762  Value  of  Drugs  in  Internal  Medicine,  j  AmN0°v  r'i92iarm' 
COMPLEXITY  OF  CHEMICAL  PROCESSES. 
Man's  body  is  the  most  marvelous  chemical  laboratory  in  the 
world,  a  laboratory  made  up  of  several  thousand  billions  of  separate 
work  rooms,  in  each  of  which  the  amount  and  kinds  of  work  done 
differ  somewhat  from  those  in  each  of  the  others.  No  two  liver 
cells,  probably,  are  precisely  alike  in  their  chemical  activities.  In  a 
single  mucous  membrane,  the  chemistry  of  the  constituent  gland  cells 
differs  markedly  from  the  chemistry  of  the  constituent  nerve  cells, 
connective  tissue  cells  and  smooth  muscle  cells.  Within  the  chan- 
nels of  communication  that  carry  fluids  and  solids  about  the  great 
laboratory  from  work  room  to  work  room,  chemical  changes  are 
constantly  going  on  in  the  transported  materials.  Even  the  walls, 
the  beams  and  the  furniture  of  the  billions  of  work  rooms  are  them- 
selves constantly  undergoing  chemical  change.  We  are  awed  enough 
by  the  complexity  of  the  chemical  processes  that  go  on  in  health; 
but  let  us  not  forget  that  in  the  diseased  body,  which  is  the  province 
of  the  pharmacotherapist,  this  complexity  becomes  manifold.  Into 
this  apparently  infinite  welter  of  chemical  transformations  (though, 
in  reality,  orderly  and  ultimately  knowable)  goes  the  drug  that  the 
physician  administers  in  the  hope  of  curing,  regulating  or  ameliorat- 
ing. Its  administration  surely  signifies  courage  on  the  part  of  the 
physician  who  has  such  a  conception  of  the  body's  chemistry.  The 
task  he  attempts  is  truly  Promethean.  Is  it  not  to  try  "to  defy 
Power,  which  seems  omnipotent?" 
THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  PHARMACOTHERAPY. 
Man's  needs  have  been  so  urgent,  however,  that  medical  men 
everywhere,  and  at  all  times,  have  not  hesitated  to  defy  powers  when 
they  seemed  malevolent ;  and  drug  therapy  has,  despite  its  besetting 
difficulties,  become  one  of  the  successful  methods  by  which  medicine 
"folds  over  the  world  its  healing  wings." 
The  clinical  experience  of  the  centuries  slowly  supplied  an  im- 
portant body  of  facts  regarding  the  nature  of  disease  and  man's 
power  to  control  it,  but  the  formation  of  true  guiding  principles  for 
pharmacotherapy  had  to  await  the  rise  of  modern  science.  More  of 
value  has  been  learned  regarding  rational  treatment  by  the  use  of 
drugs  in  the  last  fifty  years,  perhaps,  than  in  all  the  centuries  that 
preceded;  for,  during  the  last  fifty  years,  we  have  gained  entirely 
new  conceptions  of  the  nature  and  causes  of  disease. 
