760  Value  of  Drugs  in  Internal  Medicine.  \  ^^ov^im*™' 
the  proportion  of  0.5  c.  c.  to  2  c.  c.  of  human  blood  and  allowed  to 
stand  for  ten  minutes,  no  clumping  occurred,  and  when  centrifuged 
the  supernatant  plasma  showed  the  merest  trace  of  hemolysis.  These 
results  would  indicate  that  the  mercuric  suspension  is  probably  safe 
for  intravenous  medication. 
LITERATURE. 
1  Studies  upon  Leprosy,  xxviii,  per  Public  Health  Bulletin  No.  175,  Janu- 
ary, 1916.  pages  3-1 1,  Government  Printing  Office,  by  Geo.  W.  McCoy  and 
Harry  T.  Hollmann. 
2  Power  and  Gornall,  the  Constituents  of  Chaulmoogra  Seeds.  Joum. 
Chem.  Soc,  lxxxv,  page  838,  1904. 
3  Public  Health  Reports,  Vol.  29,  No.  22,  page  2763. 
4  Sudhamoy  Ghosh,  Report  of  a  Chemical  Investigation  of  Chaulmoogra 
Oil  in  Connection  with  Leprosy  Treatments.  Indian  Journal  Medical  Research, 
IV,  page  691  (1916). 
0  Paper  read  before  the  Medical  Section  of  the  Asiatic  Society  of  Bengal, 
March  12,  1919,  by  Sir  Leonard  Rogers. 
6The  Treatment  of  Leprosy.  Reprint  No.  607,  from  The  Public  Health 
Reports,  August  20,  1920,  pages  1959-1974. 
'  Compt.  Rend.,  1888,  107,  740. 
ABSTRACTED  AND  REPRINTED 
ARTICLES 
THE  VALUE  OF  DRUGS  IN  INTERNAL  MEDICINE.* 
By  Lewellys  F.  Barker,  M.  D.,  Baltimore. 
We  are  now  witnessing  a  cautious  revival  of  the  use  of  drugs 
in  the  treatment  of  disease.  During  the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  pharmacotherapy  fell  more  or  less  into  discredit,  owing  (1) 
to  a  reaction  against  the  scandalous  abuse  of  the  "shotgun  prescrip- 
tion," (2)  to  the  general  therapeutic  nihilism  that  followed  the  rise 
of  studies  in  pathologic  anatomy,  and  (3)  to  the  growing  recognition 
of  the  importance  of  forms  of  therapy  other  than  treatment  by 
drugs.  Though  in  some  quarters  the  denial  of  pharmacotherapy 
was  pushed  to  extremes,  it  is  now  generally  admitted  that  the  move- 
*Read  before  the  Section  on  Pharmacology  and  Therapeutics  at  the 
Seventy-Second  Annual  Session  of  the  American  Medical  Association,  Boston, 
June  21,  1921.   Reprinted  from  Jour.  Amer.  Med.  Assoc.,  October  8,  1921. 
