426 ANNUAL KKI'OKT SiMlTHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



used in ancient Egypt; another purgative, magnesia, came originally 

 from an ancient city of that name in Greece; jalap comes from Mexico, 

 and cascara from California; the aspirin which is so popular today is 

 first cousin to the smelly oil of mntergreen which our grandmothers 

 used to put on flaimcl and tie around aching joints, and quinine and 

 cocain and ipecac come from South America. Digitalis, our most 

 valuable heart medicine, came to us from an old English herb woman, 

 Wlien, 100 years ago, Dr. Withering found that tliis woman was cur- 

 ing some patients whom he had failed to help, he went to her and paid 

 a good price for her secret. Then, like the true physician that he was, 

 he picked out of her messy concoction the one essential drug and gave 

 it freely to the world. 



Lest this story about Withering serve to strengthen the belief that 

 many j)ersons have that it pays sometimes to go to a Chinese herb 

 doctor or to an American Indian or to a Hindu or some other foreign 

 healer because he must know many things that the American physician 

 does not know, especially about medicines of vegetable origin, I will 

 say that there may have been something in this idea long ago but 

 there is not much in it now after all the years that pharmacologists 

 have spent in studying drugs from all over the world. 



ARE PHYSICIANS TOO CONSERVATIVE? 



It is not complimentary to us physicians that thousands of people 

 believe that if some layman were to discover the cure for cancer 

 we would have none of it until forced to give in. Actually, a study 

 of the history of medicine in the last 75 years reveals no basis for this 

 belief. Our leaders have grasped eagerly at all of the great gifts 

 that have come from men outside our ranks: From a physicist like 

 Roentgen (X-rays), from a chemist like Pasteur (bacteriology), or 

 from a dentist like Morton (anesthesia). In fact one of our worst 

 tendencies today is to snatch the gift away from the giver before he 

 has had time to perfect it or to test it properly. 



Every year the institution in which I work receives many letters 

 from men and women who assure us that they have the cure for cancer 

 and ask that we help them in getting it before the world. What these 

 people fail to see is that if a man were to cure only a dozen patients 

 with cancer scattered through the body, he wouldn't need to come to 

 us for help. He would have to appeal to the police each day for a 

 detail to keep the crowds in order on his front lawn. 



Actually, of course, there is not one chance in a million that the 

 cure for cancer will bo found by a layman or some obscure physician 

 working nights in his basement. Just as in gold mining, so in medicine, 

 the time for picking up big nuggets is gone. Now the finding of such 

 a thing as a cure for cancer calls for much work by groups of highly 



