58 Botanic Drugs 



I am in position to state that commercialized 

 medical journalism, lacking in advertising stand- 

 ards as it is, is open to severe indictment for main- 

 taining the support of a class of proprietary remedies 

 wholly contemptible from the scientific point of 

 view and worthless from the clinical one. Honest 

 proprietary remedies, however, have a proper place 

 recognized by all. 



Deterioration is one factor not met by stand- 

 ardization; but preparations of digitalis, strophan- 

 thus, and ergot are the only botanic drugs of promi- 

 nence liable to rapid deterioration, and these are 

 readily put up in vacuum ampoules for use on such 

 occasions as demand a certainty of full activity. 



In the earlier employment of standardization 

 methods it was deemed essential to assay for but 

 one or, at most two, dominating alkaloids. But 

 this thought is giving way. Perhaps I can do no 

 better here than to quote Tschirch, who said: 



"We know that rarely does a single substance 

 suffice to produce the effect of the drug; it is the 

 combined action of all the substances which brings 

 about the peculiar effect. Nevertheless we must 

 often recognize the preponderating influence of one 

 substance, which I have characterized as dominant. 

 It is at first by clinical experience that one gets to 

 appreciate this fact, since it has thus been deter- 

 mined that the effect of employing the entire drug 

 is rarely the same as the effect of the single so-called 

 active principle. Moreover, Professor Burgi, of 

 Berne, has shown positively that very often the 

 effect of one substance can be augmented or dimin- 

 ished by another, and that similar substances are 



