Among other American medical men who advanced their science in the past were James Marion Sims (1813-1883) and Thomas Emmet, who acquired wide fame for successful methods of operating in obstetric diseases. William Beaumont (1785-1853) investigated the offices of the gastric juice and devised treatment for digestive troubles. John Shaw Billings served his profession by compiling, with the assistance of Robert Fletcher, an Index Catalogue of the Surgeon General's library, Washington.
Pharmacology is as old as medicine. The medicinal qualities of herbs, roots, and gums were known to primitive man. There have been herbalists and druggists in all important communities at all times. Scientific pharmacology, however, is just as new as modern medicine. Cordus published a pharmacopœia, which listed drugs in use in 1535. Since that time many such works have appeared. The second of the Monros of Edinburgh University Medical School, Magendie, and Claude Bernard placed pharmacy upon a scientific basis. They followed scientific methods used by Fontana in Florence in 1765 in studying the effects of snake poisons. Pareira's "Elements of Materia Medica" was the leading textbook in 1842. This work gave very brief accounts of the physiological effects of drugs. The physiological values were not properly appreciated until about twenty years later.
Drugs are now scientifically classified and prepared, the full resources of science being used in their manufacture. American chemists have invented machinery and methods of preparing new drugs. Citrate of magnesia was invented by Henry Blair, of Philadelphia. Many other valuable remedies came from his laboratory, including sirup of phosphates.
Among the most marvelous scientific developments of the nineteenth century those in the electrical field claim universal attention. It was only as recently as 1844 that Morse introduced electric telegraphy. The telephone was introduced by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 and Edison built one of his early dynamos in 1878 and in 1879 made his first high resistance incandescent lamp for parallel operation. The first Edison power and lighting station was opened at 257 Pearl Street, New York City, in 1882.
Although electrical phenomena were understood in a general way thousands of years ago, they were not studied and applied to practical purposes until the sixteenth century when William Gilbert carried out his classical experiments in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The Leyden jar was discovered in the early half of the eighteenth century. From experiments carried out with these jars a great number of important inventions were derived and our knowledge of electricity was for many years dependent upon researches of this kind. Benjamin Franklin in experimenting with the Leyden jar found that its electrical discharges were similar to those of lightning and he subsequently discovered that the inner part of the jar, when charged with a frictional current, was positively electrical while the outer portion was negative.