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PATENTS  IN  THEIR  RELATION  TO  PHARMACY. 
not  its  results  just  as  much  property  as  the  results  of  manual 
labor  ? 
These  considerations  have  engaged  my  attention  in  endeayor- 
ing  to  determine  the  right  and  wrong  of  patents  in  medicine.  I 
confess  they  offered  me  no  satisfactory  starting  point  for  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  question  ;  it  seems  to  resolve  itself  into  one  of 
humanity  and  expediency,  and  here  we  have,  perhaps,  firmer 
ground  to  tread  upon. 
It  is  alleged  that  the  direct  effect  of  the  patent  laws  is  to  stimu- 
late invention  :  that  men  direct  their  mental  energies  in  this 
direction,  entirely  from  the  hope  of  profit,  and  the  public  are 
therefore  benefitted  by  them,  though  there  may  be  an  apparent 
monopoly  in  each  case  of  there  operation ;  granting  this,  the 
question  becomes  a  simple  one  as  to  the  degree  in  which  society 
is  likely  to  be  benefitted  by  their  application  to  any  particular 
pursuit. 
In  the  matter  of  medicines,  the  profession  to  whom  the  healing 
art  is  mainly  intrusted,  is  pretty  unanimous  in  maintaining  that 
no  interest  of  an  inventor  should  stand  in  the  way  of  the  free 
and  unrestricted  use  of  every  improvement  that  the  ingenuity  of 
man  may  devise  either  in  the  means  of  cure,  or  the  modes  of  apply- 
ing them.  It  is  the  boast  of  the  liberal  profession  of  medicine, 
that  what  ever  is  known  by  one  as  valuable  or  useful  for  allevia- 
ting pain  or  restoring  the  diseased  to  health,  may  be  freely  known 
to  all  and  used  without  restriction. 
That  this  is  expedient  in  the  case  of  physicians  is  scarcely 
doubted  by  any  thoughtful  person  ;  it  certainly  takes  away  one 
motive  for  the  application  of  ingenuity  in  the  difficult  art  of  heal- 
ing, but  we  can  not  ignore  the  superior  force  of  the  higher 
motives  which  influence  the  conscientious  practitioner.  In  no 
other  profession  have  we  so  noble  an  example  of  liberality  in 
communicating  and  applying  the  results  of  experience  and  the 
deductions  of  science  to  the  relief  of  suffering,  and  none  have 
so  rich  a  reward  in  the  esteem  and  gratitude  of  the  public.  The 
medical  profession  is,  however,  very  different  from  ours.  Manu- 
facturing and  merchandizing  are  our  chief  pursuits,  our  motive 
is  more  immediately  pecuniary,  though  the  liberalizing  influences 
of  science,  and  especially  our  connection  with  the  relief  of  those 
maladies  which  are  the  common  lot  of  our  race,  modify  the 
