Medicine: Narcosan

“. . . and I’d give my life for it.”

As he pronounced these words, Frederick Alfred Wallis, New York Commissioner of Correction, crumpled a slip of paper in his hand and scowled earnestly at the reporters. It was rather a surprising speech, for Commissioner Wallis was moved to offer this dramatic sacrifice not for liberty, home or the flag, but merely for a mixture of lipoids, proteins and vitamins called “narcosan.”

Narcosan may be a cure for drug addiction. Commissioner Wallis said that it had been tested on 366 prisoners in the Correctional Hospital on Welfare Island. He said that narcosan cured them, at least temporarily. His report attracted considerable attention. Dr. Alexander Lambert and Dr. Frederick Tilney, famed Manhattan physicians, reported on narcosan in the New York Medical Journal and Record. They said that it had relieved , morphin, cocain, heroin, veronal and alcohol addiction, without causing delirium or intense suffering. Whether the treatment was permanent or not they said they did not know, could not guess.

Other gentlemen of the profession expressed a moderate skepticism, They pointed out that narcosan was not a new composition. A Hungarian biochemist, Alexander S. Horoyitz, invented it years ago in Cincinnati, tried some experiments on addicts in the local jail, patented his solution. In 1921 it was rejected by the council on pharmacy of the American Medical Association because it contained “unknown compositions.” The chief of police of Cincinnati last week wrote to say that he did not think Chemist Horovitz had effected any permanent cures there. “We do not know that it is a remedy that can be reproduced by any reputable scientific laboratory,” said Dr. Rudolph Matas of New Orleans, thereby laying his tongue on the kernel of the profession’s skepticism, for Chemist Horovitz has steadily refused to tell, except in general terms, the formula of his discovery. Chemists have been unable to analyze some of its elements. But if the claims made for it are true, no assertions—even a New York Commissioner’s—could exaggerate the importance of narcosan,

Welfare Island is a bleak platform rising out of a river on the east side of Manhattan and supporting on its scanty ledge a workhouse, two hospitals and a prison. Straight over the island sweeps the grey arch of Queensborough Bridge and across the bridge all day pass elevated trains, funeral carriages and people on foot. It is easy, standing on the bridge, to drop something down onto the island. Last week a man on the bridge threw away a tin tobacco box. . . .

The warden had the box on his desk. He showed it with an ironic comment to his visitor. Once the box had contained Prince Albert tobacco; now its contents were more interesting. A little rubber sack. A hypodermic needle. A broken spoon. An envelope of morphin. . . . Drug peddlers, delivering narcotics to prisoners on the island, do not always drop their orders from the bridge. An ordinary postoffice envelope, embossed with the head of George Washington, has a hollow behind the raised stamp. . . .

In the City Hospital on Welfare Island, 219 men and 147 women— lean as gulls, most of them, some with red patches under their nostrils (“snowbirds,” “sniffers”) some with their forearms and thighs pockmarked with infected needle-sores; some sent to the narcotic ward by prison authorities, some self-committed in an attempt to get rid of their addiction—took the narcosan treatment. The solution is injected with a hypodermic syringe. The lipoids in narcosan neutralize toxic substances. The proteins stimulate new blood formation. This, at all events, is the theory of the way in which it works. The facts of its effect are simpler. In 24 hours the addicts were able to sleep normally. In 72 hours they stopped asking for drugs. Their appetite for food increased; they wanted food every minute, particularly sweet food. Their skin became firm; they showed no sign of nervousness; they were declared cured, at least temporarily. Only one came back, a Negress who yearned for languor. And what, doctors wondered, will narcosan do for the shadowy, secretive regiments of U. S. addicts to opium, to morphin, to cocain?

Opium is the mother of narcotics. Derived from the unripe seed-capsules of a kind of poppy grown in India and China, it slows the heart, contracts the pupils of the eyes, binds the bowels, relieves pain and fills the brain with languor and strange faces. There is opium in paregoric (baby-soother), in Dover’s powder (cold remedy), and in many another household drug, drugs that seem kind. Opium gum looks like black paste. Addicts who smoke it use a small lamp, like a dentist’s lamp, over which they give the dark pellet a slow roasting; then they put it in the tiny bowl of a long pipe. Their dreams are gentle. Opium does not waste tissues so quickly as does alcohol.

Morphin is an alkaloid derived from opium. Its stupefying effects are like the effects of opium, and four times as strong. A “dope” (morphin addict) quivers with hunger as the time comes for his injection. Sometimes he has a hard time finding a place to take it; he goes into a hotel washroom, a taxicab, even a telephone booth. Out of his pocket comes a piece of candle. He wants to sterilize his injection. He puts water in a spoon, heats it over the candle, dissolves his morphin, filters the solution through cotton, fills his needle, injects. It is to him a holy ritual. He is happiest when he has an acolyte; someone who wants to try dope—to watch the slow fire of rot filter through the novice’s veins. He keeps the papers his powders come in. When he has no more dope he can lick the grains of dust clinging to the paper. Many Negroes are addicts; they took to it because it once was hard for them to get liquor. It relieves their spiritual tensions. The South uses more morphin than the North.

Hypnotic drugs which induce sleep are often confused with the narcotics which dull pain. Bromides, sulphonal, veronal are hypnotics. Insomniacs take them habitually. Other habit-forming drugs are ether, alcohol, chloroform, hashish (the drug of inspired assassins) and mandrake,* sleepy syrup that comes from a forked root.

*Theorists have suggested that there was mandrake, not vinegar, on the sponge offered to Christ on the Cross.