Medicine: Pulverized Poison

Dr. Howard Schultz Anders of Philadelphia hates dirt and dust. He has spent 50 of his 72 years chasing it out of city streets. In the early 1900s Dr. Anders induced the Pennsylvania State Legislature to pass an antispitting law. He also forced the Philadelphia transit company to replace dirty plush streetcar seats with clean, bare benches. In 1919, during a local row over politics in the street-cleaning system, he raised a dust storm with his carpet-beating outburst: “Dust is pulverized poison and we have seen in Filthadelphia too much drifting into damned deferential silences.”

Last week Dr. Anders himself was on the carpet, and the reason was a pulverized poison called morphine. By regulation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, a physician may not supply morphine to a known addict. But for two years Dr. Anders has been feeding heroic doses of morphine to addict Fred Barrick, a busy Philadelphia insurance agent. Federal agents warned Dr. Anders three times to cut off Fred Barrick’s supply. Three times he denounced them for “intruding upon the relation between a doctor and his patients.” Finally the agents caught Dr. Anders off base.

Into the respectable wholesale drug house of John Wyeth & Bro., Inc. stumbled Fred Barrick last month. Waving an official Government order blank signed by Dr. Anders, he demanded 500 half-grain tablets of morphine sulphate, enough to choke a team of horses. Since Government order blanks are for the personal use of physicians who purchase narcotics wholesale for office use, the druggists promptly called the narcotic squad.

Barrick was clapped into prison, where he threw two “whizbangs” (fake convulsions), demanded ten grains of morphine. (Average pain-killing dose: between 1/6 and ¼ grain.) Strangely enough, after several dopeless days, he did not become violent or sick, as most addicts do, but calmed down, gained weight.

Last week, Dr. Anders was indicted for illegally “selling” Barrick some 10,000 half-grain morphine tablets in the past two years. No man to preserve a “damned deferential silence,” he made a public case out of his indictment, spoke his mind to Philadelphia reporters. Said he:

“The patient had been addicted [to narcotics] before he came to me, mainly because he was suffering from three chronic ailments. . . . Although Fred Barrick was an addict he was a chronic, continually sick man; however, when relieved [by morphine] he was of phenomenally acute, alert, clear and competent mentality. . . . I believe I am right and loyal to my profession in relieving him or anyone . . . if thereby I can save him to some useful purpose. . . . The extraordinary tolerance the man had for gluttonous dosage [often 20 grains a day] was . . . so marvelous that his case deserves my future recording of it for medical history.”