s
superstition. Call a thing a drug and condemn it! Everything is a drug.
Everything that affects you. Food stimulates or tranquillizes. Drink.
Noise is a stimulant and quiet an opiate. What is life but response to
stimulants? Or reaction after them? When I'm exhausted I want food. When
I'm overactive and sleepless I want tranquillizing. When I'm dispersed I
want pulling together."

"But we don't know how to use drugs," the doctor objected.

"But you ought to know."

Dr. Martineau fixed his eye on a first floor window sill on the opposite
side of Harley Street. His manner suggested a lecturer holding on to his
theme.

"A day will come when we shall be able to manipulate drugs--all sorts
of drugs--and work them in to our general way of living. I have no
prejudice against them at all. A time will come when we shall correct
our moods, get down to our reserves of energy by their help, suspend
fatigue, put off sleep during long spells of exertion. At some sudden
crisis for example. When we shall know enough to know just how far to
go with this, that or the other stuff. And how to wash out its after
effects.... I quite agree with you,--in principle.... But that time
hasn't come yet.... Decades of research yet.... If we tried that sort
of thing now, we should be like children playing with poisons and
explosives.... It's out of the question."

"I've been taking a few little things already. Easton Syrup for
example."

"Strychnine. It carries you for a time and drops you by the way. Has it
done you any good--any NETT good? It has--I can see--broken your sleep."

The doctor turned round again to his patient and looked up into his
troubled face.

"Given physiological trouble I don't mind resorting to a drug. Given
structural injury I don't mind surgery. But except for any little
mischief your amateur drugging may have done you do not seem to me to
be either sick or injured. You've no trouble either of structure or
material. You are--worried--ill in your mind, and otherwise perfectly
sound. It's the current of your thoughts, fermenting. If the trouble is
in the mental sphere, why go out of the mental sphere for a treatment?
Talk and thought; these are your remedies. Cool deliberate thought.
You're unravelled. You say it yourself. Drugs will only make this or
that unravelled strand behave disproportionately. You don't want that.
You want to take stock of yourself as a whole--find out where you stand.

"But the Fuel Commis