AmjJfy,r'i2ihs!rm' )      The  Old-Fashioned  Pharmacist.  497 
medical  profession,  and,  what  is  more,  instead  of  forcing  the  issue  as  to 
specialists  give  the  general  practitioner  a  dignity  and  opportunity  which  for 
a  number  of  years  have  been  denied  him. 
As  a  consequence,  the  depletion  of  the  specialists,  not  only  the  surgical 
specialists,  by  the  war,  has  left  the  medical  profession  available  in  civil  life 
scant  in  numbers  and  with  altogether  too  few  who  are  indisputably  general 
practitioners  and  truly  understand  the  "  art  of  healing."  For  healing  is  an 
art,  and  it  depends  more  largely  than  many  think  on  individual  equation  plus 
the  science  of  medicine  as  it  is  obtained  in  the  schools,  the  hospitals  and  the 
daily  practice.  ...  As  it  is,  if  the  war  continues,  the  great  need  of  utilizing 
the  general  practitioner  for  all  sorts  of  service  from  which  he  is  now  cut  off 
by  the  detailed  specialization  which  rules  will  be  pressed  home  on  every  one. 
The  medical  educators,  however,  naturally  are  not  blind  to  the  situation 
and  to  some  of  them  what  is  happening  will  be  viewed  as  a  case  of  "  I  told 
you  so."  At  all  events,  as  all  schools  and  colleges  are  looking  to  their  methods 
with  a  view  of  determining  their  practical  relation  to  the  output,  it  would 
seem  as  if  the  medical  schools  are  in  need  of  some  genius  who  will  plan  for 
them  a  system  which  will  turn  out  more  old-fashioned  doctors  and  leave 
the  necessary  specialization  carried  on  by  relatively  small  groups  of  labora- 
tory workers,  while  the  doctors  serve  the  community  as  a  whole  and  along 
broad  and  general  lines,  applying  the  hospital  and  laboratory  facts  by  the 
bedside,  in  the  home  and  in  the  office  as  occasion  calls  for. 
The  shortage  of  the  "good,  old-fashioned,  all-around  general 
practitioner"  is  not  only  quantitative,  by  reason  of  fewer  medical 
schools  and  fewer  students,  but  qualitative,  also,  by  reason  of  the 
extreme  standardization  of  the  medical  sciences  and  art  taught  in 
the  schools  and  the  overspecialization  of  medical  practice. 
The  practice  of  medicine  today  is  in  a  state  of  evolution.  The 
older  practitioner  has  a  firm  faith  in  the  use  of  drugs  for  the  treat- 
ment of  disease.  The  newer  practitioner  has  little  faith  in  drugs 
and  much  concerning  preventive  medicine. 
The  scientific  exactness  of  the  sciences  applied  in  preventive 
medicine — bacteriology,  immunology,  hygiene,  sanitation,  etc.,  and 
the  brilliant  results  they  have  yielded  in  conserving  human  life,  have 
appealed  powerfully  to  the  imagination  of  the  medical  profession,  es- 
pecially when  contrasted  with  the  apparent  lack  of  scientific  preci- 
sion in  the  use  of  drugs,  which  lack,  by  the  way,  is  more  apparent 
than  real. 
Many  of  the  medical  schools  unduly  emphasize  the  importance 
of  preventive  medicine  and  minimize  the  importance  of  materia 
medica  and  therapeutics,  so  that  therapeutic  nihilism  has  grown 
apace  and  drugs  are  being  used,  less  and  less,  by  the  younger  men, 
at  least,  in  the  treatment  of  disease ;  although  it  is  but  fair  to  add 
