THE PLACE OF PHARMACOLOGY IN MEDICINE.CHAIRMAN'S ADDRESS BEFORE THE SECTION ON PHARMACOLOGY AND THERAPEUTICS AT THE FIFTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL SESSION, ATLANTIC CITY, JUNE, 1907.

Abstract

The medical instinct, the impulse to relieve the distress of the sick, is as old as the human race; indeed, it is even older, for we find also among the lower animals positive evidences of attempts to alleviate the sufferings of themselves or their offspring. One of the most noteworthy features of these primordial medical efforts is the almost universal solitude of the remedial agents employed. Thus, the dog finds in grass his complete panacea; the precivilized man, with his strong religious instinct, essayed to cure all ills by incantations and exorcism. In other words, there was no separation of different kinds of suffering; diagnosis was undreamed of, pathology but a fancy, the whole of medicine was therapeutics. The powers of observing and of recording his experience, characteristic of the human animal, taught man to differentiate between various forms of disease, and thus gradually was developed diagnosis and pathology, but