Drugging to Avoid Conscription.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue IX, 31 August 1901, Page 392

Drugging to Avoid Conscription.

HOW IT IS WORKED ON THI CONTINENT.

From time to time, apropos of the talk of introducing conscription in Great Britain, pttenttion has been drawn to the manner in which it works on the Continent, where it has long been in vogue. The latest instance of what young men will do in order to avoid doing military service, however, comes from Rhenish Prussia, where the stringent investigations of the military authorities have resulted in the discovery that the practice of giving drugs to young men liable to military service with the object of incapacitating them is alarmingly widespread; and this despite the fact that severe examples have been made from time to time of those caught offending in this way. At Elberfeld some months ago, for instance, several young men were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment for using drugs to this end. The authorities have also arrested doctors in Dusseldorf and Zeichlingeu, who have been pursuing lucrative businesses in this line for some time past, young men coming to them from far and near. The sons of certain wealthy parents paid them large sums, in some cases as much as £lOOO, for pills and other medicines, which, when taken two or three days before their examination by the military doctors, gave them the appearance of jaundice or heart disease.