January 21,1871.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
5S9 
SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 1871. 
Communications for this Journal,and books for review , etc., 
should be addressed to the Editor, 17, Bloomsbury Square. 
Instructions from Members and Associates respecting the 
transmission of the Journal should be sent to Elias Rrbm;- 
bidge, Secretary, 17, Bloomsbury Square, W.C. 
Advertisements to Messrs. Churchill, New Burlington 
Street, London, W. Envelopes endorsed “ Bharm. Journ.” 
PRESCRIPTIONS. 
The principal practical part of a pharmacist’s 
duty being the compounding of recipes emanating 
from men supposed to know better than himself the 
therapeutical effects of the drugs employed, it would 
be presumptuous in the face of such a supposition 
for the pharmacist to add, alter, or subtract one iota 
from the prescriptions presented to him. And the 
grand basis of all social well-being in every relation¬ 
ship of life consisting in sincerity, how much more 
must it be self-evident that in life-and-death cases 
between patient, physician and prescriber, all should 
be actuated by the sincerest motives for the mutual 
good of each. Yet the pharmacist is often obliged 
to act as a check on the physician’s involuntary 
mistakes, or occasional posological errors. One of 
the great sources of doubt and uneasiness to the 
most sincere and intelligent dispensers is the omis¬ 
sion of terminations. Admitting the general public 
not to understand Latin, why mutilate it, rendering 
it more unintelligible to them and more puzzling 
to the dispenser. What can be more ambiguous than 
the everyday pot. clilor. or sodie sulpli. of or¬ 
dinary prescription-writers? It is true that habit, 
experience, and above all, a knowledge, not only of 
the properties of medicines, but of their therapeutical 
uses, enable the dispenser in 99 cases out of 100 to 
skim over the difficulty, s«arcely noticing it. But 
frequently the ambiguity and consequent responsi¬ 
bility become much greater. 
Tins lax and undignified habit of abbreviating 
nearly every word has caused, and causes, innume¬ 
rable mistakes. Why should, for instance, the dis¬ 
penser use chlorate of potassium in a gargle where 
pot. clilor. is ordered? Common salt dissolved in 
water is a frequent domestic remedy for sore-tliroat, 
why should not chloride of potassium be equally effi¬ 
cacious? and why might not the physician wish to try 
it ? A dispenser takes an unwarrantable amount of 
responsibility in selecting one salt in preference to 
the other. And the physician has no right to throw 
■a shadow of that sort of responsibility on the drug¬ 
gist’s shoulders. Moreover, these tilings occur so 
often that people are content to lie prone in statu 
quo, without ever trying in the least to improve the 
situation. 
The habit of writing Latin prescriptions must be 
considered, on the whole, an advantageous one; for 
in countries where the vernacular is used as a me¬ 
dium of understanding between doctor and druggist, 
the tendency to revert to old-fashioned and even 
quite obsolete terms, causes quite as much misap¬ 
prehension as abbreviated Latin does here. This is 
evidently done for exactly the same reason as ob¬ 
scure Latin is even openly sanctioned by some 
members of the profession, in order to prevent the 
patient from feeling nervous at the exhibition of 
opium or calomel. But sick people’s faculties are 
often miraculously sharpened by curiosity, and ex¬ 
perience proves that such awful names as Sirop 
de Karabe or protochloride of hydrargyrum, though 
even cautiously pronounced and declared safe and 
reliable medicines by the urbane chemist, will frighten 
nervous people ten times more than the names of 
drugs familiar to the ears of all intelligent persons. 
Needless mysticism is the greatest fault of all, 
for it necessarily causes more mistakes at the dis¬ 
penser’s hands than is warranted by an increased 
privacy of inter-communication. An eminent En¬ 
glish practitioner, whose prescriptions are to be 
found all over the Continent, always writes Syr. C. for 
simple syrup,—an anything but orthodox synonym, 
syrupus communis being used to designate treacle 
in the Prussian Pharmacopoeia.* Could not a great 
amount of good be done to the pharmaceutical com¬ 
munity at large if a few “ sincere ” dispensers in the 
large houses in town and country would quietly note 
any of these peculiarities and have them periodically 
published ? 
THE QUALITY OF DRUGS. 
It is announced in the Practitioner for January 
that, in consequence of complaints made by medi¬ 
cal men as to the varying qualities of drugs, even 
when obtained from the most respectable shops, it is 
intended to commence an extensive examination of 
preparations of food and medicine, the results of 
which will be published in that journal. As a com¬ 
mencement, the results of a series of analyses of 
samples of sp. ammonke aromaticus are given. Ac¬ 
cording to the British Pharmacopoeia this prepara¬ 
tion should contain 02'0 per cent, of alcohol by weight 
in volume, and 2G per cent, of ammonia by weight 
in volume. The quantities in the six specimens 
analysed ranged from 03'1 to 48T percent, of al¬ 
cohol and from 2'0 to 15 per cent, of ammonia. 
It is unfortunate that this preparation should 
have been selected for the purpose of introducing 
the examinations contemplated by our contempo¬ 
rary, for it is one in reference to which there are 
* “ Syrupus communis—Gemeiner Syrup. Nonnisi sy¬ 
rupus in depurando saccliaro Indico obtentus adliibeatur/' 
— Fh. Borussica, p. 193. 
