. It was sold as a tonic, lozenge, powder, and laced in cigarettes. In the 1890s, the Sears Roebuck catalogue featured a syringe and vial of cocaine for a dual bargain of $1.50.20 Medical journals at the time suggested its regular use for an array of common ailments, and all but advised unlimited intakes.21 Cocaine became one of the most popular treatments prescribed by doctors to veterans suffering from “the soldier’s disease,” and neurologist and former U.S. Army Surgeon General William Hammond proclaimed to take a dose with every meal and eventually announced cocaine as the official remedy of the Hay Fever Association.22

Because cocaine, like most narcotics around the turn of the century, was hardly limited to a doctor’s prescription, men, women, and even children from every societal class took to the drug. In certain dry states, bars began serving hits of cocaine in lieu of alcohol, while in wet states bartenders gladly mixed the drug into shots of whisky for requesting customers.23 Businesses, most famously construction and mine companies, were even known to supply cocaine to their workers to help them work at fever pitch and with little food.24 In 1878, a maker of opiate liver pills from Atlanta named John Pemberton began mixing coca leaves with wine to make what he called French Wine Coca. Soon after this, Pemberton modified his drink, adding caffeine from the kola nut, and renamed the final product Coca Cola. With that, Pemberton let his formula be, and would not change it until 1906 when mounting public and federal pressure forced him to.25

But it was not just cocaine’s increasingly flavorful and cheap byproducts that so attracted the general public, for by 1900 some of the world’s most influential figures had come forward to confer their great enthusiasm for the drug. At the time, cocaine was endorsed by such luminaries as Thomas Edison, Queen Victoria, and Pope Leo XIII.26 Even some of popular culture’s most celebrated fictional characters could not escape its grasp. In the 1880s, possibly as a reflection of his own traits, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first introduced the world to his detective Sherlock Holmes with Holmes possessing a distinct quirk which was by that time shared by many of his readers. In the first few stories, Holmes fought his depression with frequent injections of cocaine. Sometimes, while stuck in the middle of some particularly trying case, Holmes would cry out, “Quick, Watson, the needle!”27

But perhaps history’s most famously-adamant supporter of cocaine was Sigmund Freud. As a young physician in Vienna in 1884, Freud was barely making a living. That year however, Freud discovered cocaine, and with it what he considered the miracle drug that would improve all of man’s existence. That year he wrote to his future wife Martha:

“If all goes well, I will write an essay on it [cocaine] and I expect it will win its place in therapeutics by the side of morphine and superior to it… I take very small doses of it regularly against depression and against indigestion and with the most brilliant of success.”28

Around this time, pharmaceutical companies had succeeding in further concentrating cocaine into a substance called cocaine hydrochloride, which was reportedly “tens to hundreds of times more powerful.”29 Freud read all the articles relating to the cocaine refinement process, along with all other medical journals devoted to cocaine usage – the vast majority of which were in praise of the drug – and set out to write what he hoped would be the final say in cocaine literature. The result was Uber Coca, a report 70 pages-long detailing the great potential of cocaine, including as a cure for morphine dependency.30 Some time after this, Freud successfully weaned one of his close friends from morphine addiction to cocaine addiction.31

Marijuana
Like the poppy and the coca leaf, cannabis has been in medicinal use for thousands of years but did not become a fixture upon drugstore shelves until the mid 1800s. At first, marijuana was most commonly ingested within a tincture of alcohol, but was soon converted into other forms like pills and cigarettes after its healing qualities grew to wider report. Much like today, medicinal marijuana in the late 19th century was used to treat such ailments as anxiety, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, arthritis, glaucoma, migraines, and seizures.32  It was also given to laboring mothers to help promote relaxation and ease contractions during deliveries.33

