Use Of Drugs In Rheumatism

It is difficult to know what to call these helpful substances and mixtures of substances, because to some people the word 'medicine' means liquid medicine only, whereas others use it to cover the whole range; others refer to the whole range as 'drugs' but some keep this word to mean only drugs of addiction. The use of the word 'medicament' gets round this difficulty because it refers to all substances used, even those applied as lotions and ointments.

Proprietary Remedies

Most of the over-the-counter remedies contain aspirin, usually in larger quantities than the ordinary English aspirin tablets. Most of them also contain one or more of the following:

Codeine:

This is related to morphia but is not so powerful. Some people find that it does relieve pain. Some find it very very constipating; in fact it is used, though in larger doses, to slow down bowels that work too often. The tablets popularly called 'codeine tablets' are more strictly called 'compound codeine tablets' and contain aspirin, phenacetin and codeine.

Phenacetin:

This relieved pain but has the disadvantage that if it is taken regularly for a long time it may damage the kidneys or turn you blue. It does not take such dramatic doses as these to damage the kidneys and for this reason some countries forbid its sale except on prescription.

Paracetamol:

This is a newcomer to the field. It does relieve pain, though not as effectively or as consistency as aspirin. Its one advantage over aspirin is that it does not upset the stomach: this makes it valuable for those who really cannot take aspirin in any form. What then are its disadvantage? The answer to this is large 'We do not know'. It is too soon to say what happens to people who take paracetamol frequently for as long as ten years. For this reason some doctors advise aspirin in preference to paracetamol following the line 'Better the devil we know'.

Other Ingredients:

There are a number of other ingredients which are put in tablets for the relief of rheumatism, even including quinine, the chief use of which is to cure malaria. If you are in doubt and want more information, do ask your chemist, not just any girl behind his counter. Chemists have a very wide knowledge of medicines and their applications. Enquiries here may save you from thinking you are buying something  better than you had last time, when all you have done is to buy the same thing under a more expensive trade name.

There is skill, great skill, in compounding tablets. On occasion this may make an important difference; one brand may suit you when another doest not. The only accurate way to find out is to compare the effect of two tablets without knowing at the time which of the two you have taken. The results of test like these show that almost always the effect if the effect of the basic ingredients; most of these come from only a few manufacturers, who supply the raw materials to the tablet makers.

More elaborate test like these, when neither the patient not the doctor knows which of two tablets is being taken, are known as double blind trails and are very important in discovering whether new found chemicals do help rheumatism. They also show that faith plays quite a part. Tablets made of flour, chalk, sugar or something else equally ineffective can produce a remarkable relief of pain if given with sufficient assurance. A similar test was tried in a girl's boarding school: the cook served up a green vegetable for dinner which everyone agreed was very nice spinach: it was not until the cook told them that they had really eaten stinging nettles that everyone began to complain!

There are, then, a variety of drugs on sale to the public for rheumatism on which the makers are prepared to stake their reputations. They are all reasonably effective for quite a number of people. There are a number of other drugs that have more restricted applications and which may actually do harm to certain people; these drugs are not sold unless a doctor, who has the necessary knowledge to decide whether they are likely to be safe and helpful, has issued a prescription for them.

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