The New York Times October 7, 1909
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DRUG HABIT CURABLE, SAYS DR. LAMBERT

The announcement made by Dr. Alexander Lambert of 36 East Thirty­first Street, visiting physician at Bellevue Hospital and Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Cornell Medical College, that he has at last discovered a speedy cure for the drug habit and alcoholism has aroused much public interest. Men of his profession are particularly interested.

The fact that Dr. Lambert is a physician of high repute and a recognized authority in the matter of specifics lends credence to his contention that the most confirmed drug fiends are not beyond cure.

"The obliteration of the craving for narcotics is not a matter of months or weeks," says Dr. Lambert, "but is accomplished in less than five days. The result is often so dramatic that one hesitates to believe it possible."

The physician says he obtained the specific about five years ago from Charles B. Towns of 119 West Eighty­first Street, who spent some years in China studying opium cases among the hospitals there. Since that time he has been experimenting with it extensively in his practice at Bellevue. Here is the specific;

Fifteen per cent. Tincture of belladonna, the fluid extract of xanthoxylum, (prickly ash.) and the fluid extract of hyoscyamus, mixed in the certain proportions.

The cure, according to Dr. Lambert, can be effected with a minimum of suffering, and no matter how long the patient has been addicted to the habit, or to what quantities he has been accustomed to take drugs, he will be placed in the same attitude toward them as before he fell into the habit. His health will in no way be impaired by the treatment or the deprivation of the drug; on the contrary, a physiological change comes about whereby, all desire being eliminated, self­confidence is restored to the patient, and his system adjusted to do without it.

Dr. Lambert says, however, that he has no intention to call the specific "an infallible cure," he says:

"This treatment is not a cure­all for disease, a rehabilitator of all the disturbed functions of the body."

As to the method of treatment, as Dr. Lambert explains it, after employing it in Bellevue in the cases of twenty­eight patients, all of whom he cured, it begins in the usual way by getting the patient into proper physical condition. Then, in cases of cocaine or morphine, the specific is administered in certain proportions and quantities, depending largely on the individual, every hour throughout the treatment . But after every six hours the specific is increased until the quantity is doubled.

One way in which the treatment differs from all others is that while the specific is being administered, the drug of which the patient is a victim is still taken. For this reason practically all suffering is absent. Regarding this Dr. Lambert says:

"Give with the first dose of the specific from one­half to two­thirds of the usual total daily dose of the opium, morphine or cocaine which the patient is taking at the time of his treatment. Divide the amount of the narcotic in three doses and give them at half­hour intervals by mouth or by hypodermic, as the patient is accustomed to take it."

Of alcoholism Dr. Lambert says:

"The same specific is used in the same dose, but it does not have to be continued for so long a time although there may be exceptions. Much closer observation is necessary in treating the alcoholic in regard to the intoxication of belladonna."

Dr. Lambert's record of his drug patients in Bellevue shows that treatment and results vary little with age or with the period of addiction to the habit, or quantity of the drug taken.

One case is that of a woman 59 years old, addicted for twenty years to the morphine habit. She had brought her dose to an excessive point daily, having acquired the habit to obtain relief from pain. She was in a feeble and nervous condition when admitted to the hospital. In thirteen days, after forty­six hours of specific treatment, she was discharged in good condition. No supplementary treatment was needed.

Dr. Lambert has been ex­President Roosevelt's private physician for many years.