^Octobe^igi1-'  ^       Pharmacologic  Superstitions.  451 
the  philanthropic  public,  educating  it  to  the  importance  of  pharma- 
ceutical research.  The  remarkable  gifts  made  to  medical  research 
during  the  past  decade  show  what  a  systematic  campaign  can  do 
and  of  all  of  the  immensely  valuable  fields  of  medicine,  none  is 
more  important  to  the  common  weal  than  is  the  field  of  pharma- 
ceutical research. 
PHARMACOLOGIC  SUPERSTITIONS.1 
By  Horatio  C.  Wood,  Jr.,  M.D.,  Philadelphia. 
The  Test  of  Utility. 
There  are  a  number  of  worthless  therapeutic  practices — some 
based  on  abandoned  theories  of  pathology,  some  due  to  technical 
errors  in  pharmacologic  investigations,  some  based  on  misinterpreted 
clinical  observations,  and  some  the  mere  relics  of  medieval  supersti- 
tion— which  still  persist  in  common  use.  Some  of  these  receive  even 
today  the  sanction  of  authority;  men  whose  acumen  in  many  lines 
has  won  our  respect  occasionally  lend  the  weight  of  their  recom- 
mendation to  measures  which  can  be  defended  on  neither  theoretical 
grounds  nor  clinical  results.  It  has  seemed  to  me  that  it  might  be 
worth  while  to  call  attention  to  the  source  of  some  of  the  more 
common  superstitions  of  this  character. 
First,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  establish  the  criteria  on  which  we 
base  our  judgment  as  to  the  therapeutic  value  of  a  drug.  Certainly 
the  length  of  time  during  which  a  drug  has  been  employed  in  medi- 
cine furnishes  no  measure  of  its  usefulness.  Ammoniac  gum  was 
described  by  Dioscorides  in  the  first  century,  and  for  more  than  a 
thousand  years  was  highly  esteemed,  but  has  fallen  into  such  disuse 
that  it  is  no  longer  recognized  by  the  U.  S.  Pharmacopeia.  In 
studying  the  materia  medica  of  the  first,  tenth  and  fifteenth  cen- 
turies, one  is  struck  by  their  similarity  to  each  other  and  their  dif- 
ference from  that  of  today.  Remedies  whose  reputation  was  sus- 
tained unabated  for  2,000  years  have  been  unable  to  bear  the  light 
of  modern  knowledge,  and  within  half  a  century  have  not  only  been 
completely  discarded  as  worthless  but  their  very  names  forgotten. 
The  first  edition  of  the  U.  S.  Pharmacopeia  was  published  less 
than  a  century  ago.2    Of  624  drugs  and  preparations  deemed  by  the 
1  Reprinted  from  the  Joum.  Amer.  Med.  Assoc.,  Vol.  LXVI,  pp.  1067- 
1073- 
2  Dec.  15,  1820. 
