December 23, 1910] 



SCIENCE 



899 



vertised is apparently owned by the medi- 

 cine company, and is known as the Uric 

 Acid Monthly. Ethics again! 



All such things and many more are 

 plainly frauds and easily disposed of but 

 other articles come to us with which there 

 is greater difficulty. One illustration may 

 be given. Following the success of atoxyl, 

 which is sodium arsanilate, a number of 

 derivatives and imitations have appeared. 

 Some of these are of the same general char- 

 acter, which may be established. But for 

 other bodies containing arsenic and aro- 

 matic radicals the evidence is not as easily 

 brought, and frequently considerable in- 

 vestigation is necessary to get at the facts. 

 Unquestionably we shall now have a 

 greater flood of aromatic arsenicals, since 

 the discovery of the preparation known 

 popularly as Ehrlich's 606 has called at- 

 tention anew to the possibilities in this 

 field. There will be many imitations and 

 many things urged i;pon physicians as 

 identical products. All such offerings will 

 have to be investigated, and some of this 

 work may possiblj^ lie within the province 

 of our council. 



Our five years of effort are beginning to 

 bring results. The better medical journals 

 are becoming more careful in the admission 

 of articles to their advertising columns, 

 and a number are following closely the 

 announcement of reports in the Journal of 

 the American Medical Association and 

 "New and Non-official Remedies" to the 

 extent that they advertise no remedy which 

 has not been approved by the council. 

 Some of the newspapers of the country are 

 dropping absolutely the advertising of 

 medicines and medical appliances of all 

 kinds, and there is now the certainty that 

 this reform will spread. 



We have reason to feel gratified by the 

 success achieved, but a much greater work 

 is ahead of us or some other body which 



may feel better able to take it up. It is 

 hot suificient to establish the honesty of 

 the claims made for a remedy or for its 

 general behavior. More than this is neces- 

 sary. The time is coming when some body 

 of scientific men will be called upon to de- 

 cide very definitely upon the accuracy and 

 reasonableness of the therapeutic claims, 

 and to draw a pretty sharp line between 

 the good and the bad. To some extent this 

 is being done now by our committee on 

 therapeutics, but it was not so at the be- 

 ginning, when we did not think it wise to 

 attempt to decide questions of actual cura- 

 tive merit. At the start it was enough to 

 secure a more rational tone in advertising 

 with the elimination of all marked exag- 

 gerations ; now the need of something more 

 is seen and the council may attempt it. To 

 fix actual therapeutic values is no easy 

 task and to do it for all substances would 

 more than tax the powers of the council, 

 since much of the information desired can 

 be obtained only by combined pharmaco- 

 logical and clinical study. Who can afford 

 the time or energy for this? Sooner or 

 later such work will have to be done by re- 

 search institutions endowed for the pur- 

 pose and the present work of our council 

 may be taken as suggestive of the great 

 need for effort in this direction. 



There is a direction, however, in which 

 the work of the council may be of impor- 

 tance in the immediate future, and in 

 which the solution of the more elaborate 

 problems hinted at may not be attempted. 

 I spoke above of the "Pharmacopceia" and 

 its revisions. A few months ago a com- 

 mittee was appointed to begin the regular 

 decennial revision, the revision of 1910. 

 As each ten-year period comes around the 

 question of what should be dropped and 

 what should be added comes up for discus- 

 sion. This time the discussion promises to 

 be a very animated one, as the more pro- 



