THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
SECOND SERIES. 
YOL. IX.—No. VIII.—FEBRUARY, 1868. 
“PRESCRIPTIONS CAREFULLY PREPARED.” 
This is perhaps the highest promise held out by a pharmaceutist to the public ; 
the promise to perform with skill, accuracy, and honesty, the duties delegated 
to him for the alleviation of human suffering ; a promise the faithful perform¬ 
ance of which connects him with a high and honourable profession, and entitles 
him to remuneration over and above the commercial value of the substances 
he dispenses, because it cannot be performed without a previous educational 
training beyond that which is necessar}’- for the exercise of a mere trade. It is 
skilled labour of a high class. Skilled labour may be required in the regula¬ 
tion of mechanical operations only ; nay, so imperatively required that a want 
of it would endanger the lives of hundreds of our fellow-creatures, as in the 
application of steam power. The driver of an engine knows what force is 
necessary to do certain work in a given time, but on his engine he has valves 
and gauges to demonstrate at once whether he is working below, up to, or be¬ 
yond the line of safety ; his table of instruction is, as it were, always before him. 
In dealing with the eccentric bodies brought together in the compounding of 
medicines, the knowledge required is of a more recondite character, and there 
skill in manipulation must be accompanied by an acquaintance with, and an 
appreciation of, actions not tabulated immediately before one’s eyes, nor regu¬ 
lated by taps always within reach. 
We are led to this subject just now by certain observations which were made 
in the pages of the 4 Lancet ’ of the 14tli of December, headed, “ Prescriptions 
carefully prepared,” in which the writer says, “ Now there are many circum¬ 
stances which lead us to think that druggists, as a body, are not so careful in pre¬ 
paring prescriptions as they shoidd he. For example, we believe that if the same 
prescription were made up on the same day at twelve different chemists’ shops 
between the Marble Arch or Charing Cross and Mile End, not more than three 
of the resulting mixtures would correspond , unless the most commonplace drugs 
had been ordered .” 
In the interest of pharmacy we put this forward as a question for the indi¬ 
vidual consideration of every dispenser, and if the fact be as the writer states, 
we ask, Why is it so? Is the promise of care and attention, in some way or 
other printed and issued by almost all chemists, a mere bit of clap-trap, no 
more representing a fact than the symbols ordinarily do on their show-bottles? 
We who have laboured for a quarter of a century to advance pharmacy in this 
country by insisting on an educational qualification in those who practise it, 
and have always observed that our contemporary—the ‘ Lancet ’—has been with 
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