INTRODUCTION 27 



vastly more interest and value to him than would be a per- 

 fect success of that same experiment demonstrated by the 

 instructor or his assistants. 



Many instructors advise that each student in the group 

 take his turn at doing various portions of the routine work. 

 In the writer's opinion this will probably not be the most 

 valuable line of procedure in the long run. For while it 

 may be very desirable for each student to acquire a certain 

 amount of skill in performing each part of the experiment 

 (and students usually want to do this at the start) the fact 

 remains that the total time devoted to the subject is too 

 short for any student to become an expert in carrying out 

 all phases of the work. It will yield a greater percentage 

 of pharmacological successes for each student to learn a 

 given portion of the routine work well and to faithfully 

 carry this out for each experiment. It should be empha- 

 sized that the chief object of the experimental course is not 

 to teach surgery, but pharmacology. For while students 

 may, and in a thoroughly satisfactory course perhaps do, 

 acquire a very fair amount of the knowledge of surgery 

 which they will later possess, this should be looked upon 

 solely as a matter of secondary importance. 



Practice dissections on dead animals are frequently de- 

 scribed at the end of experiments. This is a matter of 

 great importance and the instructor can often be of much 

 help to the student by aiding in this work to see that it is 

 properly done. These dissections usually precede experi- 

 ments in which the dissected structures will be concerned. 



A few words may be said about the matter of dosage. 

 This is a difficult subject and the writer has been compelled 

 to depend mainly on his own records and experience in this 

 line, for most of the published dose tables, etc., are based 

 on quantities of the drugs to be given by mouth. A further 

 difficulty arises from the great variation in the size and re- 

 sistance of different animals, and from the variation in 

 potency of the different drugs as purchased in the open 



