Many years ago it was written that, "A skilful physician will never rely on the curative virtues of medicines unless he has procured them in the most pure and perfect state," an injunction that was hardly necessary unless there was a suspicion in the writer's mind that medicines were not always in this desirable condition. The late Dr. Bigelow was perhaps of the same opinion, when he wrote, "There is perhaps no branch of commerce in which names are substituted for realities with more success than in the commerce of drugs." * The importance of attention to the quality of drugs cannot be easily overestimated; and we should recollect, when certain effects are asserted to follow the employment of certain drugs, that failure to obtain these effects may be due to the causes suggested. "We may rest assured that "names" will not prove useful substitutes for "realities." It is fully as important, that, having good drugs the physician should know how to use them. In the case of drugs with the use of which he is not familiar, it is certainly wise to consult every accessible work of reference in order that before prescribing them he may obtain the fullest possible acquaintance with their effects. Mr. Erasmus Wilson has expressed these ideas so forcibly that I shall quote him as follows: "I wish it were unnecessary to add as a caution that the material of our remedies must be of the very purest kind, and that where this is not the case, we may be defeated in our object, and, with loss of reputation to ourselves, lose faith in our remedies and lose faith in our faith. On the other hand it must be admitted that we may sometimes fail with the most excellent materials for the want of a sufficient familiarity with their use. I will venture to relieve the prosaic weariness of a lengthened detail by the narration of a couple of anecdotes, which convey a moral bearing on the subject before us. A wealthy merchant who knew the value of material, but had little conception of the genius requisite for its manipulation, gave a commission to an artist of eminence to paint him a picture: price was no object - the fee, to use a technical term, was enormous; but - for there was a but, and to this but the merchant found some difficulty in giving utterance - 'But, sir,' he said, 'may I rely upon your honor that you will employ none but superfine colors?' The other anecdote is probably quite as generally known, but, like the former, conveys an appropriate lesson. An amateur artist had been gazing with admiration for a long time at the splendid results of the brush of one of our famous painters. At length, inspired by enthusiasm, he ventured to ask a question which was nearest to his heart, and embodied, as he believed, the secret of his own prospective success. 'And may I, sir,' he inquired, 'humbly ask you with what you mix your colors?' to which, as you may be aware, the answer was thundered out, 'With brains, sir; with brains.' Now, in the treatment of diseases of the skin, we must endeavor, firstly, to secure for our patients 'superfine materials,' and, secondly, we must employ them with 'brains.'" (78, 71.)

* A Treatise on the Materia Medica, etc., Boston, 1822.