whose extraordinary virtues are lauded in commercial circulars, finds 

 no justification in the teachings of pharmacology. Its teachings are 

 not always or immediately convertible into bedside dogmas. 



It must be confessed that the therapeutic nihilist who uses only 

 what is indispensable among drugs, but who is wise in the curative 

 power of air, water, food, rest, and exercise, will have less to answer 

 for in the final reckoning than his drug-enslaved colleague who prates 

 of controlling disease in its every symptom with this or that panacea 

 and who is guilty of the premature application to practice of what 

 are only unproved theories. 



Pharmacology gives no support to the unthinking worship of ca- 

 nonical authority. In instances when true specifics and well-founded 

 remedies are manifestly powerless, the plan outlined by John Locke 

 is as applicable now as it was when he wrote: "You cannot imagine 

 how far a little observation carefully made by a man not tied up to 

 the four humours, or sal sulphur and mercury, or to acid and alkali, 

 which has of late prevailed, will carry a man in the curing of diseases 

 though very stubborn and dangerous; and that with very little and 

 common things, and almost no medicine at all." 



In an age which pathology and diagnosis are so far advanced and 

 in which more genuine help is derived from the rational use of drugs 

 than ever before in the history of medicine, haphazard drugging is 

 unpardonable, and still more to be condemned is a fanatical and 

 conceited adherence to dogmas based on a superficial understanding 

 of complex physiological principles. 



I have spoken thus far only of the older and well-tried methods of 

 pharmacology, methods that are still fruitful, although newer tend- 

 encies are now followed and fresher fields are being tilled. The more 

 detailed examination by means of modern physiological methods of 

 the respiratory, circulatory, muscular, nervous, and other functional 

 derangements which are met in "intoxications" will surely lead to 

 most important results. One of my younger colleagues, who is now 

 carefully reviewing the list of drugs that act on the heart, tells me 

 that not a single one of them has been studied on all sides from a 

 modern physiological standpoint. Digitalis alone of the list has been 

 the object of a fairly complete physiological examination, but every- 

 where in this field of the cardiaca there seems to be a great accumula- 

 tion of physiological facts ready for the coordinating hand of the 

 pharmacologist. As elsewhere, judgment and special knowledge are 

 required, and the day has long passed when he who knows the drugs 

 of the pharmacopeia and their clinical uses and who is able only to 



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