■814 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS 
[April 8,1871. 
ment of disease, indiscriminate drugging, and a down¬ 
ward competition. You may find in some of the surgeries of 
Glasgow, so-called, of an evening, pei'chance from a dozen 
to two dozen people waiting to see the mysterious person 
ensconced beyond the green door, on which “ Consulting 
Room” shines so prominently. It takes time to arrive 
.-at a correct diagnosis, it takes time to prescribe suit¬ 
ably to the disease, and this time being taken, an honest 
•advice should be given, and an honest advice is worth 
paying for. It is the merest farce in the world, and it 
is an outrage on medical science, to prescribe for a crowd 
of an evening, and dole out to a credulous multitude a 
heterogeneous mixture from this bottle and the other; 
and I deny that in the majority of cases this system of 
treatment can be reconciled to any physiological, patho¬ 
logical, or chemical principle. No; the threshold of 
such establishments is like Pluto’s portals— 
“ Smooth the descent and easy is the way ; 
But to return (without the bottle) and view the cheerful 
skies, 
In this the task, the mighty labour lies.” 
No fee being exacted in the back room, “the bottle” is 
sure to be advised “to be got at the counter.” It is 
what might be called a case of double do; the patient 
endeavours to do the doctor, and the doctor in return 
does the patient. This is what is called “the bottle 
system,” and is one for which Glasgow holds con¬ 
spicuously an unenviable notoriety; and it has ingrained 
into the minds of so many in the city the belief 
that medical men should be paid for their medicine, 
that a medical man without a shop is a vara avis in 
tends. But if he be asked why this system is so much 
in favour here, the only explanation vouchsafed is, that 
it will not do to practise otherwise in Glasgow. Well, 
I have only to remark, that I am not aware of any phy¬ 
siological peculiarity in Glasgow citizens compared with 
the denizens of Edinburgh or Greenock; in the former of 
which there are but few doctors’ shops, the number not 
above four, if I am correctly informed, and in the latter 
only one. I believe these towns have an equal propor¬ 
tion of poor people as we have, and in Greenock especially 
there are none of those self-seeking excrescences on mo¬ 
dern practice—Special Institutions. Yet we never hear 
complaint that the humbler orders do not receive ade¬ 
quate medical attendance. In a word, medioal practice 
in Greenock is conducted on the purest method—consi¬ 
dering the size of the town and the large proportion of 
the artisan class—perhaps in Scotland. 
But further, the shop system encourages a downward 
competition, and, in consequence, an adulteration of 
drugs. I am of those who believe that if a thing is 
worth purchasing it is worth paying for; and if this 
principle hold good in any commercial transaction, it as¬ 
suredly obtains in the purchase of medicine. Unfortu¬ 
nately, however, “ common sense ” is a very uncommon 
attribute of modern humanity, and ten to one, the 
•chances are, that the man who asserts most strongly in 
perfect disregard of an ancient virtue, called truth, or 
who most conforms to the claptraps of a Cheap-John, is 
-the man who will be most generally patronized. If the 
power of assertion was ever of service, it is eminently 
in this age; lying, to use a plain term is, par excellence, 
one of the most profitable avocations in these latter days. 
In an age, therefore, when people do not hesitate to 
stuff life buoys with other material than cork, and even 
tamper, according to the sage of Chelsea, with the very 
composition of bricks, we need not be surprised if what 
is termed a colocynth pill is not a colocynth pill. In 
the adulteration of medicine the man who is both pre- 
.scriber and dispenser has an ohvious advantage over the 
simple compounder of medicine; the former, trusting to 
the beneficence of the vis medicatrix naturae , and havin°- an 
eye to a plethoric till, often goes on the principle that a rose 
ky any other name will smell as sweet, finds, by ex¬ 
perience,—a much abused term by the way,—that it is im¬ 
material whether his compounds are made according to 
the Pharmacopoeia or not. You will not be surprised, 
therefore, to learn that I know of an instance where a 
surgeon represented to a pharmaceutical chemist that he 
must reduce his pills to three-halfpence per dozen, a 
price at which, I am told, it is perfectly impossible to 
make up colocynth pills according to the Pharmacopoeia, 
not to speak of the trifling profit which every reasonable 
pei’son will, as a matter of justice, ungrudgingly allow 
the compounder. In these cases, I am informed, the 
scammony is either all or in part left out,—a veritable 
case, Gentlemen, of the play of ‘ Hamlet,’ with the ghost 
omitted. 
Now, medical science may suffer in this respect, and 
if I were at a loss to draw an inference, I might contend 
that practices such as these conspire to make Glasgow 
practitioners so little known beyond the good old city of 
Saint Mungo. I am, at all events, informed, on excel¬ 
lent authority, that druggists are worse remunerated here 
than in any city in the kingdom, and that, as we might 
consequently expect, we excel likewise in the adulteration 
of medicines. Not only does medical science suffer in 
this manner, but the reputation of a gentleman who 
simply prescribes is imperilled if his prescriptions luck¬ 
lessly find their way into any such establishment. It is 
in my recollection that while the Pharmacy Bill was 
passing through Parliament, one of the grounds of oppo¬ 
sition to it was that there was no clause in it rendering 
the compounding of medicines according to the British 
Pharmacopoeia compulsory ; and I remember that on 
this point the Lancet very sensibly suggested that any 
such procedure was like putting the cart before tho 
horse, for if physicians prescribed according to the 
British Pharmacopoeia, the necessity of compounding me¬ 
dicines according to it would be forced upon druggists ; 
but it is surely breaking faith with us, and is a violation 
of a public trust reposed in druggists, if physicians so 
prescribe, and their patients are not supplied with what 
is so ordered. Now, is it a fact that the existence of 
medical practitioners’ shops to the extent that we have 
them in this city fosters indiscriminate medication ? My 
experience decidedly confirms this belief. Repeatedly 
have I witnessed an ominous row of bottles, so signi¬ 
ficant of wry faces, adorn the mantelpiece of poor pa¬ 
tients’ houses; and how often is the confiding remark 
made that Dr. So-and-so is a very fine man,—“ a skilly 
doctor,”—that no one grudged him his fee, but had an 
awful horror of the bottles! I have elsewhere endea¬ 
voured to show that by this system a great injustice is 
done to the public, and that it is a method of practice 
the most powerful of any I know in pauperizing people 
of slender means, and subverting professional integrity 
and honour. Human nature will be human nature to 
the end of time; and be a man however estimable and 
upright in his inclinations, circumstances have a prover¬ 
bial influence in altering cases; and when a certain 
amount of money is invested by a medical man in a 
drug establishment, looking at the question from a com¬ 
mercial point of view, he must to a great extent be 
influenced by a good return. I hold that this induce¬ 
ment—be it an unconscious bias—is not compatible with 
the honest practice of the medical profession. This, of 
course, leads to the incessant changing of bottles, pow¬ 
ders, etc. Now one bottle, to-day another, and so on. 
It is a case of— 
“ At nine these powders let him take, 
At ten the draught, the phial shake: 
And you’ll remember at eleven 
Three of these pills must then be given. 
This course you’ll carefully pursue, 
And give at twelve the bolus too. 
If he should wander, in a crack 
Clap this broad blister on his back ; 
And after he has had the blister 
Within an hour apply the clyster. 
I must be gone; at three or four 
I shall return with something more.” 
