AFeb™Uarya8a99m'}      Observations  on  Fluid  Acetracts.  67 
These  facts,  while  not  new  in  themselves,  indicate  a  new  way  of 
looking  at  an  old  subject,  and  may  bring  out  points  which  have 
hitherto  been  ignored  in  considering  commercial  questions  relating 
to  pharmacy. 
Increased  requirements  for  pharmacists  should  be  accompanied  by 
increased  remuneration  for  services  rendered,  and  no  true  progress 
can  be  made  until  equilibrium  is  established  in  this  direction. 
Poplar  and  Canal  Streets,  Philadelphia. 
SOME  OBSERVATIONS  ON  FLUID  ACETRACTS  IN  COM- 
PARISON WITH  FLUID  EXTRACTS. 
By  Wm.  B.  Thompson. 
Where  radical  change  in  the  method  of  preparing  medicines  is 
advocated  or  proposed,  we  cannot  be  expected  to  accept  any  state- 
ment of  facts,  however  responsible  or  authoritative,  without  some 
reservation.  The  theory  may  be  indisputable  and  the  deductions 
upon  which  that  theory  is  based  incontrovertible,  at  least  in  our 
present  state  of  knowledge,  yet  when  determinate  or  conclusive 
evidence  is  not  before  us  we  must  insist  upon  practical  demonstra- 
tion rather  than  theory.  The  only  crucial  test  of  the  therapeutic 
action  of  medicines  is  to  be  sought  in  a  close  clinical  observation 
at  the  bedside  of  the  patient,  the  physician  present  noting  with 
care  not  only  the  constitutional  effect,  but  the  intermediate  effects 
which  precede  the  final  and  full  impression  of  the  medicine.  To 
what  a  voluminous  extent  our  medical  literature  teems  with  the 
most  positive  assertions  of  authors  lauding  and  vaunting  the  vir- 
tues of  some  new  remedy,  when  careful  inquiry  often  discloses 
the  fact  that  for  the  greater  part  these  recorded  observations 
have  been  of  the  most  casual  character,  and  the  result  more 
frequently  attributable  to  other  and  auxiliary  means  rather  than  to 
that  of  the  chief  instrumentality.  So  that  we  had  better  err  on  the 
side  of  over-caution  than  to  rely  upon  so  serious  a  venture  as  experi- 
mental medicine  at  the  moment  of  emergency. 
There  has  been  submitted  to  the  trade  judgment  a  class  of  fluid 
pharmaceutical  preparations  to  which  the  term  "Acetracts"  has 
been  very  aptly  applied,  all  these  being  of  an  acetous  character. 
The  samples  which  have  come  under  the  writer's  observation  have 
been  subjected  only  to  the  test  of  a  casual  observation,  with  such 
