308 PHARMACOPEIAL DRUGS 



termine the potency of that drug with a human being 

 afflicted by disease. Dr. Van Derveer antidoted 

 (treated) animals inoculated with hydrophobia poison, 

 to determine whether the remedy could cure the af- 

 flicted animals, or could abort or counteract (neutralize) 

 the virus, providing it had not begun its action. He 

 reasoned that if a substance (mad dog virus) killed a 

 number of animals inoculated with it, either by the 

 bite of a rabid animal or by injection, the virus was a 

 poison. If a number of bitten animals were not medi- 

 cated and died, whilst others inoculated in the same 

 way, at the same time, and then treated with scutel- 

 laria recovered, he argued that the drug antidoted the 

 poison. Let us quote from Dr. Spalding: 



"Dr. Van Derveer made more than an hundred ex- 

 periments on the antidotal powers of the scullcap, in 

 each of which the remedy was given to a part of the 

 bitten animals, none of which were afflicted with hydro- 

 phobia; but in every instance some of the animals which 

 did not take the scullcap died rabid." 



Concerning the number treated, we have the state- 

 ment of Dr. Henry Van Derveer, son of Dr. Law- 

 rence Van Derveer, in a letter to Dr. Spalding. He 

 says: 



"It is impossible to determine to what number of 

 animals my father gave the scullcap. I should, how- 

 ever, say that it was not less than one thousand, and 

 in no instance has an animal to which he gave the plant 

 died of hydrophobia. In more than an hundred cases 

 my father experimented with the Scutellaria, and he has 

 repeatedly told his medical brethren that each experi- 

 ment was successful, and tended to establish the anti- 

 dotal powers of the plant." 



