458 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. [December 3, 1870. 
*** Ab notice can be taken of anonymous communica¬ 
tions. Whatever is intended for insertion must be authenti¬ 
cated by the name and address of the writer ; not necessarily 
for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. 
Obscure Prescriptions. 
Sir,—Many—I think I may say the majority of your 
readers—will be pleased to see that in your Journal attention 
has been drawn to the slovenly method in which prescrip¬ 
tions are frequently written. Medical journals have for some 
time past been making editorial attacks upon dispensing 
chemists for high charges and for prescribing; but I think 
their attention might well be turned to a matter nearer home, 
viz. the present loose style of prescribing. I will put the 
question to any average dispenser, whether he is not con¬ 
tinually troubled by it. The prescription is frequently care¬ 
lessly written, often the terms are indefinite, and sometimes 
two or three pharmacopoeias are mixed up together, while 
the dispenser is all the time subject to the Pharmacy Act. 
He can, therefore, only dispense comfortably when he has 
neither conscience nor property; the absence of the first allow¬ 
ing him to keep what he considers self-respect, the want of 
the latter enabling him to defy attempts to recover penalties. 
I once lived in a surgery, and by excellent fortune was on 
very good terms with my master. After sending out 
“inf. calumb.” for “mist, camph.” several times, and by the 
law of average, vice versa, I was obliged to propose that after 
he had “written in” I should always read the entries over 
to him before dispensing. After that arrangement we got 
on pretty well together. It was no compliment to propose 
such conditions to him, but what was I to do ? 
Unfortunately dispensers in retail cannot do this, they 
must either hand back the prescription or make it up by 
guess. Of course, if they can afford to take the first course 
they will return the prescription; but suppose a man is 
“running up hill,” can he avoid the second? Why, he 
would at least be “ thought a fool,” and if he had an un¬ 
scrupulous brother-chemist, the honest man would be cut 
out. Honesty may be its own reward, but how about paying 
your bills ? 
Now how can all this petty distress be avoided ? I think 
by all chemists, when they have doubts about prescriptions, 
referring, if possible, to the prescriber, and when this is im¬ 
possible, declining to dispense by mere guess. If this rule 
was invariably carried out it would soon remedy bad writing 
so far as prescriptions go; the wealthy and needy would be 
on the same “platform.” Many will say to this proposal, 
“ What about the patient perishing for lack of physic ?” My 
reply is, does it differ much whether a man perishes for lack 
of physic, or is destroyed by having the wrong ? All respon¬ 
sibility on this point rests with the prescriber, who is amply 
paid for (in these cases) unfulfilled duties. 
M.P.S. by election. 
Brighton, November 26th, 1870. 
Sir,—I beg to thank you for the remarks made in support 
of my letter published in your Journal of the 12th instant. 
You were correct in supposing that the classical acquirements 
of the author of the prescriptions in question were a matter of 
but little interest to me. May I be permitted to advise that 
gentleman, if he wishes his prescriptions handed down to ad¬ 
miring posterity, in all their purity of true classical expres¬ 
sion, to write them in such a manner that the real termina¬ 
tions may be seen without the aid of a powerful microscope ! 
As the author appears to consider few of the readers of our 
Journal “respectable” enough for him to “condescend” to 
answer them with civility, perhaps he will think it less “infra 
dig. ” to give an explanation of his remarkable prescriptions 
in the columns of the Lancet or some other “respectable” 
medical journal. 
He also speculates in rather a sarcastic manner upon the 
amount of “lustre” I am likely to “shed” upon my “fra¬ 
ternity.” May I be permitted to ask him—with all due re¬ 
spect, and with a deep sense of my own ignorance and infe¬ 
riority if his prescriptions (classical though they may be) 
will bring him any very great amount of “honour” from the 
Members of the College to which he belongs ? 
E. J. B., Major Associate. 
Sir,—The thanks of chemists generally are due to you 
for your publication of Mr. W. Bradshaw’s prescription. 
It is a chef d’ceuvre of hieroglyphic art, and reflects the 
greatest honour on the profession of which its author is a 
member. 
