newer Eclectic pharmacy and most employed by Eclectic practitioners, held the field which they conquered for Eclecticism. If the reports that are voluntarily recorded by physicians outside the Eclectic school are criteria, these medicines are likely to supersede some of the most approved other forms of galenicals now in general use. As might have been anticipated, the condemnation of certain drugs of Eclectic introduction by certain pharmacologists, who are not practitioners of medicine, based only upon physiologic and pharmacologic experimentation upon animals, has had the salutary effect of disseminating a better knowledge of these medicines, which upon use have revealed their actual worth in clinical tests. The clinician, we hold, is best qualified to know whether he gets results in human illness from the medicines administered, and it is significant of the worth of such medicines as cactus, echinacea, cratægus, etc., that they now occupy a leading rank in the remedial equipment of bedside physicians, even if not capable of producing medicinal shock in animals-both cold and warmblooded.

In a list of vegetable drugs used, recently published, the medicines taking the leading rank with the reporters, old and wellknown pharmacopoeial products and preparations are conspicuous by their absence, and the preference lay with those remedies mostly employed in Eclectic practice. It is significant of the demands of the times, and better far would it be if some of the pharmacopoeial encumberers, little used by any physicians, would give place to agents most in demand and more generally employed. In the reports referred to we note that echinacea (declared inert by the "Council") leads the list by one-third in frequency of employment. Cactus, condemned as worthless (pharmacologically), occupies the ninth rank. As a matter of drug history and Eclectic progress, as well as an earnest of broad liberality and therapeutic intelligence by physicians in general, permit us to name the first twenty-five drugs of the list, in the order of frequency of use, of Eclectic drugs of vegetable origin, as reported by practitioners not of the Eclectic school, who freely give Eclecticism credit for their conspicuity:

Echinacea, aconite, macrotys, bryonia, gelsemium, pulsatilla, veratrum, belladonna, cactus, apocynum, chionanthus, thuja, nux vomica, phytolacca, digitalis, hydrastis, lobelia, dioscorea, ipecac, rhus tox, baptisia, collinsonia, cratægus, asclepias, and apis.

AMONG THE ECLECTIC EDITORS.

System Essential in Therapeutic Study.-"Until the methods of surgery became the dominant influence in the profession, every physician believed that he was practicing medicine in order that he might cure his patients when they were sick. The conspicuous belief, that on which his whole faith was pinned, was that he could cure a man with medicine. It is surprising how much has been said in the past two decades to the effect that medicine is a non-essential, and that there is nothing for internal use upon which our faith can be securely fastened.

"Throughout the entire history of the application of drugs, by the dominant school of medicine-the Regulars-there has been no science whatever applied; no systematic course has been adopted; no strict, underlying principle, either of disease action or of exact drug application, has been adopted. Science, science, science has been the cry all the time, and yet the most unscientific methods in drug application the world has ever known, methods comparable with those of the Dark Ages, have been adopted.

"It is not necessary to state that it is generally openly acknowledged that the study of Materia Medica and Therapeutics, up to the present time, has been grossly neglected. The work done in surgery has been exceedingly important; the results accomplished in bacteriology, microscopy, pathology and in the origin and prevention of disease have never been surpassed. But for this advancement the most important branch of the whole materia medica has rapidly lost ground.

"It seems to be as clear as day to those of us who study therapeutics that the practice of medicine as a profession has no right to an existence if it does not consider the means by which the sick are relieved, are restored to health, and by which disease is overcome. Every possible disadvantage follows the lack of a thorough, persistent, and systematic study of drug action. In this branch the energy has been expended on the so-called scientific branches. Energy should now be concentrated on this, but it should be done in the most systematic lines. Mechanotherapy, psychic therapeutics, physio therapeutics, in all its branches and with all it includes, are not auxiliary branches only, but they are not really great, as compared with the real subject matter of true internal medicine.

"For the correct study, and for an exact scientific knowledge of this whole subject, a system is demanded-a correct, exact, rational, scientific system, based upon correct underlying processes, and developed by exact study and correct methods. This system must include in a correctly adjusted manner all other methods, each in its exact place, using each only where exactly and correctly indicated, and giving drugs full place in therapeutics, especially the rational organic

remedies that act in perfect harmony with the normal processes of the body. This we are working for. This, developed, is our system." -Ellingwood, The Eclectic Review, November, 1911.

"The Opinion (Not the Drug) is Worthless."-"Just now the pharmaceutical and the medical professions of America are undergoing a revolution in the line of ideals, ideas, opinions, authorities and other what-nots, that either wedge in from the outside, or rise up from within. Men not in the least concerned in pharmacy, at least men not very proficient in practical pharmacy, freely ventilate their opinions in directions where those fairly qualified, by a lifetime of experience, hesitate to intrude. Men without any education in the direction of practical medicine presume to discredit physicians who have given lifetimes of conscientious study in the direction of disease diagnosis and disease cures. Comes, now and then, one who even asserts that all physicians are needless, and that humanity thrives best without a doctor. From the opposite, ultra-scientific direction, comes, next, a not less nihilistic personage who asserts that because a physician who practices medicine clinically may not be able to demonstrate the manner of operation of the remedies he employs by means of the test-tube or other laboratory apparatus, he is incompetent to judge of the therapeutic action of his remedies, and need not, therefore, be considered competent to prescribe for a disease. Turning in other directions, we meet very dogmatic parties, who have never practiced either pharmacy or medicine, who have no clinical experience, whose knowledge of therapy, and of remedial action as well, is based upon the reading of books far separated from pharmacy or medicine, but who yet are accepted, by some persons, as great "authorities." In still other directions we see the men who stand over a dumb creature afflicted (or undisturbed) by something injected into its veins. These observers, likewise, we find not at present disposed to resist the implication that they are to be considered as the only "authority" on medication in disease of the human family.

