ergot, or opium, only brief historical remarks, with short accounts 

 of their chemical composition and their behavior toward solvents are 

 introduced. 



Certainly all unnecessarily detailed description of crude drugs, of 

 their active principles, or of the modern synthetic remedies, is out of 

 place in a medical school. The instructor should allow himself but 

 the briefest introduction as to the physical and chemical properties 

 of a drug before he begins the more important discussion of its 

 pharmacological action. Thus, when chloral is the subject, he will 

 describe its chemical relationship to the other anesthetics and hyp- 

 notics, its solubilities, its deliquescence, its decomposability by alka- 

 lies, etc. A rapidly-performed test-tube experiment showing how chlo- 

 roform is split off when it is brought into contact with an alkali will 

 prevent the student from prescribing it in this form. Such a method 

 of treatment consumes but little time and is easily comprehended by 

 the student who has had a suitable preliminary course in chemistry. 

 In a word, I would teach materia medica in direct connection with 

 pharmacology, letting it serve in the case of each drug or class of drugs 

 as a brief introduction to the latter and giving only such parts as are 

 indispensable to the physician in his administration of drugs or of 

 such historical significance that they ought not to be neglected from 

 the culture point of view. Here, as everywhere in our crowded courses, 

 wise selection is our only safeguard. With regard to the pharmacopeial 

 preparations it has always been my plan to require only a knowledge 

 of the more important ones, the student being requested merely to 

 read over those of lesser importance. There is much truth in the re- 

 mark made by William Withering more than a century ago, that "the 

 ingenuity of man has ever been fond of exerting itself to vary the forms 

 and combinations of medicines. Hence we have spirituous, vinous, and 

 acetous tinctures; extracts hard and soft, syrups with sugar or honey, 

 etc., but the more we multiply the form of any medicine the longer we 

 shall be in ascertaining the real dose." 



Certain chemical and physical points which have a bearing on the 

 combination of drugs as called for in prescriptions, or official prepara- 

 tions may be taken up again in a brief course in pharmacy. I cannot 

 believe that the art of preparing drugs for therapeutic use requires a 

 prominent place in the better medical schools of the day. The young 

 physician who is fairly well trained in chemistry can get all that is 

 necessary in the way of pharmacy out of a course of at most a dozen 

 or fifteen lectures in which systems of weights and measures, incom- 

 patibles, and special points relating to prescriptions are dealt with, 



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