454 
The  Use  of  Drugs  in  Disease, 
Am.  Jour.  Pharra. 
July,  1920. 
hair,  mucous  membrane  and  nails.  A  scratch  of  the  skin  may  inocu- 
late the  apparently  trifling  wound  with  some  virulent  kind  of  strepto- 
coccus that  starts  erysipelas  and  kills  us.  We  stop  its  multiplication 
by  a  free  use  of  exactly  the  same  radicals  as  the  skin  that  was  removed 
contained.  Our  supply,  however,  most  likely  came  from  coal  tar 
in  which  it  had  lain  for  many  milleniums  since  the  plants  that  pro- 
duced it  were  menaced  by  still  other  kinds  of  parasites.  With  the 
advancement  of  bacterial  and  chemical  knowledge  we  are,  as  such 
cases  show,  getting  rid  of  empiricism  and  discovering  broad,  general 
laws  of  treatment  that  are  as  sound  to-day  as  they  were  when,  in  the 
Carboniferous  era,  these  substances  were  formed.  Unfortunately, 
there  are  among  us  a  large  number  of  people  who  measure  progress 
by  the  yard-stick  of  their  own  ignorance.  Knowing  nothing  of  dis- 
coveries that  lie  outside  of  their  studies  they  look,  with  unfeigned 
terror,  on  any  kind  of  change  that  does  not  correspond  with  the 
opinions  of  their  great  grand-dads.  They  cling  to  old  fads  and 
fancies  as  they  do  to  truth  when  they  happen  to  possess  it.  Not 
laymen  alone  are  guilty  of  this  folly.  It  is  quite  common  among 
physicians  and  pharmacists  as  well.  We  are  all  loath  to  give  up 
ideas  that  we  took  in  when  babes  and  sucklings.  We  have  little  of 
the  bravery  of  the  pioneer,  and  dread,  with  undisguised  fear,  every 
innovation  that  collides  with  our  early  impressions.  Medical 
science  has  entered  a  new  path  since  our  discovery  of  the  cause  of 
disease  and  we  are  now  being  called  upon  to  remodel  our  ideas  in 
respect  to  processes  of  cure.  In  the  confusion  that  is  resulting  from 
this  change  we  are  witnessing  an  intense  conflict  of  opinion  between 
progressive  and  sessile,  or  conservative,  minds.  Remarkable  as  is 
the  fact,  too,  the  conservatives  have  chosen  for  themselves  the  title 
"reformer"  as  they  seek,  with  might  and  main,  to  reform  things 
backward. 
Among  the  new  so-called  reformers  are  those  who  seek  to  stop 
the  use  and  manufacture  of  vaccines,  those  who  oppose  research 
in  physiology  and  therapeutics,  calling  the  processes  pursued  by  the 
name  of  vivisection  and  themselves  antivivisectionists,  and  those 
who  oppose  all  drug  treatment  and  condemn  it  as  wholesale  poison- 
ing. The  creed  of  the  latter  is  that  all  drugs  are  "deadly"  poisons 
and  all  administration  of  drugs  as  poisonings.  From  their  point 
of  view  poisons  are  poisons  inherently,  and  it  matters  not  whether 
the  dose  is  large  or  small  it  poisons  in  proportion  to  the  amount 
given,  the  result  being  cumulative.    This,  of  course,  is  a  very  old 
