Am.  Jour.  Pharm.) 
March,  1920.j 
Teaching  of  Therapeutics. 
193 
"All  men  are  not  endowed  with  a  truly  scientific  spirit;  the  posver 
of  evolving  great  principles  is  reserved  to  the  few,  and  even  the  correct 
appreciation  and  application  of  those  which  have  been  laid  down  is 
not  a  faculty  universally  enjoyed.  Again,  the  power  of  reasoning, 
the  possession  of  initiative  and  invention,  and  the  facility  of  de- 
veloping technical  skill,  are  qualities  very  unevenly  distributed 
among  the  class  of  man  who  adopts  medicine  as  his  profession. 
The  reasons  which  lead  to  his  choice  are  by  no  means  always  governed 
by  the  degree  of  aptitude  he  possesses  for  the  calling  he  decides  to 
follow.  To  some  the  science  of  medicine  appeals;  some  adopt  medi- 
cine from  the  lofty  motive  of  desiring  to  benefit  mankind ;  some  boys 
are  born  to  succeed  to  a  family  practice;  some  become  students  of 
medicine  because  the  choice  coincides  with  that  of  a  friend;  in  some 
business  capacity  is  nil;  in  others  it  is  the  mainspring  of  the  future 
career  and  dominates  all  other  feelings  or  aspirations.  Lastly, 
in  not  a  few  instances  the  initial  choice  has  never  been  made  the 
subject  of  serious  thought  or  consideration." 
My  point  is  not  that  there  should  not  be  teachers  of  pharma- 
colog}\  On  the  contrary,  there  should  be,  because  it  is  only  by  the 
efforts  of  these  men  that  the  scientific  or  investigative  side  of  thera- 
peutics can  be  advanced  and  the  errors  of  empiricism  corrected. 
Their  existence  develops  those  who  have  the  talent,  initiative,  the 
proper  deduction  and  the  love  of  investigation,  and  their  methods  of 
thought  and  mode  of  study  are  examples  of  the  highest  type  of  med- 
ical man;  but  in  their  enthusiasm  they  should  not  forget  that  999 
of  their  pupils  want  to  know  how  to  make  the  sick  well  and  do  not 
want  to  know  by  personal  experiments  on  dogs  the  effect,  for  ex- 
ample, of  cutting  the  animal's  sympathetic  nerve,  or  the  action  of 
cocaine  on  the  eye.  If  this  is  to  be  taught,  let  the  pharmacologist 
make  the  experiment  and  demonstrate  the  result. 
It  may  be  said  that  I  do  not  know  whereof  I  speak;  but  I  do, 
for  I  was  once  a  pharmacologist  myself.  In  the  eighties  I  worked  in 
laboratory  pharmacology,  and  taught  it,  too,  as  a  somewhat  long  list 
of  titles  in  the  Index  Catalogue  will  show.  I  am  not  an  iconoclast, 
and  no  one  rejoices  more  than  I  do  that  the  only  pharmacologic 
laboratory  in  the  United  vStates  in  1886  has  been  followed  by  two 
score  of  such  laboratories  from  which  a  wealth  of  wonderful  work  vvas 
originated;  but  it  is  postgraduate  work.  I  am  pleading  that  hours 
now  used  otherwise  may  be  employed  to  teach  not  only  the  theory 
but  also  the  practice  of  therapeutics.    When  this  is  done,  the  work  of 
