Safer Narcotic

U.S. doctors have lately been hearing about a new drug so powerful that it may eventually replace morphine as the standard painkiller. The drug is a German invention that U.S. researchers have variously called amidone, methadon and dolophine (TIME, April 28). It has been under intensive study in scores of U.S. hospitals. Last week the American Medical Association Journal published an encouraging verdict by a team of U.S. Public Health Service investigators. Among other things, amidone has proved helpful in treating morphine addicts.

Amidone itself is definitely habit-forming. Because a single factory could produce more amidone than the total world supply of morphine, the doctors warned that the drug must be rigidly controlled; it might become a major health menace.

But for medical uses, amidone has great advantages. Unlike morphine, it does not make addicts violently sick or produce an attack of the shakes when suddenly cut off. In treating addicts,* doctors first substitute amidone for morphine, then in a week stop the substitute. The amidone-deprived patients feel only mildly sick.

As a painkiller, amidone has performed brilliantly. It is used in smaller doses than morphine, does not produce morphine's pipe-dreamy effect, sometimes kills pain after morphine has failed.

*History's most talkative addict was Thomas De Quincey (The Confessions of an English Opium Eater), who took laudanum (like morphine, derived from opium). He yielded to the habit four times in 40 years, finally cured himself by tapering off, the most painful cure.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.