Am.  Jour.  Pharm.) 
March,  1920.} 
Teaching  of  Therapeutics. 
191 
gentian  and  tincture  of  iron  in  a  quart  of  water,  particularly  if  the 
mixture  is  prepared  forthwith. 
This  large  class  teaching  is  driven  home  by  a  junior  teacher 
taking  the  class  in  sections  and  having  it  spend  one  or  two  hours  a 
week  for  several  weeks  writing  prescriptions,  for  suppositive  cases, 
which  are  then  criticized,  and  the  writer  asked  to  give  his  reasons 
for  using  each  remedy. 
The  regular  medical  ward  classes  should  emphasize  therapeutics; 
and,  in  addition,  clinical,  not  laboratory,  pharmacology  should  be 
taught.  This  is  done  by  demonstrating  a  case  of  auricular  fibrillation 
both  at  the  bedside  and  with  the  electrocardiograph,  and  then  giving 
full  doses  of  digitalis,  a  second  demonstration  revealing  the  effects. 
So,  too,  the  mode  of  action  of  atropine  in  partial  or  complete  heart 
block  is  demonstrated,  and  the  effects  of  nitrites  in  lowering  pressure 
are  taught  by  seeing  a  patient  to-day  with  high  pressure  and  again 
at  the  next  visit  with  a  reduced  pressure.  Any  number  of  these 
therapeutic  demonstrations  can  be  made  by  the  regular  ward  class 
teacher,  and  made  still  more  useful  if  a  demonstrator  of  clinical 
pharmacology  who  can  use  the  polygraph  and  electrocardiograph 
is  given  proper  hours.  By  this  means  the  student  is  taught  how 
drugs  act  and  how  various  doses  act,  entirely  apart  from  the  didactic 
lectures  on  therapeutics  or  the  general  therapeutic  clinics  given  by 
the  head  of  the  department,  who  deals  of  necessity  with  principles 
and  practice. 
Faults  in  Present  Methods. — All  this  seems  so  obviously  practical 
that  the  question  arises,  "Why  is  it  not  done?" 
The  answer  is  that  there  is  not  time.  If  there  is  not,  why  not? 
There  is  not  time  for  two  chief  reasons.  The  first  is  that  the  stu- 
dent is  taught  too  much  of  the  special  art  of  the  specialties,  many 
of  which  he  will  never  attempt  to  practice;  and  unless  he  takes  a 
post-graduate  course  after  several  years  in  general  practice,  he  ought 
not  to  try  to  practice.  At  present  the  young  graduate  can  talk 
learnedly  of  the  diflference  between  paralytic  and  concomitant 
squint  or  about  the  Barany  test,  but  is  stumped  when  told  to  write 
a  recipe  for  diarrhoea. 
The  second  reason  is  that  the  laboratory  of  pharmacology  has 
drowned  practical  therapeutics,  and  has  done  it  so  effectively  that 
in  most  schools  literally  no  bedside  therapeutics  as  a  separate  branch 
is  taught,  the  original  chair  of  therapeutics  being  filled  by  a  lab- 
