Mercks Archives PDF Download

Excerpt from Merck's Archives The knowledge we need concerning the nature of the various diseases and the true means of combating them can only be discovered in research laboratories. How many laboratories are there in America for the study of the effects of drugs ill health and disease? Where are the physical and biological laboratories for the study of the fundamental laws of life? Professor Rowland answers these pertinent questions in the following words: "We see a few miserable structures here and there occupied by a few starving professors, who are nobly striving to do the best with the feeble means at their disposal. But where in the world is the institute of pure research in any department of science with an income of $100,000,000 per year? Where can the discoverer in pure science earn more than the wages of a day laborer or cook? But $100,000,000 per year is but the price of an army or of a navy designed to kill other people. Just think of it, that 1 percent, of this sum seems to most people too great to save our children and descendants from misery and even death!" The public will tax themselves willingly to destroy life, but refuse to do anything toward saving life. Rich men spend fortunes to perpetuate their names in charities, in libraries, in monuments, in churches, and in colleges, but no one has thought far enough ahead to endow a therapeutic research laboratory. Legislatures vote the public funds in the line in which bequests usually go, but the people continue to suffer, because of public parsimony in the matter of medical research. While the doctor is blamed for the loss of a loved child, sister, wife, brother, or friend, the finger of science points to the accusers and the facts all cry out against each of them: "Thou art the man!" The people do not seem to be aware that they are neglecting their own interests in neglecting the interests of medical science; they seem to think that all possible knowledge is already in the hands of medical men, and if anything goes amiss it is the doctor's fault. If they could only be made to realize their own blameworthiness in not using their best efforts toward helping along medical research, what a blessing it would be both for them and the doctors! To-day the great bulk of therapeutic research is being conducted by private enterprise not in publicly endowed laboratories. We wish to know what remedy or combination of remedies will give the best results in a given disease. Since the matter has never been put to the test of experiment, a query on the subject only elicits a babel of opinions. We wish to obtain the serial order of a number of remedies belonging to a common class, in order to discover the relative degrees of excellence of each in doing the work of that class. For reply we receive as many different arrangements as there are men consulted. We ask how drugs act to produce the results we know they are capable of producing, and in the majority of instances but a theory is hazarded. The jungles of Africa, Asia and America remain unexplored, except in the most superficial manner for their probably innumerable healing alkaloids, glucosides, gums and oils. Let us have a National Therapeutic Society to strive to control extensive research laboratories, where the true value of drugs shall be determined and the proper methods of curing disease made clear. Let the members of such a society work for the realization in therapeutics of what Prof. Rowland hopes for in each department of science a large, well-supported plant with numerous well-paid, thoroughly trained investigators. Let them develop a public sentiment that will eventually result in the liberal endowment of such institutions, and so shower untold blessings upon unborn generations. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com