136 
Obituary. 
!Am    Tour.  Pharm. 
February,  1920. 
He  held  many  positions  of  prominence  in  his  profession,  having^ 
been  president  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  of  Edinburgh 
and  was  a  member  of  the  medical  committee  appointed  to  prepare 
the  latest  revision  of  the  British  Pharmacopoeia.  He  was  a  member 
of  the  commission  to  investigate  plague  and  in  that  connection 
visited  India  in  1898.  In  1902  he  was  knighted.  He  was  an  honor- 
ary member  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Great  Britain. 
Sir  Thomas  Eraser's  scientific  standing  was  based  upon  his 
original  investigations  and  his  contributions  to  medical  knowledge 
was  mainly  along  the  line  of  the  pharmacologic  study  of  potent 
remedies.  His  study  of  the  physiologic  action  of  strophanthus 
stands  out  yet  as  one  of  the  most  valuable  contributions  to  the 
knowledge  of  that  drug  and  placed  it  permanent^  among  the  valuable 
heart  tonics.  As  other  investigations  may  be  mentioned  those  of 
physostigmin  and  certain  snake  venoms.  G.  M.  B. 
DR.  HORATIO  C.  WOOD. 
The  demise  of  Dr.  Horatio  C.  Wood,  on  January  3,  1920,  the 
widely  known  authority  on  therapeutics,  deserves  more  than  passing 
tribute.  Although  a  semi-invalid  since  1906,  at  which  time  he 
retired  from  practice,  his  researches  upon  the  physiological  action 
of  drugs  have  left  a  deep  and  permanent  impression  upon  American 
medical  practice;  so  much  so  that  he  has  been  called  "The  Father  of 
American  Therapeutics." 
Dr.  Wood  was  a  man  of  unusual  breadth  of  vision  and  a  tireless, 
versatile  worker.  He  was  a  botanist,  pharmacognocist,  physiologist, 
pharmacodynamist,  neurologist  and  clinician;  possessed  of  keen 
powers  of  observation  and  close  reasoning,  his  studies  upon  the  action 
of  drugs  upon  animals  and  human  beings  have  become  classic,  and 
with  Dr.  Roberts  Bartholow  and  others  he  drew  international  at- 
tention to  the  research  work  of  American  therapeutists.  He  was 
among  the  first  to  differentiate  between  the  empirical  use  of  drugs 
and  the  rational  use,  based  on  physiological  action  as  determined 
by  animal  experimentation.  With  his  classic  studies  on  pharma-' 
cology,  he  ever  kept  a  firm  faith  in  the  preeminent  value  of  drugs 
for  the  treatment  of  disease  when  rightly  used,  and  was  ever  sym- 
pathetic to  the  claims  of  pharmacy  for  recognition  as  a  sister  pro- 
fession. 
