Am  jour.Pharm.  }       Pharmacologic  Superstitions. 
October,  19 17.    >  J  1 
453 
that  empiricism  should  be  the  only  guide  in  the  treatment  of  the  sick 
could  read  the  history  of  medicine  "  with  their  eyes,"  they  would  see 
what  a  feeble  nickering  light  to  the  progress  of  medical  science  ex- 
perience has  been ;  nay,  it  has  been  a  veritable  will-o'-the-wisp,  lead- 
ing men  astray  farther  and  farther  from  the  truth.  For  fifteen 
centuries  the  experiences  of  medical  Europe  were  interpreted  to 
suit  the  theories  of  the  great  Galen,  and  in  these  fifteen  hundred 
years,  with  their  observations  of  millions  of  deaths,  physicians 
learned  absolutely  nothing  of  how  to  relieve  suffering  or  prolong 
life.  A  splendid  illustration  of  the  blindness  of  humanity  to  their 
surroundings  is  seen  in  the  duration  of  the  bloodletting  superstition. 
For  three  centuries  physicians  with  the  best  motives  bled  their 
patients  to  death,  absolutely  incapable  of  realizing  that  their  vene- 
section killed  far  more  than  it  saved.  Despite  the  frightful  mor- 
tality of  their  methods  of  treatment,  they  clung  to  the  error  with  the 
enthusiasm  of  a  religious  fanatic.  Dr.  Benjamin  Rush  on  his  death- 
bed, almost  pulseless  from  the  combined  effects  of  disease  and  re- 
peated venesections,  begged  the  attending  physicians  to  bleed  him 
again.  The  story  of  the  pneumonia  "  cures  "  is  another  interesting 
confirmation  of  the  deceptiveness  of  experience.  Time  after  time 
has  some  new  method  of  treating  this  disease  been  brought  forward 
with  most  impressive  statistics  which  would  seem  to  have  established 
it  as  of  the  utmost  value,  and  yet  despite  the  venesection,  veratrum, 
creosote,  quinin,  alcohol,  camphor,  ice  jackets  and  poultices,  the  mor- 
tality of  this  disease  is  practically  unaffected. 
Of  the  drugs  of  generally  recognized  utility,3  numbering  about 
270,  not  one  third  of  those  introduced  within  the  last  hundred  years 
were  discovered  through  the  medium  of  bedroom  observations. 
If  neither  antiquity  nor  clinical  results  can  establish  the  thera- 
peutic credentials,  on  what  grounds  are  Ave  to  accept  therapeutic 
claims  ?  There  are  those  who  pretend  to  believe  that  the  final  judg- 
ment as  to  the  therapeutic  value  of  a  drug  can  be  made  in  the  phar- 
macologic laboratory ;  such  a  claim,  however,  is  so  foolish  as  scarcely 
to  be  worthy  of  a  refutation.  Although  it  is  undeniable  that  we 
owe  most  of  our  useful  drugs  to  the  researches  of  chemists  or 
physiologists,  their  conclusions  concerning  the  value  of  a  remedy- 
can  be  accepted  only  when  confirmed  by  clinical  experience.  I  do 
not  know  how  many  rabbits  Ehrlich  and  his  assistants  cured  with 
salvarsan,  but  I  do  know  that  he  was  unwilling  to  permit  this  drug 
3  A  Handbook  of  Useful  Drugs,  Chicago,  1913. 
