NOTES  ON  PRESCRIBING. 
341 
other  person  of  judging  of  the  merits  of  formulae  under  pharma- 
ceutical and  chemical  aspects. 
It  has  long  appeared  to  me  that  some  of  these  methods  or 
modern  phases  of  prescribing  call  for  notice  in  the  pages  of  the 
Pharmaceutical  Journal,  and  in  the  hope  that  the  subject  may 
be  further  handled,  I  have  thrown  together  the  observations  here 
presented.  Some  of  the  formulae  that  I  shall  quote  will  afford 
evidence  that  the  precepts  of  the  author  of  the  Pharmacologic/, 
and  the  rules  of  chemistry  are  too  little  observed,  and  that  the 
duties  of  the  private  dispensary  performed  by  many  of  the  older 
physicians  while  practising  as  apothecaries,  enabled  them  to 
avoid  the  errors  and  eccentricities  into  which  some  of  their  suc- 
cessors occasionally  fall.  The  result  of  mixing  the  ingredients 
ordered  in  a  prescription  is  sometimes  very  unexpected,  so  that 
even  the  most  practised  dispenser  is  often  unable  to  predict  whe- 
ther certain  given  ingredients  can  be  united  into  a  compound 
that  shall  be  suitable  for  administration  : — and  if  the  pharma- 
ceutist whose  time  and  skill  are  chiefly  devoted  to  the  mixing  of 
drugs  is  thus  at  fault,  it  is  hardly  surprising  that  the  physician 
whose  mind  is  mainly  directed  to  other  subjects,  should  some- 
times prescribe  ingredients  that  it  is  impossible  to  combine,  or 
that,  if  combined,  cannot  be  taken,  or  are  devoid  of  the  required 
efficacy. 
For  convenience  I  shall  place  my  remarks  under  different 
heads  and  shall  notice  firstly 
Unchemical  Formulas. 
As  an  example  let  us  take  the  following: 
R  Barii  chloridi  gr.  iss. 
Ferri  sulphatis  gr.  ij. 
Extracti  gentiange  q.  s. 
Ut  fiat  pilula. 
The  writer  of  this  formula  was  a  frequent  prescriber  of  chlo- 
ride of  barium,  which  he  generally  ordered  in  combination  with 
sulphate  of  quinine  or  sulphate  of  iron,  or  with  both,  thereby 
probably  rendering  the  chloride  inert.  No  reliance  could  of 
course  be  placed  on  the  uniform  effects  of  baryta,  prescribed 
sometimes  in  a  state  of  activity  and  sometimes  in  an  inert  form. 
As  another  example  of  this  character,  take  the  following  pre- 
scription which  was  brought  to  be  dispensed  a  few  weeks  ago : 
