EHRLICH'S SPECIFIC THERAPEUTICS 219 



autopsied by Rokitansky. A diagnosis confirmed by a post-mortem 

 became a too frequently attainable ideal and the physician of the day 

 went far towards being the " petulant scientific coxcomb " of Mr. Ber- 

 nard Shaw's aversion. This sterile complacency went even further, for 

 we read in Baas that there were deaf physicians in Vienna who could 

 not use the stethoscope but who presumably traded upon the Skodaesque 

 dogma that there is no treatment for disease. Meanwhile organic 

 chemistry was forging ahead at a rate which to Helmholtz " did not 

 seem quite rational." The science of the coal-tar products brought 

 great numbers of new drugs into play and pharmacology became more 

 and more exact. Experimental pharmacodynamics, however, is a plant 

 of very recent growth, the work of such men as Schmiedeberg, Buch- 

 heim, Traube, Brunton and Cushny. After reading the text-book of 

 Schmiedeberg's brilliant pupil Cushny^^ we get such a poor idea of 

 the bulky pharmacopoeias of recent date, that the remains of the sifting 

 process seem very like the stock in trade of Romeo's starving apothe- 

 cary — 



A beggarly account of empty boxes 



Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds, 



Remnants of pack thread and old cakes of roses. 



"The period of constructive pharmacology," says Cushny, "has 

 scarcely dawned : at present its chief function is destructive and critical," 

 and he points out that remedies " generally employed may be numerated 

 in units where they were once counted in scores." The effect of this 

 destructive criticism upon " pharmacologic fetishisms " (as Barton calls 

 them) is seen in the gradually changing attitude of the medical pro- 

 fession towards a work like Osier's " Practice," which is not only the 

 best book on the subject in English, but also the best abused, on account 

 of the author's very conservative feeling about drug therapeutics. As 

 a matter of fact. Professor Osier gives with lucid, scientific precision 

 all that can be done for a given disease ; when it comes to general drug- 

 ging, he says that such and such remedies may be tried: he does not 

 guarantee that they will cure. Similarly, if we follow the teaching 

 of one of the most eminent of recent French clinicians, the lamented 

 Huchard, actual drug therapy may be limited to some twenty remedies 

 or groups of remedies ("La therapeutique en vingt medicaments"),^* 

 viz. : opium, mercury, quinine, nux vomica, digitalis, arsenic, phos- 

 phorus, ergot, belladonna, chloral, bismuth, the bromides, the hypnotics, 

 the purgatives, the antiseptics, the anaesthetics, the antipyretics, the 



"Cushny's "Pharmacology" (5th ed., Philadelphia, 1910) is dedicated to 

 Schmiedeberg, " dem Meister vom Schuler gewidmet." For an interesting ac- 

 count of recent aspects of the subject see the two papers on " Pharmacologic 

 Fetishisms," by Dr. Wilfred M. Barton in Jour. Am. Med. Assoc, Chicago, 1909, 

 LII., 1557-1560; 1910, LV., 284-287. 



" By Henri Huchard and Ch. Fiessinger, Paris, 1910. 



