“As you sow so shall you reap” is a good old age. Speaking psychologically also “Love begets love” and “Contempt breeds contempt”. All this was not said in vain. But we living in the so called modern world have inculcated a sense of contempt for all that was good and useful in the good old past. We have become so much sophisticated that we wish to discard everything that we used to do in the past, so much so that most of us sneer and scoff at every thing that our forefathers used to do. Their way of living, their food, their dress, their manners, their sense of sincerity and truthfulness in their dealings of life, nay even their good and robust health and active habits of life do not appeal to us at all and most of us, if we could, would like to completely obliterate out past from our memory.
This is an achievement of our modern world and modern science. We are trying to reach the Mars and build our houses on the Moon. We are trying to destroy the whole world with a single bomb or with a single blast of “Death Rays”. We have created an “IRON LUNG” and we are trying to devise an artificial HEART and may be some day our scientists may be able to create all the spare parts of the human machine.
But have we ever thought for a moment why this human machine becomes impaired so prematurely and goes out of gear so often? Why does it need constant repairs and replacement of parts? Why majority of us are invariably sick and meet a premature death?
In obvious contrast to this we know that our forefathers were so healthy and long lived. Why was it so then and why is it so now, is the obvious question.
Scientists also realise and admit that inspite of the creation of a number of “WONDER DRUGS” one after the other, the incidence of disease is on the increase and a number of new diseases, hitherto unknown, are attacking mankind. Our medical wizards are baffled by this strange phenomenon.
Our answer to this query is simply this we have become DRUG ADDICTS we are being constantly doped by drugs, and every drug is a position and as such it creates its own disease “THE DRUG DISEASE.”
This is not a vain assertion on our part. We say it on the authority of recognised leaders of medical opinion.
Dr. Trall, the eminent physiologist, said “I would avoid drugs if there were no other remedical agents in the universe, because, if I cannot do good I shall cease to do evil. Every attempt to cure disease with drugs is nothing more nor less than a war on human constitution.
Dr. Sir William Osler, an authority highly esteemed on both sides of the Atlantic, declared “We put drugs, of which we know little, into bodies, of which we know less.”
Dr. Mason Good, the celebrated English author and physician in his contribution to the Medical Magazine writes “Medicine has destroyed more lives than war, pestilence and famine combined.”
Dr. Barker said “The drugs administered for Scarlet fever kills more than the disease does.”
Dr. Sir James Mackenzie in his book “Diseases of the Heart” wrote “He (Allopath) gives drugs, whose action he does not understand and conditions of which he is ignorant”.
Sir Almroth Wright declared “We have been practising quackery”.
Sir Morell Mackenzie wrote “If there were not a single drop of medicine in the world, the death rate would be lower than it is”.
Sir Fredricke Treves said “He looked forward to the time when people will leave off the extraordinary habit of taking medicine.”
Even Pandit Nehru, our Prime Minister, has denounced the use of drugs. He said in a meeting of students at Madras on 9th October, 1952. (PTI report in Hindusthan Times of 10th October, 1952).
“Mr. Nehru today warned the people not to have anything to do with drugs even if the doctors prescribe them.”
Denouncing the “Soft lives” lead by some people, he added “if the element of struggle goes out of life, then there is no life. If you have the power of resistance, you will live any how. There I warn you: DONT TAKE DRUGS”.
Mr. Nehru, narrated how a dozen doctors rushed to him “with all kinds of syringes” when he had a fall recently and prevailed upon him to take an Anti-tetanus injection.
This injection produced a most powerful reaction in my body which had been free from drugs for a number of years and after a few days I was blown up like a balloon.
When this remark produced peals of laughter, he said sharply: “You need not laugh. It was a disgusting sight.”
It will be easily deducible from the above that DRUGS DO MORE HARM THAN GOOD.