Throughout the latter half of the 19th century, hundreds of articles were written on the medicinal benefits to be derived from cannabis. In his celebrated 1915 textbook, Sir William Osler – often called “the father of modern medicine” – hailed marijuana as “the best treatment for migraines.”34 In fact, from 1850 to 1937, the U.S. Pharmacopoeia listed marijuana as the primary treatment for over a hundred different ailments.35 Dr. John Russell Reynolds, personal physician to Queen Victoria, prescribed cannabis to all the royal family for more than thirty years and in 1890 wrote in the medical journal The Lancet that marijuana is “…one of the most valuable medicines known to man.”36

Gradually however, the American taste for marijuana shifted from that of a medicinal palette to one recreational. This likely started as early as 1857 with Fitz Hugh Ludlow’s book The Hasheesh Eater. Modeled after de Quincey’s memoir on opium, Ludlow recounts his own experiments with hashish – experiments that compared to opium were comparatively free of consequence.37 Soon, un-manufactured, homegrown hashish started to replace the marijuana-based medicines produced by pharmaceutical companies. In the 20th century, as more and more citizens began to consume marijuana for clearly recreational purposes and when the drug began to be identified with artists, musicians, and, worse, the black community, marijuana was first taxed and then eventually banned from society in all its forms. The drug would later resurrect itself in American medicine, although only in prescription form, and otherwise remains heavily regulated despite being one of the very few psychoactive drugs – legal or no – to be both physically non-habit-forming and incapable of inducing overdose.

Amphetamine
Amphetamine in the decades following its synthesis in 1887 in a German laboratory has been described as “a drug in search of a disease.”38 It was not until 25 years later that amphetamine was used medically to treat asthma, and only after that did American doctors begin researching serious medical applications for the drug. In 1932, amphetamine was first introduced commercially as an over-the-counter inhalant called Benzedrine. Soon after, amphetamines were being used to treat a wide array of disorders, including depression, obesity, narcolepsy, congestion, epilepsy, schizophrenia, enuresis, migraines, and alcoholism.39 It was during this time that Benzadrine began to be widely abused as both the Depression and Prohibition forced citizens to seek other forms of escape.40

In 1919, a more concentrated and potent version of amphetamine was developed in Japan called methamphetamine. Methamphetamine – a crystalline powder – was relatively cheap and simple to produce, and because it was also soluble in water it could be injected.41 During World War II, methamphetamine was dispersed to soldiers on both sides of the line to promote alertness and fight fatigue, and after the war’s close amphetamine addiction ran rampant in Japan after piled military supplies of the drug were released to the public.42 Less than thirty years later, methamphetamine was once more used by American fighting men in Vietnam, and like an evolved virus “the soldier’s disease” struck again (heroin addiction also hit epidemic proportions among American GIs in Vietnam).43

In the years between the two wars, amphetamines were further manipulated into more specially-marketed drugs, including Dexadrine for depression or lethargy, and Ritalin for attention and learning disorders. Such drugs became so popular late in the 20th century that some educators came to refer to the “three Rs” as “reading, writing, and Ritalin.”44 In the new millennium, amphetamine use and abuse, as well as the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine, are at all time highs.

Hallucinogens
In 1938, with the goal of discovering a remedy for migraines, two Swiss chemists extracted lysergic acid from an ergot – a type of fungus commonly found in grains.45 The chemists added a diethylamine molecule to the acid and named it LSD 25. Some years later, one of the chemists, Dr. Albert Hofmann, accidentally ingested some of his chemical, and the rest is history.

LSD never did prove a cure for migraines, but throughout the 20th century scientists would continue medical research on the drug, each time with varying hopes on treating psychiatric disorders, alcoholism, impotence, autism, and depression.46 Very few tests resulted with much promise, although in 1959 Cary Grant did report to Look magazine that LSD psychotherapy sessions had single-handedly brought happiness back into his life.47

MDMA was first developed early in the 20th century by pharmaceutical giant Merck, although at the time the company only used the chemical as an intermediate for other drugs.48 Upon further investigation however, MDMA was found to be a rare compound enveloping both hallucinogenic and stimulant properties, and was briefly considered for use as a diet aid.49 MDMA was all but forgotten since around the time of its invention and all the way until the 1980s when researchers began experiments similar to those conducted with LSD in which MDMA was applied to psychotherapy. But, also like LSD, the adverse effects outweighed any positive, and MDMA was given up on by the medical field and picked up by the illicit market. Only in recent years have researchers expressed any new hope that MDMA may in fact contain medicinal potential, this time in treating cancer.

