92 
The  American  Materia  Medica. 
{Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
February,  1910. 
efforts  of  conspicuous  men,  who  wrote  and  copyrighted  books,  as 
well  as  of  Samuel  Thomson  and  some  of  his  followers.  It  touched 
nearly  every  phase  of  professional  effort  throughout  America,  con- 
tinuously pursuing  its  course  under  various  phases,  until  about  the 
middle  of  the  last  century,  when  came  into  play  such  factors  as  the 
manufacturing  establishments  that  in  pharmacy  wedged  themselves 
into  the  field  of  medicine,  dominating  at  last,  as  can  be  perceived, 
many  sections  in  manipulative  pharmacy  that  had  previously  be- 
longed exclusively  to  the  apothecary.  Of  these,  their  influences, 
methods,  and  such,  we  cannot  now  speak.  Let  us  not  forget  that 
in  the  opening  of  the  present  century  and  the  closing  of  the  last 
came  another  phase  of  commercialism  in  the  university  methods, 
chiefly  centering  in  the  progressive  German  institutions  of  scientific 
instruction.  Needless  is  it  to  suggest  that  these  influences  have 
come  to  be  a  mighty  factor  at  the  present  time  and  that,  in  the 
processes  now  in  vogue,  wherever  patent  protection  is  possible 
through  the  opportunities  of  patent  laws,  the  contrasted  attempt 
Samuel  Thomson  once  made  to  secure  protection  by  his  patent  proc- 
ess is  insignificant.  But  as  already  intimated,  these  phases  of  the 
problem,  entering  as  a  thread  into  the  very  beginning  and  at  the 
present  time  sweeping  all  before  it  as  in  a  mighty  net,  can  only  be 
referred  to  as  a  subject  which  must  not  be  overlooked,  and  cannot 
rest  unmentioned. 
What  of  the  Present? — Thus  we  come  to  the  present  day. 
And  if  this  history  of  the  past  be  correct,  we  can,  through  this  brief 
synopsis,  form  an  opinion  of  the  tortuous  journey  of  the  American 
materia  medica  from  its  beginning  in  the  day  of  the  Colonial  pioneer 
to  the  present.  In  it,  as  we  look  back,  the  men  constituting  these 
antagonistic  forces  were  incapable  of  comprehending  the  part  they 
were  taking  in  a  far-reaching  problem,  whose  end,  in  connection 
with  the  efforts  of  those  to-day  involved,  is  not  less  surely  hidden 
from  us  of  the  present.  However,  into  this  problem,  which  I  had 
hoped  to  make  the  substance  of  this  paper,  time  will  not  permit  me 
to  enter.  I  must  therefore  close  by  remarking  that  it  seems  to 
me,  when  I  revert  to  what  I  have  said,  as  though  the  most  interesting 
phases  and  side  lines  connected  with  the  pharmacy  (altogether 
neglected),  the  educational  problems  (practically  untouched),  the 
hopes,  ambitions  and  antagonisms,  the  personalities  of  the  parties 
involved,  the  many  authorities,  important  as  well  as  seemingly  unim- 
portant, unmentioned  by  me,  the  forgotten  or  overlooked  ideals  of 
