108  Physiological  Standardisation.  {*miiirch,5io*m' 
capable  worker  in  a  comparatively  short  space  of  time.  I  refer  to 
the  contributions  which  have  been  made  by  Dr.  Reid  Hunt  to  our 
knowledge  of  the  thyroid  gland.  In  two  interesting  communications, 
published  within  a  year  of  each  other,  Dr.  Hunt  described  a  method 
for  standardization  of  the  thyroid  gland  based  upon  principles 
which  were  absolutely  new  to  biological  assay ;  showed  the  wide 
extent  of  variations  in  the  commercial  samples  of  the  drug ;  showed 
that  the  activity  of  the  thyroid  body  varied  not  only  with  the  species 
but  with  the  age  of  the  animal  from  which  the  glands  were  obtained, 
and  the  influences  which  special  feeding  of  the  animal  may  have 
upon  the  activity  of  the  gland ;  and,  finally,  determined  that  with 
unsophisticated  glands  the  percentage  of  iodine  was  an  accurate 
indicator  of  the  quality  of  the  drug.  Truly,  through  this  one  man's 
efforts  we  have  been  led  with  dramatic  suddenness  from  absolute 
darkness  to  the  brilliancy  of  almost  complete  knowledge. 
I  have  chosen  as  examples  of  what  may  be  accomplished  three 
drugs  which  have  yielded  some  interesting  results,  but  I  must  con- 
fess that  outside  of  these  instances  which  I  have  mentioned  little 
of  importance  has  been  added  to  our  knowledge  of  practical  phar- 
macy through  physiological  investigation.  When  we  consider  how 
much  might  have  been  done,  and  how  little  has  been  done,  the 
pharmacologist  may  well  bow  his  head  in  shame  at  the  neglect  of 
so  fruitful  a  field.  We  cannot  plead  that  the  idea  of  biological 
assay  is  so  recent  that  there  has  not  been  time  enough  for  its  de- 
velopment. More  than  forty  years  have  elapsed  since  the  method 
was  earnestly  suggested  and  for  more  than  twenty-five  years  it  has 
been  more  or  less  systematically  applied  in  various  laboratories 
of  the  world.  There  certainly  has  been  time  enough  in  this  half 
century  of  an  intellectual  progress,  whose  rapidity  has  never  been 
equalled  at  any  stage  of  the  world's  history,  for  the  development  and 
application  of  the  method  of  biological  assay  to  a  dozen  drugs 
instead  of  one  or  two. 
But  the  laborers  in  this  field  have  been  so  pitifully  few  that  one 
should  wonder  not  at  the  smallness  of  the  harvest  but  at  its  abund- 
ance. We  are,  however,  not  altogether  without  excuse  for  the 
neglect  of  this  field.  Pharmacology  is  a  young  science — men  some- 
times forget  that  the  first  pharmacologist  in  the  modern  sense  of  the 
word  is  still  living  and  teaching — and  in  the  enormous  mass  of 
problems  the  accumulations  of  centuries,  many  of  them  of  funda- 
mental importance  for  its  own  development,  which  the  world  hurled 
