Intravenous medication, as the name indicates, is a direct, exact and efficacious method of administering medicine, and is employed quite extensively in medical practice with drugs of known and proven therapeutic value, also in an experimental way on animals. Not only is intravenous medication the most direct, but it is also well known that many patients are unable to take certain medicines when given orally, for example, salicylates, iodides, mercury and iron salts, which cause unpleasant

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... tive disturbances and form chemical compounds with the contents of the stomach, thereby entirely defeating the purpose for which the medicine is given. This coiistitutes one of the reasons why intravenous and hypodermatic forms of medication are holding such an important place in the practice of medicine to-day. One would be led to believe, from the knowledge of the extensive use of hypoderniatics, that these antedated intravenous medication. However, this is ii-ot the case, as intravenous injections of drugs were administered several centuries before medicines were given hypodermatically. If we consider the transfusion of blood under intravenous injcctions, then that procedure goes back to the remote antiquity. The Egyptians are said to have practised it. The earliest method of intravenous medication dates as far back as 1492, when it was recommended for the treatment of Pope Innocent VIII. If we confine ourselves strictly to the subject of the injection of drugs, the first experiment of that character was performed in England by Christopher Wren. Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, who first tried the bold experiment of injecting drugs into the veins of animals. In 1656 he injected opium and crocus mettalorum, using dogs as his subjects of experiment. His injection apparatus consisted of a quill attached to a small bladder, and not the hypodermic syringe, as we have to-day. The opium stupefied the dogs, but did not kill them ; while the crocus caused violent vomiting. It appears that a certain foreign ambassador at the court of St. James became interested in Wren's experiments and offered a delinquent servant of his as a subject for experiment. In 1662 J. D. Major, an English physician, and Escholtz made several successful injections on human beings. Altogether the experiments at this first and early period of intravenous injections were discouraging in their results, and for that reason the practice fell into disrepute, and was not revived until about the end of the eighteenth century. The reason for this was that the preparations were applied indiscriminately in all kinds of cases, and, perhaps, the preparations were not compounded properly. At the same time they paved the way to our present rational intravenous therapy based on careful pathologic, pharmacologic and chemical research, and to-day the drugs used for intravenous injection are increasing rapidly. The first injection to man was given by Wren in 1657. -~ _ _ _ _ _ _~. _ ~ __ -* Read before the Denver Branch, A. Ph. A.