DRUG ADDICT

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 77, 28 September 1938, Page 23

DRUG ADDICT

A REVOLTING RUSE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) •SYDNEY, September 12.

Hospitals in the metropolitan area have been warned 'by the police against a young woman who drinks what appears to be animal blood to make herself ill so that she will be put to bed and given medical drugs. Doctors think that she is an addict and uses this revolting ruse to obtain the drug for which she craves. Hospital authorities believe that she is the same woman who, two years ago, swallowed dyes with a similar object. A general warning to all doctors has been published in the "Medical Journal,'' and detectives or the Drug Bureau are making inquiring-

The woman, who is about 24 years of age, is said to have imposed on hospitals and doctors for several years. She poses as a nurse. "She has again commenced a round of Sydney public hospitals," said the medical superintendent of one institution. "I have identified her as the woman against whom complaints were made by doctors in 1936."

Other doctors recollected the woman. The object of swallowing the dyes, and now the blood of animals, was to make it appear that she was suffering from some internal hemorrhage for which drugs would be prescribed, the^ said. The woman appeared one day last week at the Royal South Sydney Hospital. She vomited about two pints of blood before being admitted to a ward, where a doctor identified her. An examination of her belongings was made, and an eight-ounce bottle full of blood was found. The blood was microscopically examined and found to be mammalian. When confronted with the bottle and other evidence, she asked for her clothes and left.