IV.
INTERNAL MEDICINES.
While considerable latitude may be extended, as mentioned last week, in the ethical requirements, to articles designed for purely external use, such exemption can not be applied to medicinal agents or preparations for internal administration. While it may be broadly asserted concerning every method of medication, oral, subcutaneous or orificial, that the therapeutic effect derived from a remedy depends as largely on the quantity of the particular agent that may "reach the spot" as it does on the amount of the medicine administered, yet for the general therapeutic purposes indicated by preparations for external use, the actual amount of the active agent applied is as a rule of but little consequence compared with the quantity given as a dose of any internal medicine. The only safe rule, therefore, governing the administration of medicine for internal use, is that the composition must be known, and the quantities of