192 
Teaching  of  Therapeutics. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
March,  1920. 
oratory  pharmacologist  who  in  some  instances  is  not  even  a  doctor 
of  medicine,  or  if  he  has  the  degree  of  M.D.  has  never  practiced  a 
day  in  his  Hfe  or  even  been  an  intern  in  a  hospital.  When  he  at- 
tempts to  tell  students  bedside  facts,  it  is  as  if  he  >vere  an  astronomer 
trying  to  teach  a  sailor  how  to  navigate  a  ship  without  ever  having 
been  to  sea.  As  he  lacks  bedside  experience,  he  teaches,  for  example, 
that  the  best  treatment  of  fever  is  a  combination  of  the  cold  bath 
and  coal-tar  antipyretics,  when  every  one  who  practices  knows  that 
this  is  a  great  error.  It  is  enough  to  bring  the  gray  hairs  of  Dr. 
Simon  Baruch,  the  great  apostle  of  hydrotherapy,  in  sorrow  to  the 
grave,  and  if  carried  out  will  bring  many  patients  there. 
Valuable  time  which  should  be  spent  at  the  bedside  learning  how 
to  use  drugs  is  employed  in  having  students  carry  out  pharmacologic 
technic  in  a  course  of  six  or  eight  weeks  or  their  equivalent.  It  is 
safe  to  say  that  not  one  man  in  a  thousand  who  takes  this  course 
becomes  a  pharmacologist  or  learns  to  be  an  efficient  technician. 
What  the  student  needs  is  not  to  do  the  experiments  himself  but  to 
see  them  done  by  a  man  so  well  trained  that  results  are  produced 
that  make  a  demonstration  that  really  demonstrates  the  fact  to  be 
remembered.  I  can  see  no  more  reason  for  making  a  group  of  stu- 
dents, designed  to  be  practitioners,  make  bungling  experiments  with 
a  Kronecker-Bowditch  heart  apparatus  than  I  can  for  their  perform- 
ing amputations  and  visceral  operations  on  dogs  or  cats  with  the 
idea  that  they  will  become  good  surgeons;  indeed,  there  is  less  rea- 
son. One  cannot  make  a  man  who  has  no  music  in  his  soul  a  vio- 
linist in  a  six  weeks'  course,  and  probably  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the 
majority  of  excellent  physicians  have  not  the  qualities  which  pro- 
duce original  contributions  to  medical  knowledge. 
Need  for  the  Teaching  of  Practical  Therapeutics^. — To  quote  Sir 
George  Makins,  ^  in  an  address  to  the  Medical  Society  of  Manchester : 
"A  survey  of  these  considerations  should  exert  a  definite  influence 
upon  the  determination  of  the  nature  of  the  course  of  education  best 
suited  to  the  development  of  the  doctor  upon  whose  efficiency  the 
happiness  and  health  of  the  nation  so  largely  depends.  It  is  clear 
that  for  the  great  bulk  of  the  profession  a  path  must  be  found  by  which 
advances  in  science  are  utilized  for  the  perfection  of  the  art  of  medi- 
cine, but  it  cannot  be  possible  to  elevate  every  medical  man  to  the 
position  of  an  apostle  of  pure  science.  .   .   .   .  " 
1  Makins,  Brit.  Med.  J.,  2:  590  (Nov.  8),  1919. 
