1905

Founding of Interurban Clinical Club, with 24 members chosen by Osler just before he left for Oxford (Aub & Hapgood, 39-40). Establishment of AMA Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry, which published the handbook New and Nonofficial Remedies (1907), a response to fact that half of all prescriptions were for unregulated proprietary remedies; it was reviewed by Edsall in JAMA in November, 1910 (42-45). The Council was the institutional embodiment of the program for a rational therapeutics, according to which the mechanisms of action of therapeutic agents “were scientifically established prior to their introduction into clinical practice” (Marks, 21-22; Weisz et al., 701). It analyzed chemical identity of commercial products; undertook animal experimentation; and assessed available clinical data via a staff of clinical consultants (32ff.). Passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, “merely authorized the Bureau of Chemistry to seize ‘adulterated’ or ‘misbranded’ products” and, as interpreted by the courts, required that the bureau demonstrate “not merely the falsity of a manufacturer’s claims but that he knew the claims to be false” (Marks, 74-75). Without Council approval, drugs could not be advertised in JAMA or other cooperating medical journals (Marks II, 54).