Galen took a very great interest in everything relating to the subject of drugs, and sometimes made long journeys for the purpose of securing certain plants or roots which he was unable to procure near home or which he was very anxious to obtain in a more perfect condition than was possible when they were purchased from the regular dealers. “Simple remedies,” he declared, “are pure and unadulterated, and produce effects in only one direction. It is the business of pharmacology to combine drugs in such a manner--according to their elementary qualities of heat, cold, moistness and dryness--as shall render them effective in combating or overcoming the conditions which exist in the different diseases.” Galen’s interest in pharmacology materially aided the advance of medical science in other ways. He systematized the existing knowledge of materia medica and infused some measure of orderliness into the therapeutics of his day. The success of his efforts in this direction did not become manifest until after he had been dead about fifty years; but, if his ideas were slow in meeting with general acceptance, they took such deep root in the minds of physicians that to-day in Persia Galen’s system of therapeutics is the only one generally received as authoritative. Although the facts do not warrant our making the same statement with regard to Western and Southern Europe, it is nevertheless true that our dispensatories still continue to honor the memory of this great physician by bestowing the name of “Galenical Preparations” on a large group of pharmaceutical combinations.