There can be little doubt that when a being of such talent 
and renown (for who amongst us has not heard of Mr. Wat¬ 
son Bradshaw?) descends from the lofty eminence of naval 
surgeon to pity and relieve the bodily sufferings of poor mor¬ 
tals on earth, we should be careful how we offend his dignity 
by daring to question any word or deed of his, no matter 
how obtuse it may seem to our benighted senses. Nor should, 
we take the liberty of mentioning his great name in the same- 
breath with a posse of silly or angry druggists. Such is the 
tenour of his second letter, which, indicating an almost angelic 
serenity of temper, effectually exposes by contrast the silly 
squabbles that promoted its production. What business on 
earth has a druggist to speak? He has no professional 
wrongs; he is made expressly to execute the wishes of the 
doctor; in case of an accident to take all culpability from 
him and, if need be, to bear it himself. In this case it would 
seem that it is Mr. W. Bradshaw who suffers wrong and in¬ 
justice, as he mildly hints, because some silly and ignorant 
druggists—incapable of reading and dispensing prescriptions 
of his, couched in such concise and every-day terms, and 
written in such a legible and masterly style of caligraphy as 
the specimen published last week—have asked for an expla¬ 
nation of the terms used. Who can blame the ex-naval sur¬ 
geon for preferring druggists to whom he has imparted the 
key to his Euclid, the “open sesame” of his mysteries ? No 
doubt he does it from purely disinterested motives. But if it 
cannot be a matter of surprise that such a man should be con¬ 
taminated by entering the arena of pharmaceutical corre¬ 
spondence, surely legal proceedings would be “ infra dig.” 
indeed ! I trust that the publication of the prescription may 
have the beneficial effect of inducing some surgeons to be- 
somewhat more explicit in prescribing. If they are plain, 
and readable, no druggist will ever complain of their Latinity.. 
Norwich. T. P. 
43, Welbeclc Street, Cavendish Square, W. 
' Nov. 27, 1870. 
Sir,—I not only complained in my letter of the incorrect 
Latinities imputed to my authorship, but disputed your 
right, in toto, of using my name at all, still less in the way 
you have permitted it to be paraded in your columns. 
If your intention had been simply to assist a puzzled drug¬ 
gist out of the quagmire, or to discuss, on the broad basis,, 
the advisability of “obscure prescription-writing,” this might 
have been fully effected without my name, and thus I should- 
have been spared the necessity of troubling you on a subject 
upon which I could say so much, and par parenthese, what¬ 
ever theories you could have advanced I am certain would 
no4 have changed my opinions; and, perhaps, to set the 
matter finally at rest, for I admit that it is an important sub¬ 
ject for discussion, I contend, as an invariable rule, it is 
better that patients ( omnium generum) should not know 
what medicines they may be taking; and if this be deemed a 
special feature in the management of certain cases, which I 
could abundantly illustrate, I consider it quite supererogatory 
on the part of any/puzzled druggist to question the motives 
of any prescriber; and I am well certain of this, that any 
pharmacist presuming to dispense any prescription “ob¬ 
scurely ” written, which the presenter thereof had been “ dis¬ 
tinctly ” told could only be made up by an “especial” drug- 
gish designated, would be held legally liable for all conse¬ 
quences flowing therefrom by a British judge and jury. 
I have always been consistently opposed to the writing of 
prescriptions in English, and, in short, I think that they 
cannot be made too unintelligible for the patient’s benefit. A 
general practitioner does not edify his patient by informing 
him what his 6-ounce mixture contains. There are many 
other cogent reasons which could be urged in favour of the 
system which I adopt, but to which I need not now advert, 
but I am quite prepared to vindicate anything which I may 
do or advocate. 
The prejudices of certain patients are so well known by 
medical men, that there can be no dissentient opinion in such 
cases as to the expediency of concealing the means that may 
be thought by the medical adviser indispensable for their re¬ 
covery. Conceive, for example, a nervous patient, requiring 
a full dose of morphia, indulging his morbid fear of having 