Medicines or Intoxicants
From the base organics – opium, coca, cannabis – to the more obscure synthetics – MPTP, Quaaludes, PCP – almost all of America’s narcotics have their origins as pharmaceuticals. Today, some of the country’s most heavily abused substances are prescription drugs, their active ingredients often deriving from such drugs as opium, cocaine, and amphetamine, signaling an epidemic alarmingly similar to that which swept the populace more than a hundred years ago.

By the dawn of the twentieth century, it was estimated that 313,000 out of the total 76 million living in America were addicted to opiates alone.50 Of those 313,000, two-thirds were women, a result of the male physician’s over-tendency to prescribe opium for relief of gynaecological issues and mood disorders.51 Women were even encouraged to be sure and take healthy doses of opium during menstruation periods in order to ease cramps and stress. From a broader perspective, this example was just one of many demonstrating the medical negligence that helped produce so many addicts in the 19th century – a negligence that, as new drugs emerged, seems to have never gone away.

According to David F. Musto in his book, The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Control:

…if the physician could not effect cure, he could assuage pain and apprehension: opiates were preeminent for these functions and were apparently used with great frequency. Drugs are still overused in this casual, convenient way – penicillin, the sulfas, tetracycline, barbiturates, and son on – they carry a message of effective treatment to the patient, fulfilling his emotional needs even if sometimes risky and superfluous from an objective viewpoint.52

Late in the 19th century, as the public grew aware of the addiction epidemic that had somehow spread right before their eyes, professionals finally began to reevaluate the true benefits of psychoactive drugs. The British Medical Journal retracted its previous unrestrained endorsement of cocaine in medical practice, and Sigmund Freud, upon witnessing the deterioration of his friend as he moved from opium to cocaine dependency, revised his Uber Coca.53 Similarly, beginning in the 1980s and continuing to now, doctors have reconsidered their readiness to prescribe such symptom-blanketing drugs as Hydrocodone and Valium which, when addiction inadvertently sets in, ultimately produce more harm than good.

Along with public awareness came public outcry for federal regulation of the patent drug industry. During the late 19th century, this growing demand met with a powerful counterforce by the drug industry. In fact, by the turn of the century, patent medicine companies had become the largest advertisers in all U.S. print media, and using their immense financial and marketing arms, effectively blocked any banishment or labeling requirements of their products for at least another decade.54 Finally, in 1906 the U.S. passed the original Pure Food and Drug Act which amounted to the first official action taken by the government to protect drug consumers and require certain foods and medicines to disclose potentially-harmful ingredients on the labels of their products. Still, this new transparency did little to slow sales of, or addiction to, items like opium and cocaine, and neither did the 1909 Act to Prohibit the Importation and Use of Opium for Other Than Medicinal Purposes, which mainly just forced opium abusers out of smoking dens and into neighborhood drugstores. It was not until the Harrison Act of 1914 did narcotic abuse actually see a sharp decline. The Act, which did not completely outlaw narcotics like heroin and cocaine, required that to obtain the drug one must do it through the prescription of a licensed physician.55

But, as recent decades have demonstrated, limiting narcotics to prescriptions does not eradicate abuse. In many instances, particularly in cases where the drug is improperly or over-prescribed, abuse is actually fueled. As this brief examination of history suggests, mankind’s affinity for psychoactive drugs – whether obtained illicitly or medically – will likely never be cured. But, as history also shows, it can be tempered. Just like the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Harrison Act of the early 20th century demonstrate, the will of the public is capable of overcoming Big Pharmacy and addiction itself. In more recent years, acts like The Combat Meth Act of 2005 have effectively limited the sale of potential meth ingredients to consumers.