"Having considered the problem from these and other viewpoints, and having given to each his share of credit, for, notwithstanding the many fallacies, all have some good points, the question arises, Who in the end will stand the test, when time in its crucible shall fry out fact from fiction?

"Turn now to the heading of this editorial. Then read the article of Dr. Solomon Solis Cohen in the New York Medical Journal, May 7, 1910, in which occurs the following passage:

"Whose opinion as to the value of drugs is to rule the convention (Pharmacopeial) and the Committee of Revision? Is it to be Osler's opinion? Is it to be my opinion? Is it to be the opinion of any one here present? Is it to be the opinion of any one of the thousands of physicians not here present? Or is it to be the opinion of all physicians together?'

"Dr. Cohen is exceptionally fair to all interests that converge in the direction of balanced pharmacy and balanced medication. This

we know, and we admire him not the less by reason of our knowledge of the fact that he earnestly resists one phase of the problem in which we sincerely believe, namely, the necessity of sects (sections) in medicine. As we review sentences connected with that above quoted, in the journal cited, we note how earnestly, but yet how discretely, he bespeaks the value of balanced pharmacological research, and how candidly he denies that this class of persons should be considered as 'authorities,' in directions where they are not qualified. Dr. Cohen first asks the question, a broad one, too:

"Whose opinion as to the value of drugs is to rule the convention (Pharmacopeial), and the Committee of Revision?'

"This he answers, as concerns laboratory people, as follows:

"Surely it is not to be the opinion of those pharmacologists whose experience has been confined to the laboratory and to healthy animals? The value of pharmacological research is indisputable. It is of great weight, but it is not conclusive.'

"Comes next the unexpected, where the doctor unites his efforts with the practicing physician who knows how to accomplish a clinical object, taking as an example the physiologically 'discredited by (vivisection) authority' drug, cactus. Listen to what Dr. Cohen says in

this direction:

""Thus the Journal of the American Medical Association has published several articles to prove that cactus is pharmacologically inert; and some of them strongly imply that physicians who report good results from its use are unworthy of credence. Nevertheless I am neither afraid nor ashamed to appear in such excellent company as that of Dr. Roland G. Curtin, of Philadelphia, in support of the high clinical value of cactus, when a good preparation is properly used, in suitable cases.'

For

"But in it all the 'milk in the cocoanut' lies in what follows. here the doctor calls attention to the fact that a preparation, to be serviceable, must be properly used; that the case must be suitable, and that the remedy must be unimpeachable. These three axioms, that have been the sum and substance of Eclectic crusade for generations, are tersely, and happily, put by him as follows:

"Here is the point-a good preparation, properly used, in suitable cases. One who has not used a good preparation of a drug under discussion; or has not used it properly; or has prescribed it in a case for which it is not suitable; or one who has never used it clinically at all, is not in position to dogmatize as to its value. He may properly criticise, suggest, demand evidence. But he can not properly condemn in the face of competent evidence in its favor; and it is the opinion, and not the drug, that in such a case is to be considered worthlessor at least needs to have its 'value established.'

"The selection of the remedy he is discussing in the above quotation (cactus), illustrates strongly Dr. Cohen's independence in the face of recognized 'authority,' which, in this instance, he does not

accept as conclusive authority. The drug named is one in which the Eclectic physicians have every confidence, although it will not, as a primary test, kill a dog, nor is it in the least destructive to the life of a healthy creature. Dr. Cohen's championship of its value, in the face of adverse animal experimentation, is therefore unexpectedly refreshing.

"In our opinion, a statement from Dr. Cohen concerning the effect that emanates from a remedy that he knows how to handle in a disease that he has properly diagnosed, with a preparation that is unquestionably authentic, will unquestionably bear more weight with the profession at large, than the sum total of the statements of parties of little faith, occupied with laboratory work, far removed from the diseases under discussion, intent though they be in observing the primary action of drugs, in cases that do not parallel disease conditions of the human being.

"And yet, while Dr. Cohen thus highly commends the value of cactus in the hands of qualified physicians, and bespeaks its efficacy in relieving the patients to whom it is properly administered, we believe he will not deny that the vivisectionists (sometimes called 'pharmacologists') should be credited with what they have proven. They have demonstrated that cactus has not, under their experimentations, killed a well dog, paralyzed the heart of a live frog, or unduly affected the heart of a normal rabbit, and for this, and this only, they should be fully credited."-Lloyd, Eclectic Medical Journal. 1911.

"The Department of Health.-The Journal of the American Medical Association is continually and eternally calling for a Department of Health; says that Senator Owen is the originator of the scheme, and is solely and only to blame, and then eternally disclaims that the American Association is not a 'trust' and its methods pure, unselfish, and holy. In other words, they are 'It,' all others are wrong, and ought not to be considered in any way; have no rights, and should be eternally damned.

"Is Senator Owen the originator? The beginning of the scheme is not so ancient that men's memories have failed them. It hardly sounds plausible to any one that a layman would write such a bill and ask for the department to have the right to standardize drugs. The original bill contained too many such schemes to have been written by a layman unassisted. But let us see if the appellation 'trust' does not fit the 'American Medical Association.' A 'trust' is a combination to regulate the supply and price of commodities. Does the A. M. A. do this?

"1. They are now and have been for years, by innuendoes and appeals to Legislatures and the daily press, attempting to reflect upon the standing of colleges and men who do not come up to their preconceived ideas of medicine, whether these men believe as they do or not. Unfortunately their inspections and reports are not always true and just.