GENERAL DIRECTIONS
199
when
pancreatin and trypsin are described as substances of equal value,* and how
shall we gauge the action of pancreatin and trypsin ampullae whose mode of
preparation and whose composition is not mentioned in the original paper,
neither is there any mention made of their sterility or the method by which
they have been sterilized? We need not wonder, then, to find that one author
has never seen local inflammation follow the injection, while another reports
severe local irritant effects. So long as the solutions of pancreatin and
trypsin are treated as secret remedies no one will be able to form a clear
picture of the value of trypsin treatment from the many publications which have
appeared.”
6. If the foregoing citation be read carefully,
and its meaning appreciated, the reader will be prepared for what follows. The
writer has never made up, or offered for sale, injections of either trypsin or
amylopsin. In laying down, as I am about to do, certain strengths and doses of
trypsin and of amylopsin as normal ones, which in the discretion of the
physician may be exceeded on occasion, if used in the same invariable
proportions, I also state how, in my scientific opinion, these should be assayed—that
is, “standardized.” The physician must satisfy himself that all this has been
done, and he must not ask any guarantee from the scientific investigator for
any preparation to which he has not placed his name as a pledge of its true
character. If the physician should
* The
following passage occurs in a recent letter from one who knows thoroughly what
he is writing about: “ Even at this day, by the way, there is a ‘trypsin’ (so
labeled) on the market which is practically identical with the products sold as
pancreatin from the same source; the only way they differ is in the name— the
label. Equally, there are products sold as amylopsin which differ from the
preparations sold as pancreatin only in name.”