There have been a few cases of physicians who have yielded unworthily to drugs and opiates as a means of dissipation. I have known some physicians, for example, who have been opium-smokers. In the United States the opium-smoker is invariably unworthy. Not long ago the New York police raided the apartment of a physician where were found thirty or forty opium-pipes and more than a hundred pounds of opium, either crude or prepared for smoking. I have known fewer than half a dozen physicians whose drug vice was purely social, however. The victims of drag habit who achieved it through a tendency toward dissipation are almost invariably denizens of the under-world; and if it were not for the fact that the contagion of their vice may spread, they might well be permitted by society to drug themselves to death as speedily as possible.
We shall entirely disregard the physician who becomes addicted to the use of drugs through unworthy tendencies, and consider only the dangers to the profession and the public latent in the case of the physician who becomes addicted in the less reprehensible, but more dangerous, manner that I have indicated. Not only will such a drug addiction injure the doctor's practice and threaten his career, but it will surely constitute a threat against the welfare of his patients not included in the possibility that through it he may miss engagements, write improper prescriptions, and make mistakes of many kinds.
A very serious danger lies in the psychology of drug addictions. The person who has taken a habit-forming drug for the purpose of relieving his own pain, and through it has found that relief which he sought, is almost certain to become abnormally sympathetic to the suffering of others. It is a curious fact that this doctor will be more than likely to administer the drug he uses to his patients, not with malicious, but with probably friendly, intent, and that he will feel no scruples whatsoever in acting as a go-between for drug-users in general who find themselves unable to obtain supplies easily. He will do what he can to help confirmed users to obtain their drugs, even if he makes no profit out of it. He will write prescriptions for them in evasion, if not in violation, of the law. It is a curious and tragic fact that the drug-taking doctor will spread the habit in his own family.
