". . . and I'd give my life for it."
As he pronounced these words, Frederick Alfred Wallis, New York Commissioner of Correction, crumpled a slip of paper in his hand and scowled earnestly at the reporters. It was rather a surprising speech, for Commissioner Wallis was moved to offer this dramatic sacrifice not for liberty, home or the flag, but merely for a mixture of lipoids, proteins and vitamins called "narcosan."
Narcosan may be a cure for drug addiction. Commissioner Wallis said that it had been tested on 366 prisoners in the Correctional Hospital on Welfare Island. He said that narcosan cured them, at least temporarily. His report attracted considerable attention. Dr. Alexander Lambert and Dr. Frederick Tilney, famed Manhattan physicians, reported on narcosan in the New York Medical Journal and Record. They said that it had relieved , morphin, cocain, heroin, veronal and alcohol addiction, without causing delirium or intense suffering. Whether the treatment was permanent or not they said they did not know, could not guess.
Other gentlemen of the profession expressed a moderate skepticism, They pointed out that narcosan was not a new composition. A Hungarian biochemist, Alexander S. Horoyitz, invented it years ago in Cincinnati, tried some experiments on addicts in the local jail, patented his solution. In 1921 it was rejected by the council on pharmacy of the American Medical Association because it contained "unknown compositions." The chief of police of Cincinnati last week wrote to say that he did not think Chemist Horovitz had effected any permanent cures there. "We do not know that it is a remedy that can be reproduced by any reputable scientific laboratory," said Dr. Rudolph Matas of New Orleans, thereby laying his tongue on the kernel of the profession's skepticism, for Chemist Horovitz has steadily refused to tell, except in general terms, the formula of his discovery. Chemists have been unable to analyze some of its elements. But if the claims made for it are true, no assertions—even a New York Commissioner's—could exaggerate the importance of narcosan,
Welfare Island is a bleak platform rising out of a river on the east side of Manhattan and supporting on its scanty ledge a workhouse, two hospitals and a prison. Straight over the island sweeps the grey arch of Queensborough Bridge and across the bridge all day pass elevated trains, funeral carriages and people on foot. It is easy, standing on the bridge, to drop something down onto the island. Last week a man on the bridge threw away a tin tobacco box. . . .
The warden had the box on his desk. He showed it with an ironic comment to his visitor. Once the box had contained Prince Albert tobacco; now its contents were more interesting. A little rubber sack. A hypodermic needle. A broken spoon. An envelope of morphin. . . . Drug peddlers, delivering narcotics to prisoners on the island, do not always drop their orders from the bridge. An ordinary postoffice envelope, embossed with the head of George Washington, has a hollow behind the raised stamp. . . .