Abstract
IN the fifth Stephen Paget Memorial Lecture before the Research Defence Society (Quart. Jour. Research Defence Soc. summer issue), Dr. H. H. Dale gave some examples of the effect of research on curative medicine. After referring to the founder of the Society, in memory of whom the lecture was instituted, Dr. Dale pointed out the remarkable change which had come over therapeutics in the last thirty years. Not only have new drugs been introduced after experimental trial in the laboratory, but also the investigation of old drugs, found to be of use empirically, has resulted in explanations being obtained for their actions, so that they can be prescribed with confidence that they will be of value, rather than with the pessimism which feels that at any rate they will do no harm. Only passing reference need be made to insulin, salvarsan, ipecacuanha and emetine, as their therapeutic efficacy is so well known: but it might be pointed out that the experimental investigation of emetine led to the differentiation of the different dysenteries, for only one of which emetine is a remedy, and finally to the development of a method of cultivating the amœbæ in vitro, so that new substances likely to be of value in amœbic dysentery can now be tested first in the test-tube, without the use of experimental animals other than the amœbæ themselves.
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Science and Curative Medicine. Nature 128, 499 (1931). https://doi.org/10.1038/128499a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/128499a0