186 
PRESCRIBERS AND DISPENSERS. 
It is the duty of the prescriber to make the instructions conveyed through 
the prescription as intelligible and easy of execution as possible. Every 
avoidable difficulty placed in the way of the dispenser may be compared to 
an obstruction or defect in a railway, caused by careless inattention, the 
effects of which may be visited upon helpless passengers, who would have 
just ground of complaint for such culpable conduct. 
Clearness of diction and legibility of writing are of course primary essentials 
in a prescription. Complaints have sometimes been made of want of attention 
to these requisites, and it must be admitted that a little more care in acquiring 
the habit of writing distinctly would be very desirable in some instances. 
But it is astonishing how much can be done by practice in learning to de¬ 
cipher writing which to the inexperienced would be unintelligible. We are 
far from thinking that there is any general ground for complaint on account 
of the writing of prescriptions, for it must be borne in mind that while it is 
the duty of the physician to write legibly, it is equally the duty of the dis¬ 
penser to become an expert in the power of reading bad writing. 
The language and the nomenclature adopted in prescriptions are, or ought 
to be, the result of conventional arrangement,—the necessity for the adoption, 
as far as possible, of uniformity in these respects being founded upon the ob¬ 
vious tendency of any deviation from such a practice to weaken the security 
of the patient by causing confusion and increasing the liability to accident. 
We should be sorry to see the use of Latin relinquished. It is a language 
the knowledge of which is acquired in all civilized countries, and it is well 
adapted for the abbreviated writing commonly used in prescriptions. The 
nomenclature should in every case be founded upon the type, whatever it 
ma} 7 - be, of that used in the Pharmacopoeia. Any show of scientific learning, 
by making the names of medicines to accord with modern theories, is an in¬ 
novation that would be out of place here. The primary consideration is the 
avoidance of ambiguity, and this is best effected by complete conventionality. 
The Pharmacopoeia is the first and principal guide for interpreting the 
terms of the prescription. Wherever it applies its authority is supreme, and 
it is the duty of prescribers and dispensers to follow it in all that it relates to 
as closely as possible. There is, happily, but one national Pharmacopoeia, 
•which supersedes all others in authority, and leaves no valid excuse for reject¬ 
ing or modifying the instructions contained in it. The physician will find 
here all the best established and most generally used medicines, more fully 
and correctly described than they have been in any other similar work. No 
slight fancy or mere prejudice should be allowed to interfere with the adoption 
in all cases of the only legally authorized standard for the maintenance of 
•uniformity and the prevention of confusion, uncertainty, and error. 
If, as sometimes occurs, it should be necessary to go beyond the con¬ 
fines of the Pharmacopoeia, in seeking some form of remedy not there indi¬ 
cated, it becomes most important to look well to the principles upon which 
the selection is made, and to the terms in which the remedy is prescribed. 
As a rule, it is inconsistent with the character of a learned and scientific pro¬ 
fession, such as that of medicine, to patronize or in any way to encourage the 
use of secret medicines or mere nostrums. There are exceptional cases in 
which experience has demonstrated the value of medicines the exact compo¬ 
sition or mode of production of which is not generally known, and these will 
sometimes be used with advantage, although it must always be regretted, in 
such cases, that science is deprived of the means of tracing effects to their in¬ 
ferred causes. In a liberal profession the greatest openness is expected, and 
there is no profession in which a greater amount of liberality or less of 
selfishness is manifested than that to which we are referring. 
Medicines that are not included in the Pharmacopoeia, when ordered in 