The future has yet to tell what further policies and programs will be required to quell what appears to be a centurial pattern of pharmaceutical misuse. For now, as it did around the dawn of the 20th century, the line between medicine and abused substance remains thin. And probably it always will.

1 M. Liebowitz. The Chemistry of Love (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1983), 208.
2 All descriptions of the above antique medicine ads are from: K. Smith. Weed, Booze, Cocaine and other Old School ‘Medicine’ Ads. March 11, 2012. http://www.pharmacytechs.net/blog/old-school-medicine-ads (accessed April 1, 2012)
3 W. White. “OxyContin Addiction: A New Drug, But an Old Problem.” When Prescription Drugs Become Dangerous (Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2004), 101.
4 J. Young. The Toadstool Millionaires: A Social History of Patent Medicines in America Before Federal Regulation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), 144.
5 D. Maurer and V. Vogel. Narcotics and Narcotic Addiction (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1973), 382.
6 T. De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, edited by Alethea Hayter, (New York, Penguin Books, 1971), 103-104.
7 R. O’Brien and S. Cohen. Encyclopedia of Drug Abuse (Portland, Oregon: Facts on File, 1992), XIII.
8 White, 123.
9 J. Buxton. The Political Economy of Narcotics: Production, Consumption, & Global Markets (Black Point, Nova Scotia: Fernwood Publishing Ltd),14.
10 R. Schmits, “Friedrich Willhelm Serturner and the Discovery of Morphine.” Pharmacy in History 27 (1985): 61 – 74.
11 D. Musto. The American Disease: Origins of Narcotic Controls. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973), 2
12 White, 124.
13 R. O’Brien and S. Cohen, XIV
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Buxton, 15.
17 Ibid.
18 Quoted in H. Kane, The Hypodermic Injection of Morphia (New York: C.L.  Birmingham, 1880).
19 White, 125.
20 Buxton, 17.
21 Musto, 7.
22 Ibid.
23 Musto, 8.
24 M.I. Wilbert. “Sale and Use of Cocaine.” Public Health Report 29. 3180-83. (1914).
25 R. O’Brien and S. Cohen, XV.
26 C. Hellerhman. “Cocaine: The Evolution of the Once ‘Wonder’ Drug.” CNN Health. July 22, 2011. http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/22/social.history.cocaine/index.html (accessed April 1, 2012.
27 J.T. Dalby. “Sherlock Holmes’ Cocaine Habit.” Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, Volume 8 (1991). 73-74.
28 C. Hellerman.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 R. O’Brien and S. Cohen, XVI.
32 White, 110.
33 “History of Medical Cannabis.” CannabisMD.net. August 4, 2008. http://www.cannabismd.net/history-of-medical-cannabis (accessed April 1, 2012).
34 Ibid.
35 Buxton, 4.
36 E. Abel. Marijuana: The First Twelve Thousand Years (New York: Phenum Press. 1980), 114.
37 F. Ludlow. The Hasheesh Eater. (New York: Harper & Bros Publishers, 1857), 70.
38 Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office. History of Methamphetamine.  http://www.montgomerycountytn.org/County/sheriff/meth/methHistory.aspx (accessed April 1, 2012).
39 White, 109.
40 Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44 White, 109.
45 White, 119.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 E.J. Turner. Ecstasy’s History. 1988. http://www.ephidrina.org/ecstasy/history.html (accessed April 1, 2012.
49 White, 121.
50 Buxton, 18.
51 Ibid.
52 Musto, 13.
53 Buxton, 19.
54 Ibid.
55 Drug Misuse: A Psychiatric View of a Modern Dilemma. Report 8. Formulated by the Committee on Mental Health Services. 1971.
56 NADCP. “Facts and Figures.” http://www.nadcp.org/learn/facts-and-figures (accessed April 1, 2012.
57 P. Parkinson. Interview conducted February 8, 2012.

