November 25, 1871.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
429 
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SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1S71. 
Communications for this Journal, and boohs 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 Brem- 
©idge, Secretary, 17, Bloomsbury Square. W . C . 
Advertisements to Messrs. Churchill, New Burlington 
Street, London, IF. Envelopes indorsed “ Pharm. Jo-urn .” 
PRESCRIBING AND DISPENSING. 
A brief communication published in the “ Cor¬ 
respondence” of last week’s Journal naturally 
directs our attention to the very important subject 
above indicated, and induces us to make sundry 
categorical remarks thereupon. We are content to 
begin with the prescriber’s aspect of the question, 
nnd may, we suppose, assume his dictum to be that 
a prescription, once committed to paper, is to be 
“ accurately ” dispensed, without jot or tittle of 
-change. How dubious soever the caligrapliy, how 
absurd soever the errors, the dispensing must 
be “ accurate,” or the dispenser has failed in the 
fulfilment of his duty. This sort of Medic and Per- 
.sianic rule, which obtains with many if not most 
physicians, arises, we must assume, from an idea 
that all the “mind” is on one side, and all the 
matter ” on the other. If such were positively and 
actually the case, we might fitly stick to the rule 
unswervingly, and all would be well. But v r e know 
that it is not so. In taldng the dispenser’s aspect 
of the question, we find that mental as well as phy¬ 
sical powers have to be exercised on many occasions 
to a very considerable extent. Prescriptions are sent 
•so cloudily written that it is next to impossible to 
•decipher them; so funnily constituted as to result 
in a chaos of chemical combinations; and so faulty 
ns to quantities that “ accuracy ” in the dispenser 
would inevitably result in death to the patient. 
That these three sins in prescribing are com¬ 
mitted by physicians daily and hourly, no one who 
lias had any experience in the ways and means 
whereby physic is imparted to the public will at¬ 
tempt to deny. The evil is particularly patent, but 
the remedy is equally plain. It is manifestly the 
duty of physicians to pay more attention to cali- 
.graphy, to chemical combinations and to correct 
quantities. But it is as clearly and positively the 
duty of the dispenser to communicate with the pre- 
scriber in all cases of doubt and difficulty, v r hether 
they have reference to any one or all of the errors 
above indicated. It is by no means the “ whole 
duty” of a dispenser to decipher one-half of a pre¬ 
scription and to imagine the rest, to remedy or 
supply chemical errors or deficiencies, or to reduce 
a dangerous dose to the innocuous point. The 
prescriber and dispenser may, and should, always 
work harmoniously; for if the latter invariably 
adopts the plan that we have recommended, the 
former will be very glad to acknowledge and appre¬ 
ciate that valuable sort of discretion that can, in 
pharmaceutical work, alone constitute the security 
of the physician. 
THE POPPY CROP IN BEHAR AND BENARES. 
We learn that the poppy crop of the past season 
in the Behar and. Benares agencies has suffered 
much from excessive rains and an unusually severe 
visitation of blight; this blight is reported “ to have 
been quite different from that hitherto known in 
Behar, which affects only the small stunted poppy, 
when dried up by the hot winds in March. This 
year the finest and strongest poppy has been at¬ 
tacked. It appears first to have manifested itself at 
the beginning of February, when the leaves of the 
plant began to wither and turn black, the plant 
eventually dying. The late-sown plant has perhaps 
suffered the most severely, whole fields of this hav¬ 
ing been destroyed; but the damage done to the 
early-sown plant has also been very considerable, 
while the portion that seemed to have escaped the 
blight has not actually been free from its effects, the 
capsules of such portions having dried up after two 
or three incisions, instead of standing four, five and 
six, the produce of each incision being at the same 
time small.” 
So great has been the effect of this visitation, 
that onty 41,000 chests of opium are expected as the 
results of the harvest, instead of 55,724 as originally 
estimated. No satisfactory conclusion can be ar¬ 
rived at in India as to the cause of these ravages; 
the popular notion amongst the natives, however, 
“ is that the excessive rain of October washed a 
good deal of the strength of the soil out of the land, 
and that the unusual heat in the early part and 
middle of February, together with the cloudy wea¬ 
ther and easterly winds which prevailed, have been 
the main cause.” 
It is satisfactory to know that the Indian Govern¬ 
ment, both in India and at home, are taking steps to 
ascertain, if possible, the cause of this blight, the 
result of which we hope may be successful. 
AN AMERICAN ENIGMA. 
We have no desire just now to take part in the 
discussion of the question as to whether man has 
been developed from any other form of life. We 
simply wish to furnish an illustration of how easily 
he may be changed into something else—at least in 
name—under the printer’s care, assisted by the fos¬ 
tering influences of illegible manuscript and inef¬ 
ficient supervision. The Leavenworth (Kansasji 
