You reject empirical methods as being unscientific notwithstanding the fact that most of our therapeutic knowledge is based on empiricism. (I use the terms empirical and empiricism here in the sense of knowledge obtained from experience and observation, not in the bad sense in which they might be construed.) It would therefore be folly on my part to argue with you that I have obtained beneficial results from amorphous phosphorus in many cases of senile arteriosclerosis. I did not obtain such results from a single dose, but gave it in some cases for many weeks or months. It is unfair to judge of the value of a drug from a single dose or several doses unless it is a drug which is expected to show immediate effects. It would be greater folly on my part to pit my knowledge of pharmacy and chemistry against the knowledge of your staff of experts. I can but repeat what I have said on many occasions that under the persistent use of amorphous phosphorus in cases of senile arteriosclerosis symptoms were frequently relieved. I never claimed that amorphous phosphorus will cure arteriosclerosis. In the chapter on Arteriosclerosis in my book I say: “Senile arteriosclerosis being a natural, normal condition, is incurable in the sense that it can be neither prevented nor removed. The best that we can hope for is to retard its progress and relieve disagreeable symptoms, etc.”
You say in reference to the elimination of the amorphous phosphorus as amorphous phosphate of calcium, “Is it not a fact that he (I) found the urine alkaline and detected a precipitate of amorphous calcium phosphate—always present in alkaline urine—and concluded that this must be his particular amorphous phosphorus in combination with calcium?” No. The specimens of urine were examined in reliable laboratories and I have reports showing acid and neutral urine as well as alkaline urine having the amorphous phosphate precipitate. Nor is the amorphous phosphate “always present in alkaline urine.”
As for the theory I advanced, it is simply a theory based on reasoning without facts to prove it. If I had facts to prove it, it would no longer be a theory or open for discussion. Being a theory, it is the province of the wise man to ridicule it and call it absurd. I will confess that your criticism of it is not clear to me and I still do not see its absurdity. I don’t see what relation your argument, that the phosphates of sodium and potassium do not draw the calcium from the blood, brains and bones, has to the theory I advanced. It is true that I have no private mark by which I can identify the amorphous phosphate produced by amorphous phosphorus, but such argument is puerile. When medical science has so far progressed that the physician will be able to put his tag on the molecule of drug substance and follow it through the various metabolic processes to its final elimination we will not need any Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry to decry what it cannot understand. Let me say here that scientific criticism does not stoop to ridicule for ridicule is usually based on animus or bias.
The conclusive proof of the value of a drug is not its action on the healthy dog, frog or guinea-pig but its action on the individual patient, and no amount of animal experimentation can dispose of the personal factor which is so marked in senile cases. This is no criticism of animal experimentation as a whole but of the insistence on animal experimentation to determine the value of a drug in a class of cases for which the healthy animal can furnish no comparison.
You say amorphous phosphorus is practically inert and quote Noé, Witthaus and Becker, Thornton and Phillips. The quotations of the first three are little more than statements that amorphous phosphorus is non-toxic. Phillips makes two references, one of which is to Badner who obtained decided effects from its prolonged use. Thornton, whom you quote in your contention that amorphous phosphorus is inert, says that on prolonged use in doses of 3⁄10 grains every two hours it produced headache, vertigo, mental excitement, priapism, etc. (See footnote under Phosphorus, U. S. Dispensatory). Shoemaker’s Materia Medica and Therapeutics says it is toxic and is called the servant-girl’s poison. Phillips suggested that Badner probably used an impure drug. I suggested that Thornton probably used an impure drug. On the other hand, Badner and Thornton obtained positive results from prolonged use, not from the single dose.
You say it has not been used on account of its insolubility in any of the liquids of the body. Roscoe and Schorlemmer, quoting Neuman, said if injected into the blood the usual symptoms of phosphorus poisoning appear. In a letter from Dr. Hatcher he says Nassé injected 0.2 gm. of the purest amorphous phosphorus into a rabbit’s vein and the animal presented the usual symptoms of phosphorus poisoning. There are also references to amorphous phosphorus action in Kobert’s Lehrbuch der Intoxicationen, in Blythe’s Poisons, etc.
You say of your four quotations, “the foregoing represents our scientific knowledge as to the action of amorphous phosphorus.” Did you not know of these other authorities, or are their statements unscientific, or were they omitted because they disprove your contention that amorphous phosphorus is practically inert?
Your denunciation of ordinary phosphorus has no bearing on the subject as I do not recommend the amorphous phosphorus as a substitute for the other.
I have worked for eight years to arouse medical and public interest in the aged and their ailments and I cannot afford charges of commercialism, foisting worthless drugs as aphrodisiacs or other unethical conduct to stand against me. As for the charge of unscientific work, I can only point to my work on Diseases of Old Age, and my medical papers, and express the hope that others better equipped for laboratory research will take up the laboratory investigation of amorphous phosphorus. I have faith in its therapeutic value and believe competent clinical observers will have favorable results from it in suitable cases.