DRUG MANIA. A great muddle has been created in the public mind. While leading medical authorities are denouncing the use of drugs, the ordinary practitioners continue to prescribe more and more of them and the vested interest of big drug companies are flooding the drug market with their ever increasing products. The Government, controlled and bossed as it is by allopathic practitioners, sits mum, unmindful of the peoples sufferings.
Two centuries of British rule backed by the subtle propaganda of the vested interest of drug manufacturers has created a psychological belief in the public mind. Whenever we are ill we think only of DRUGS and injections as the surest and quickest way of cure. Right from our cradle we have been taught that the doctor would come and would give us some good medicine to make us well. Matters have gone so far that even an illiterate villager asks for an injection because he has been made to believe that an injection was sure cure for all human ills. Our minds have become so perverted by the constant use of palliatives and quick-relief- givers that few ever get rid of this idea, which gradually becomes a conviction.
In India there has practically been no opposition to the use of drugs. The medical journals, on the other hand, have always patronised every new “Nonsense” put on the list of drugs by manufacturers of proprietary medicines. The press forgets its noble ideals when it receives big amounts as advertisement revenues from pharmaceutical firms.
Some of the drugs are being so largely used that the whole practice of medicine has become confined to a few of them. In fact the whole materia medica has been reduced to few well known and commonly used drugs.
Whenever even complicated patient comes to a doctor he does not rack his brain for a medicine. After getting the usual pathological reports, of course at the expense of the patient, he simply prescribes the all omnipotent Penicillin injections, and some Vitamins and Sulpha Drugs. But when all these fail to help the poor patient, he throws up his cards and sends the patient to perdition his case having become still more complicated. The remedy proves worse than the disease.
THE LURE OF PROPRIETARY DRUGS.
Proprietary medicines have become the bone of medical science and at present the situation has become so intriguing that the one cannot exist without the other. Doctors are supposed to have blind faith in the efficacy of advertised drug when the producers proudly assert that it has been discovered after years of laborious research.
The poor doctor has got no alternative but to believe what the producer has advertised in most glowing terms in a beautifully illustrated brochure. The doctor has neither laboratory nor brain to test the veracity of the advertisers statement. So the matter ends there for most of them till an ugly situation arises and a halt is cried by some big guns of the profession. The ordinary practitioner falls in a quandry but has got to keep mum. He has neither guts nor moral courage to denounce the use of a particular drug for fear of losing practice and being denounced by his patients.
Drug prescribing has reached such heights that in 1951 the cost of such prescriptions under the National Health Service in England was L 50,000,000. Dr. John Watt, a medical Officer in England reported that in his area: “Headache tablets, dyspepsia tablets, and constipation pills are swallowed by tons and no one seems to question the propriety of it all.”
Most countries have passed various laws to check this nefarious trade in proprietary medicines because most of them are poisonous. Sir William Jones pointed out that most of the patient drugs should be placed on the POISON LIST”. It is a well known fact that most Sulpha drugs are marked “POISONS” on their labels and cartons. To stop this trade in secret medicines a law has now been passed in our country also whereby the manufacturer has to give the formula of the medicine on the label. This however, has in no way lessened the evil or eliminated the poisonous effects of the drugs. The Wonder Drugs of today are in no way less poisonous than the patient medicines of the past. Moreover the names of ingredients printed on the label are absolutely unintelligible to the layman. The writing on the label is all Greek even to an educated person.
Our doctors have never cared to assess the good or the bad effects of a newly imported drug. They straight off start experimenting on their unsuspecting patients unheedful of the results. Our Government too does not care to impose any restrictions on the import or use of any new drug. It is the duty of the Government not to allow the use of any new drug unless it had passed certain laboratory and clinical tests. But it is not so and we are left to the tender mercy of the manufacturer.
THE VICIOUS CIRCLE
Every drug has some poisonous effect and causes a disease of its own according to individual constitution which fact remains unknown to the patient and in most cases even to the doctor who continues to administer more and more poison to the patient as he develops new symptoms of drug poisoning.
