104  Physiological  Standardization.         f  Am.  jour.  Pharm. 
March.  1910. 
Let  us  try,  therefore,  to  peer  into  the  future  and  see  what  pros- 
pects of  success  lie  before  him  who  embarks  on  this  enterprise.  We 
can  hope  to  penetrate  the  dark  mist  which  hides  from  our  vision  what 
is  to  come,  only  through  the  telescope  of  history,  and  as  a  foundation 
for  the  prophecy  of  the  destiny  of  biological  assay  I  wish  briefly 
to  review  with  you  some  of  the  past  accomplishments  of  the  art. 
Before  we  seek  to  gauge  the  progress  that  has  been  made  we  must 
have  a  clear  understanding  of  the  goal  towards  which  we  are  striv- 
ing, of  the  questions  which  we  may  hope  to  answer  by  the  method. 
First  and  foremost  of  course  we  desire  a  means  of  determining  the 
relative  potency  of  individual  samples  of  drugs ;  in  other  words, 
to  be  able  to  distinguish  between  a  specimen  of  good  quality  and  one 
of  poor  grade.  But  allow  me  to  emphasize  with  all  the  vigor  that 
I  can  that  this  is  not  the  ultimate  nor  even  the  chief  aim  of  the  real 
pharmacologist.  The  idea  which  is  prevalent,  that  when  a  pharma- 
cologist has  worked  out  a  method  of  assay  simple  enough  to  be  com- 
mercially available  and  accurate  enough  to  be  scientifically  useful, 
he  has  fulfilled  his  whole  duty  to  the  pharmacist,  is  an  error  due  I 
believe  largely  to  the  commercial  dominance  in  the  field  of 
investigation. 
The  man  who  is  engaged  in  the  drug  business  as  a  business  is 
satisfied  if  his  pharmacologist  enables  him  to  sell  reliable  goods, 
that  is,  to  manufacture  preparations  of  uniform  strength ;  but  the 
scientific  pharmacist  wishes  an  answer  to  many  and  various  ques- 
tions that  have  been  perplexing  his  profession  for  years.  He  wants 
the  biological  assayer  to  aid  him  in  discovering  the  most  favorable 
condition  under  which  the  plant  may  be  grown  and  the  best  method 
of  collecting  and  preserving  the  crude  drug ;  the  most  useful  solvent 
for  extracting  its  activities ;  the  rate  of  deterioration  which  takes 
place  both  in  the  crude  drug  and  its  galenicals,  and  the  methods 
of  delaying  these  changes.  Last  but  by  no  means  least  the  pharma- 
cologist can  be  of  invaluable  assistance  in  working  out  methods  of 
chemical  standardization. 
Keeping  these  objectives  before  us,  let  us  briefly  review  what  has 
been  accomplished  with  some  individual  drugs  along  the  lines  I 
have  mentioned. 
Because  of  its  great  practical  importance,  and  of  its  well-known 
liability  to  variations,  and  because  it  produces  certain  well-marked 
effects  which  would  seem  to  make  it  an  especially  suitable  object 
for  physiological  testing,  digitalis  has  been  more  studied  from  the 
