Medicine: The Youngest Addicts

The infant in Manhattan's Harlem Hospital was smaller than most newborn babies, and his cry was unusually shrill and high-pitched. Within several days after birth, his tormented wails became incessant. His sweating body shook and twitched. Occasionally he vomited. If his condition had gone undiagnosed and untreated, the baby might have suffered a convulsion, which could have been fatal, or have died a slower death by dehydration. But the signs have become all too familiar to inner-city doctors. The child's mother was a narcotics addict, and he was suffering withdrawal from the "habit"...

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