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Artificial Respiration Performed on President Lincoln

Excerpted from: "History of the Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (Part One)
From: infouci.org

Abraham Lincoln’s assassination took place on Friday, April 14 in Washington, DC 18651 C., when the American Civil War came to an end. The murder occurred five days after the commander of the Army of Northern Virginia Robert E. Lee surrendered his troops to General Ulysses S. Grant and the Army of the Potomac. Lincoln was the first U.S. president to be assassinated.

The sixteenth U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot in the head while attending to the representation of the play “Our American Cousin” by Tom Taylor, Ford’s Theatre in Washington D. C., with his wife and two guests. Lincoln died the next morning following the shooting received.

Charles Leale, a young military surgeon license attended the theater, went through the crowd towards the presidential box. The door opened and Rathbone not realized that was blocked by a piece of wood. He removed the bolt and opened to Leale.

Leale entered the box and found in abundance Rathbone bled a deep wound throughout her forearm. It did not stop and went directly to Lincoln, slumped in his seat and secured by Mary. The President had no pulse and Leale him for dead and laid him on the floor.

A second doctor who was also among the public, Charles Sabin Taft, arrived at the scene by climbing over the railing of the box. Leale Taft and cut the collar of Lincoln and opened it, then, Leale made the following acts: “A”, “B” and “C”

Method “A” “... As the President made no move to revive then, I thought of another way of death, apnea, and I assumed my preferred position for him with artificial respiration to revive …” “… I knelt on the floor on the President, with one knee on each side of the pelvis and in front of him. I leaned forward, opened my mouth and inserted two fingers of his right hand as far as possible .. . and then I opened the larynx and I did a free passage for air to enter the lungs … “

Method “B”: “… I put an assistant in each of his arms to manipulate in order to expand the chest and then slowly pushed his arms down the side of the body as I pressed the diaphragm above: These methods caused the vacuum and air is forced out of their lungs … “

Method “C”: “… Also with the thumb and fingers of my right hand pressure intermittent sliding pressure below the ribs stimulated the apex of the heart …”

In this way, Dr. Leale made 3 moves correctly described later as “A, BC” of CPR. The “A” or “Airway” is to leave the open air for ventilation, the “B” or “Breathing” the act of venting and “C” or “Circulation” promote circulation.

“… Convinced that something must be done to preserve life, I leaned forward to apply force directly on your body, chest, chest, face to face, and several times made a long sigh, which is force expanded his lungs and his breathing improved … “Charles Augusto Leale”

Felt it and found the wound left on the back of the skull near the left ear. Remove a blood clot, which the injured person to breathe again. However, Leale knew that this recovery was only temporary and said, “His wound is mortal. It will be impossible to cure. “

Dr. Leale, Taft and another doctor named Albert King quickly agreed and decided that the President could not be brought to the White House because of the tumbling of the carriages. After considering driving to a nearby saloon of Peter Taltavull, decided to take him to a house opposite the theater, known as the Pension Petersen. The three doctors and soldiers who attended the show took the President to the entrance. Across the street, a man holding a lantern and said, “Bring him here!, Bring it here!” It was Henry Safford, a resident of the house of William Petersen (Petersen pension) which was outside the theater . Men charged to Lincoln to the pension and put it on the bed in a room on the second floor.

The wounded vigil held in the pension Petersen. The three doctors were joined by Army Surgeon General Joseph K. U.S. Barnes, Dr. Charles Henry Crane, Dr. Anderson Ruffin Abbott and Dr. Robert K. Stone. Crane was the assistant Barnes and Stone, Lincoln’s personal physician. The president’s sons, Robert and Thomas Lincoln joined them, as Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.

While Mary Lincoln wept one of the lounges, Stanton was installed in another and took command of the U.S. government, sending and receiving telegrams, reading the statements of witnesses and the prosecution of organized Booth. Nothing more could be done for the wounded, at 7:22 am on April 15th, Lincoln died at the age of 56 years, 2 months and 3 days.

See citations at infouci.org

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