24 
The  Future  of  Pharmacy. 
f  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\    January,  1913. 
alone  is  it  concerned  with  Medicine  and  Pharmacy,  but  it  has  per- 
formed a  most  important  service  in  engineering  projects  of  world- 
wide importance.  It  may  be  truthfully  said,  that  this  discovery 
and  those  it  led  up  to,  made  possible  the  building  of  the  Panama 
Canal.  It  was  a  most  important  factor  in  bringing  victory  to 
Japan  and  defeat  to  Russia.  It  is  banishing  pestilence  from  its 
breeding  places  everywhere,  and  no  department  of  life,  either  ani- 
mal or  vegetable  is  beyond  its  influence.  It  has  placed  the  prac- 
tice of  medicine  upon  a  scientific  basis,  and  inaugurated  the  era 
of  preventive  medicine.  The  day  of  curative  measures,  with  which 
we  are  most  familiar,  is  passing.  In  most  of  the  cities  and  large 
communities  of  the  world,  Public  Hygiene  has  become  a  very 
important  department  of  government.  Observe  our  own  city  of 
Philadelphia,  we  have  here  the  largest  water  purification  plant 
in  existence.  Its  effect,  m  that  city,  is  to  reduce  the  number  of 
typhoid  fever  cases,  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  former  total,  and 
perhaps  one  hundred  per  cent,  of  the  water  bore  typhoid,,  peculiar 
to  the  Philadelphia  water  supply.  A  case  of  typhoid  fever  com- 
monly runs  three  months.  In  money  it  is  worth  from  fifty  to 
one  hundred  dollars  to  the  attending  physician,  perhaps  half  of 
that  to  the.  druggist.  A  similar  change  has  taken  place  concern- 
ing diphtheria.  Antitoxin  and  treatment  are  supplied  to  the  pa- 
tient at  the  expense  of  the  communities  in  by  far  the  greater  num- 
ber of  cases.  Smallpox  is  practically  unknown,  for  similar  reasons. 
Bacterins  as  prophylactic  measures  against  typhoid,  and  a  number 
of  other  diseases,  are  coming  into  increased  usefulness. 
Chemo-Therapy. 
The  latest  advance  has  done  astounding  things.  With  one 
treatment  of  606,  Salvarsan,  specific  disease  disappears  to  return 
no  more.  At  least  it  seems  so  at  this  early  date.  Much  is  prom- 
ised from  the  same  source  in  the  eradication  of  cancer.  Leprosy, 
incurable,  from  remote  antiquity,  seems  about  to  succumb  to  the 
new  enlightenment. 
The  extermination  of  tuberculosis  is  within  hailing  distance. 
And  so  on  through  the  whole  catalogue  of  ills  that  plagued  the 
people,  unrestrained,  less  than  thirty  years  ago. 
The  transcendental  discovery  by  Dr.  Koch,  that  has  made 
possible  all  of  these  Avonders  and  many  others  beside  and  others 
yet  to  come,  is  the  simple  fact  that  microscopic  organisms  grow 
