182 
Drugs  and  Food  Products. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
April,  1902. 
out  of  proportion  to  the  original  cost.  Neither  does  competition, 
in  so  far  as  the  retail  price  of  the  drugs  is  concerned,  compel  the 
druggist  to  reduce  the  cost  which  may  be  said  to  be  fairly  uniform 
with  a  liberal  margin  for  wholesale  fluctuations. 
Adulterations  of  drugs,  therefore,  is  nothing  less  than  an  abom- 
inable fraud  which  ought  to  put  to  shame  any  self-respecting  man 
practising  it.  This  fraud,  like  a  double-edged  sword,  cuts  in  two 
directions:  (i)  By  it  money  is  obtained  under  false  pretense,  alike 
from  rich  and  poor,  an  offence  which  in  other  walks  of  life  is  pun- 
ished by  law ;  and  (2)  human  life  or  health  is  frequently  placed  at 
stake  for  the  gain  of  a  few  paltry  dollars.  There  is  still  a  third 
aspect  to  this  evil :  It  retards  the  progress  of  materia  medica  in  the 
proportion  as  the  physician  fails  to  achieve  the  desired  effect,  and, 
not  suspecting  the  genuineness  of  the  drug  he  uses,  does  not  believe 
in  its  virtues.  The  reason  for  the  sophistication  of  drugs  is  to  be 
sought  in  the  cloak  of  mystery  with  which  medicine  has  been 
wrapped  up  from  time  immemorial.  The  sick  know  naught  of  the 
drugs  they  are  made  to  take,  nor  do  they  care  to  know.  Medicine 
to  them  is  still  a  black  art,  and  what  they  want  is  charms,  being 
altogether  indifferent  as  to  whether  these  are  made  of  scraps  of 
paper,  worthless  herbs  or  roots  or  plain  sugar.  The  physician,  on 
the  other  hand,  has  been  in  the  past  so  deeply  entangled  in  the  web 
of  polypharmacy  that  one  or  two  worthless  or  adulterated  drugs 
made  little  difference  among  two  or  three  dozen  others.  His  was 
truly  a  shotgun  prescription :  if  one  shot  missed  the  mark  the 
others  might  hit  it.  From  these  dark  ages  of  polypharmacy  the 
physician  emerged  into  the  fruitless  age  of  proprietary  medicine,  an 
age  so  remarkably  barren  of  results  and  so  inimical  to  scientific 
progress !  In  the  proprietary  medicine  we  have  the  same  shotgun, 
only  the  loading  is  done  by  somebody  else,  the  physician  pulling  the 
trigger.  He  even  does  not  know  how  many  shots  are  in  the  barrel 
or  what  they  are  made  of.  What  does  "  eudoria  "  stand  for  ?  For 
nothing.  All  we  know  is  that  it  is  a  wonderful  combination  of  rem- 
edies, possessing  extraordinary  virtues  not  to  be  found  in  any  of  the 
drugs  mentioned  in  the  Pharmacopoeia  or  the  National  Formulary. 
This  remarkable  panacea  stops  diarrhea  and  moves  the  bowels, 
relieves  pain,  cures  headache,  dizziness,  dropsy,  influenza,  rheuma- 
tism and  all  other  ills  human  flesh  is  heir  to.  "  Doctor,"  proclaims 
the  illustrious  inventor  of  the  miraculous  panacea,  "  why  bother 
