194 
Teaching  of  Therapeutics. 
Am.  Jour.  Phafm. 
Mai-ch,  1920. 
the  Council  on  Pharmacy  and  Chemistry  will  be  helped  in  its  com- 
pletion; for,  when  the  practitioner  knows  how  to  prescribe,  he  will 
not  tolerate  the  commercial  concern  that  poses  as  his  teacher. 
The  closing  paragraph  of  a  recent  editoriaP  has  a  bearing  on  this 
subject.  I  have  substituted  the  word  "pharmacologist"  for  "physi- 
ologist," and  "pharmacology"  for  "physiology." 
"It  is  quite  possible  that,  as  has  been  suggested,  we  are  approach- 
ing the  time  when  there  will  be  two  types  of  persons  connected  with 
each  clinical  department,  namely,  the  clinical  pharmacologist, 
whose  chief  work  will  be  the  intensive  study  of  selected  groups  of 
cases  and  the  instruction  of  students  in  the  application  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  pharmacology  to  the  elucidation  of  disease,  and  the  clini- 
cian, whose  chief  function  will  be  the  care  of  the  patient  and  the 
instruction  of  the  student  in  the  practical  methods  of  diagnosis  and 
treatment.  Obviously,  some  arrangement  already  exists  in  some  of 
our  better  schools.  In  institutions  in  which  full  time  medicine  has 
been  introduced,  there  has  been  a  distinct  effort  to  appoint  as  heads 
of  the  clinical  departments  men  of  the  investigative  type.  One 
question  that  Addis'  discussion  raises  is  whether  in  our  enthusiasm 
for  laboratory  research  w^e  have  not  overlooked  the  importance  of 
purely  clinical  investigation  and  of  the  type  of  physician  that  natur- 
ally tends  toward  this." 
At  present  an  attempt  is  made  to  make  pharmacologists  out  of 
men  who  are  going  to  practice  medicine.  A  real  pharmacologist  is 
a  highly  educated  man  in  physiology  and  chemistry,  an  investigator, 
a  discoverer,  and  by  rights  a  leader  in  the  higher  realms  of  thera- 
peutics-— one  who  should  teach  medical  students  how  drugs  can  be 
studied  and  should  be  studied  in  the  laboratory,  and  to  determine 
fundamental  facts  about  remedies.  But  to  try  to  train  the  general 
run  of  students,  who  will  never  have  a  laboratory,  to  be  pharma- 
cologists without  first  teaching  elementary  practical  therapeutics,  is 
somewhat  like  a  great  opera  singer  trying  to  make  every  one  a  great 
singer,  or  as  if  one  should  attempt  to  make  his  infant  son  sing  be- 
fore he  tried  to  teach  him  to  walk.  The  use  of  instruments  of  pre- 
cision necessary  for  the  study  of  drugs,  if  taught  at  all,  should  be  at 
the  bedside.  I  repeat  what  I  said  above:  "The  lack  of  training  as 
to  what  to  do,  what  not  to  do,  and  when  to  do,  as  to  remedies, 
is  one  of  the  weak  spots  in  medicine  to-day."    I  firmly  believe  that 
2  "The  Teaching  of  Clinical  Medicine,"  editorial, /.  yl.  AT.  74:  35  (Jan.  3), 
1920. 
