GENERAL DIRECTIONS 195
they
deemed suitable, and with one exception none of them ever asked a scientific
opinion from me as to their procedure. More than once the one firm with whom,
through their European manager, I was long in constant communication, declined
to put out still stronger injections, until some physician should ask for them.
That is to say, like the writer, they preferred to place the responsibility
upon the shoulders of the physicians in charge. When, therefore, for example,
Dr. P. Tetens Hald,* referring to one of the Fairchild preparations, says,
“This solution is of the same strength as the special injection’ recommended by
Beard,” this recommendation” must be understood as given because the high
reputation of the firm of Fairchild Brothers and Foster was a guarantee that
all their preparations were reliable and scientifically prepared, and not
because, in my scientific opinion, they were at that time the best possible
preparations ideally for use in either absolute or relative strengths. I knew
of no better ones on the market—indeed, for a very long time, of none as good;
and, in addition to other advantages, they had for my purposes the very great
recommendation that through agents they could be obtained in almost every part
of the world, at the Cape, in Australia, India, Italy, Spain, etc. Thus, no
single correspondent had to be told that reliable injections of trypsin and of
amylopsin were out of his reach. Moreover, these injections had active ferment
powers in whatever part of the world they happened to be purchased, a thing
which cannot be said of certain other injections.
The time has now arrived when it is the writer’s duty
* Hald, P. Tetens: “Comparative Researches on the Tryptic
Strengths of Different Trypsin Preparations, and on their Action on the Human
Body,” in the Lancet (November 16, 1907, pp. 1371-1375).