14 E. A. Schäfer, 



Only inferior to the claims of pathology are those of pharmaco- 

 logy. Little as I would have the student's mind burdened with the 

 dry details of materia medica, so much the more would I insist upon 

 the importance of his acquiring a proper understanding of the action 

 of drugs in health, so that they may be scientifically and accurately 

 applied to combat the manifestations of disease. 



It will be said that this is merely a branch of physiology, and 

 this is true; but it is so large and special a branch, that it is ne- 

 cessary it should stand upon an independent footing. Like physiology 

 and pathology, pharmacology is an experimental science, and, as such, 

 demands laboratories fitted with the most approved instruments of 

 research, and every essential for teaching. But where — I do not say 

 in this metropolis, but in the whole of England — will you find a 

 laboratory devoted to this purpose, and presided over by one who 

 has familiarised himself with all the details of this important branch 

 of medical science. Probably not one single room is set aside even for 

 the carrying on of private research, certainly there will not be found 

 any means of enabling the intending medical man to study the action 

 of those drugs which he is afterwards, often blindly and fortuitously, 

 to experiment with upon his unfortunate patients. 



How far we are behind Germany in this matter will be evident 

 from the circumstance that even the smallest German University 

 reckons among its teachers a professor of pharmacology, to whose sole 

 use a laboratory is devoted for purposes of research and teaching. 

 But, in this country, the pharmacologist may think himself fortunate 

 if he can obtain the grudgingly yielded licence of a Secretary of State, 

 and a spare corner in a physiological laboratory, in order to pursue 

 those investigations, and conduct those experiments, which ought to be 

 a necessary preliminary to the application of remedial agents in the 

 human subject. How, under these circumstances, a doctor can be 

 blamed for occasionally making himself or his patients the subject of 

 experiment, I am at a loss to understand; for surely it is only by ex- 

 perimental means that the necessary knowledge can be arrived at, and 

 the legitimate opportunities for obtaining this knowledge are, in this 

 country, difficult, indeed, to be obtained. 



