The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [140]
The West has been opened and, with the admission of Arizona twenty-one years ago, America now consists of an incredible forty-eight states. The great expanse of our nation has been rendered smaller, not simply by the profusion of railroads that now crisscross the landscape, but by travel through the air. Horse-drawn locomotion will soon disappear entirely as internal combustion vehicles come within the financial reach of all but the very poor.
Abigail once told me that art was changing the way men and women see their world, but in 1905, an obscure German physicist working in a patent office in Bern, Switzerland, created the same phenomenon in science. He postulated that we live in a world without absolutes, a theory scoffed at in popular circles, as had been Darwin’s, until, in 1919, observations during a solar eclipse proved to the world that he was correct.
The Bayer Company thrived. In 1897, one of its chemists, Felix Hoffmann, applied the acetylizing process that Wright had used on morphine to salicylic acid, thus synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid, which Bayer marketed under the trade name “Aspirin.” Aspirin had the analgesic, antipyretic, and anti-inflammatory qualities of the nonacetyl variety, but without the horrific side effects. Two weeks after he synthesized aspirin, the very same Felix Hoffmann finally succeeded in synthesizing an easily manufactured version of diacetylmorphine. The next year, 1898, the Bayer Company finally offered up a tacit admission of its experiments with the substance, when it sought patent protection for Hoffmann’s process under the trade name “Heroin.” Bayer then marketed Heroin, named for its miraculous and nonaddictive qualities, as a nonprescription pain reliever, cough remedy, harmless sedative, and cure for morphia addiction.
Heroin became the wonder drug of the early twentieth century. Bayer embarked on a worldwide sales campaign and soon, Heroin lozenges, tablets, elixirs, powders, and dietary supplements were all the rage, despite growing evidence among chemists that the substance was far more toxic than the morphia from which it was derived. Among its more popular applications was as a cough remedy for children. I was among the few doctors who opposed its use. I was scoffed at by my colleagues until, inevitably, its ravaging effects made themselves known and, in 1914, the United States Congress passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act to regulate opiates. Still, by 1920, there were 200,000 Heroin addicts in America. In 1924, the substance was banned entirely. Aspirin, Bayer’s stepchild invention, replaced Heroin; it has become the single most successful drug in history.
As for me, after I left his rooms on that early April day in 1889, I never saw Dr. Osler again.
I agonized whether or not to send the journal to Farnshaw’s parents with an explanatory note, so that they might pursue the matter and attempt to clear their son’s name. But would it have been genuine consolation for them to know how close their son was to being freed before he was murdered? I thought not.
I had been taught to distrust coincidence, but sometimes people are correct only by chance. Although he had made the statement simply to stifle my inquiries, Dr. Osler had spoken the truth when he opined that from the moment the cover of the ice chest was opened in the Dead House and its contents revealed, every time I tried to help, I had made matters worse. I vowed to do so no longer. Or perhaps I simply wanted to be free of everything to do with my life in Philadelphia. Whatever the case, I destroyed Turk’s journal and hoped that I had saved Farnshaw’s poor parents further torment.
I waited until the following evening and then called on Mary Simpson at the Croskey Street Settlement House. I informed her of my decision to decline the appointment at Johns Hopkins and of my intention to leave Philadelphia. Although I had settled on no firm destination, I had resolved to finally heed Reverend Audette’s advice and head West. I asked Mary to join me. I