450 
The  Use  of  Drugs  in  Disease. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
July,  1920 
plished  that  year  in  a  pharmaceutical  sense  was  the  founding  of  this 
association  which  we  are  so  proud  to  honor  at  this  its  semi-centen- 
nial. 
In  closing  acknowledgments  are  due  to  the  Proceedings  oj  the 
American  Pharmaceutical  Association,  the  American  Journai^  of 
Pharmacy,  The  Druggists  Circular,  the  Pharmaceutical  Journal  and 
Transactions  and  The  Chemist  and  Druggist  for  1870  from  which  the 
facts  given  in  this  paper  are  collated. 
THE  USB  OF  DRUGS  IN  DISEASE.* 
By  R.  G.  EccIvKs,  M.D., 
BROOKI.YN,  N.  Y. 
To  how  many  of  your  minds  has  the  idea  come  that  pharmaceu- 
tical chemistry  may  be  the  oldest  profession  on  the  earth?  The 
very  first  of  living  things  must  have  started  as  a  drug  compounder. 
As  soon  as  the  early  Protozoa  began  colonial  life — i.  e.,  when  they 
changed  from  one-celled  to  multi-celled  organisms — they  must  have 
exchanged  with  one  another  those  kinds  of  drugs  now  known  to 
physiologists  as  hormones.  With  progress  upward  to  the  higher 
forms  of  life  we  find,  on  study,  that  the  exchange  of  drug  commod- 
ities increased  very  greatly.  Myriads  of  substances  unknown  to 
the  lower  forms  appear  among  the  higher.  Prof.  Huxley,  the  great 
English  biologist,  of  the  end  of  last  century  and  the  beginning  of 
this,  declared  that  of  the  many  millions  of  organic  substances  pro- 
duced by  plants  and  animals  they  are  all  combinations  of  exactly 
the  same  elements  as  are  found  in  "smelling  salts"  with  a  trifling 
amount  of  mineral  substances.  Out  of  these  the  cells — the  primitive 
pharmacists — produce  by  their  compounding  almost  the  entire 
array  of  organic  substances  found  upon  your  shelves  labelled  with 
what  laymen  look  upon  as  hieroglyphics.  While  most  pharmacists 
know,  in  a  general  way,  that  the  great  bulk  of  their  medical  supplies 
are  the  products  of  these  ancient  pharmaceutical  chemists  few  have 
stopped  to  consider  the  fact  that  their  own  bodies  are  miniature 
drug  depots,  and,  that  a  quite  respectable  proportion  of  the  drugs 
found  therein  vary  but  slightly  from  those  they  sell  every  day  over 
*  Read  before  the  Fiftieth  Annual  Meeting  of  the  New  Jersey  Pharmaceu- 
tical Association,  Newark,  June  8,  1920. 
