8 THE JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. 



cess, and who cries down, as a theorist and a book-doctor, the man who goes 

 delving after deeper knowledge. 



Occasionally, an accident resulting from a physician's prescription gets 

 into the papers. But it is not his fault; it is the druggist's. The physician 

 is too omnipotent, too highly educated, too astute, and too careful to make 

 such an error. It was the stupid clerk, that did not know calomel from 

 bichloride. The truth is, that most physicians have less practical knowledge 

 of drugs than the youngest pharmacy graduate. Their knowledge is purely 

 empirical; because a certain formula has been potent in certain cases, they 

 apply it to others, and the variation in effect they put down to the idio- 

 syncracy of the patient. Their college course does not give them any idea 

 of the fact that some drugs are largely adulterated, that certain medicinal 

 elements are present in plants to a greater degree at one season of the year 

 Than at another, that many preparations undergo chemical changes if ex- 

 posed to the light, that others are rendered absolutely useless if they stand 

 for a certain time on the shelf, by virtue of moulds and bacteria which at- 

 tack them. All these facts are deemed trivial, because the physician hat- 

 not looked into them. 



lie will gravely discuss the different effects that the same drug has upon 

 different people, not knowing that, in apparently the same dose, one person 

 had taken twice as much as another; and in the case of accidental loss of 

 life he will arguof the limit of the dose, the limit of the pharmacist's ac- 

 curacy, the limit of people's credulity, but never the limit of his own knowl- 

 edge of the subject. 



Many serious mistakes are made by physicians that are attributed to the 

 course of the disease, and are never discovered, because they are not fatal, 

 and the few fatal cases are rarely laid to their door. 



The fact, nevertheless, remains that materia medica is not thoroughly 

 taught in the medical colleges of this country. The professors are not ex- 

 perts upon their subjects. The study is reduced to a dry accumulation of 

 facts which no student attempts to remember after examination time. 

 A few lectures upon therapeutics are thought to cover this subject, which 

 could, and which should, he developed into a practical and tangible course. 

 The individuality of the drug should be enforced by its origin, its manu- 

 facture, its chemical action and its peculiar physical properties. 



The whole subject of physiological chemistry is progressing with such 

 strides that it is impossible to say what changes will take place in the 

 materia medica of the future. This one thing is certain, that the medical 

 man must acquaint himself better with the nature and action of drugs, and 

 he would do well to invoke the shades of his ancestors of the middle ages 

 rather than to trust himself unreservedly to the makers of pills and potions. 



