30 Kmisas Academy of Science. 



or calomel and jalap, were for the first time put together, he who should 

 do it, whether regular practitioner or quack, would not be an inventor or 

 discoverer under the law. If done by a physician, it would be only the ex- 

 ercise of ordinary professional skill. If by another, it would be but an 

 ignorant jumble of things having supposed virtues and benefits to be ob- 

 tained by the union of known drugs." 



In the issue of January 13, 1910, the editor of the official organ 

 of the National Association of Retail Druggists thus classified 

 medicinal preparations: 



1. Ethical preparations. 



2. Druggists' own-make preparations. 



3. Proprietaries. 



4. Nostrums. 



5. Fakes. 



According to the editor, an ''ethical preparation" is one "whose 

 entire composition is known, and can be prepared by any capable 

 pharmacist"; the "druggists' own-make preparations" are those 

 "common domestic remedies which almost every druggist prepares 

 for himself to meet a popular demand"; the "proprietaries," er- 

 roneously called patents, are such as have, through merit, and by 

 the price protecting efforts of their manufacturers, become a recog- 

 nized article of merchandise in most drug stores"; the "nostrums" 

 are those "secret and semisecret mixtures, either with or without 

 coined names, about whose virtues such extravagant claims are 

 generally made to the members of the medical profession or to the 

 public"; the "fakes" include such compounds "as are intended 

 more to defraud the public than anything else." 



Doctor Stewart says: 



When it is considered that the same preparation may belong to any ore 

 of these classes, and that some of the so-called "ethical preparations" of 

 the Pharmacopoeia were originally introduced as secret nostrums, it is at 

 once apparent that this classification is faulty, because misleading. The 

 question is in fact one of advertising. By advertising in this connection we 

 mean recommending, whether such recommendation be spoken or printed 

 on a label or published in a newspaper. 



Judge McFarland, of Pennsylvania, in his decision in the case 

 of the Dr. Miles Medical Company vs. The May Drug Company, 

 brings out the legal attitude toward these preparations, in speaking 

 of them as a method of prescribing at long range without diagnosis. 

 He says : 



We do not need to be told by medical authority — our own knowledge in- 

 forms us— that not only a careful examination, but great skill is needed, for 

 example, to detect the numerous valvular and other diseases of the heart. 



