282 
U.S. P.  National  Convention. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1900 
"I  am  not  one  of  those  who  are  conceited  in  things  American,  freely  acknowl- 
edging that  we  have  added  very  little  to  the  great  sciences  which  underlie  the 
practice  of  medicine,  and  that  we  have  been  indebted  to  Europe  for  almost 
all  of  our  fundamental  inspirations,  I  still  hold  most  strongly,  however,  to  the 
belief  that  there  are  no  therapeutics  superior  to  the  American  therapeutics, 
and  that  in  no  other  country  has  pharmacy  been  carried  to  the  perfection  that 
it  has  reached  in  the  United  States. 
"  Delegates  of  the  pharmaceutical  associations,  I  congratulate  you  on  repre- 
senting a  profession  which  has  attained  its  highest  development  in  the  United 
States. 
"  There  is  a  probably  widespread,  and  certainly  often  spoken  of,  feeling  that 
the  medical  profession  of  the  United  States  does  not  properly  appreciate  and 
support  the  United  States  Pharmacopoeia.  There  is  some  foundation  for  this 
feeling,  but  assuredly  it  is  exaggerated.  It  is  true  that,  owing  to  the  activity 
of  manufacturing  pharmacists,  and  the  number  and  skill  of  their  commercial 
salesmen  (vendors  of  samples),  aided  by  the  deficiencies  of  medical  education 
and  the  peculiar  childlike  credulity  which  is  so  common  in  doctors,  all  kinds 
of  proprietary  mixtures  and  proprietary  articles  and  extra-pharmacopoeial 
remedies  are  largely  used  in  the  United  States.  It  is  so  easy  for  the  lazy  doctor 
to  write  for  Smith's  Panacea  for  human  ills,  and  so  easy  for  the  doctor  who 
knows  neither  materia  medica  nor  therapeutics  to  order  Jones'  Consumption 
Cure  or  Thomas'  Kamianita,  that  so  long  as  laziness  and  incompetence  remain 
with  us  so  long  will  this  thing  be  done.  But  this  is  no  fault  of  the  Pharmaco- 
poeia, and  no  perfection  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  will  greatly  influence  it.  Certainly 
any  attempt  to  reduce  the  products  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  to  the  level  of  the 
proprietary  or  patent  medicine  would  be  to  destroy  the  dignity  of  the  work,  to 
bring  it  into  contempt,  and  finally  to  uproot  its  influence.  Under  the  influence 
of  State  law  and  of  public  opinion  the  average  education  of  the  American 
medical  profession  is  rapidly  and  steadily  rising  ;  in  this  and  not  in  anything 
that  this  Convention  or  its  committee  can  do  lies  the  hope  of  the  future. 
Moreover,  the  intensity  of  the  feeling  that  the  American  medical  profession  is 
not  so  thoroughly  interested  in  the  Pharmacopoeia  as  it  ought  to  be  rests 
largely  upon  a  misconception  of  the  intent  of  the  Pharmacopoeia  and  its  rela- 
tions to  the  medical  profession.  A  Pharmacopoeia  is  not  intended  to  be  a  guide 
to  practice,  or  a  working  book  to  be  used  by  the  doctor,  but  is  really  a  handbook 
of  the  apothecary.  I  do  not  believe  that  at  any  time  or  in  any  country  Phar- 
macopoeias ever  have  had  much  sale  among  the  medical  profession  ;  and  each 
year,  as  the  professions  differentiate  themselves  more  and  more,  as  the  doctor 
becomes  less  and  less  of  a  pharmacist,  the  tendency  of  the  doctors  to  buy  Phar- 
macopoeias must  grow  less  rather  than  more.  The  Pharmacopoeia  can  only  be 
popularized  in  the  medical  profession  by  making  it  a  treatise  on  therapeutics  ; 
in  other  words,  by  causing  it  to  cease  to  be  a  Pharmacopoeia.  So  long  as  it  is  a 
Pharmacopoeia  it  is  the  basis  upon  which  text-books  and  dispensatories  are  to 
be  written  ;  and  it  becomes  through  these  treatises  a  guide  to  the  medical  pro- 
fession. It  remains  the  apothecary's  2^fe  mecum,  with  which  in  hand  he  does 
his  work,  and  its  sales  must  be  chiefly  among  the  apothecaries. 
"  There  may  have  been  a  time  when  the  medical  horizon  was  so  narrow  that 
the  doctor  had  time  to  trouble  himself  as  to  how  the  druggist  made  laudanum, 
but  at  present  the  doctor  has  as  much  as  he  can  do  to  store  his  mind  with  purely 
