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Prescription  Ownership. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Feb.,  1891. 
PRESCRIPTION  OWNERSHIP. 
By  Joseph  W.  England,  Pf.G. 
Read  before  the  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy  at  the  Pharmaceutical  Meeting, 
January  20. 
A  prescription  may  be  defined  as  a  general  order  drawn  upon  any 
pharmacist  for  certain  specified  drugs,  in  certain  specified  quanti- 
ties, to  be  prepared  by  recognized  methods  of  pharmaceutical  pro- 
cedure. It  is  issued  as  an  official  order  to  obtain  certain  remedies 
necessary  to  carry  out  a  quasi-contract,  i.  e. — the  relieving  or  curing 
of  a  patient  of  a  bodily  ailment.  Such  an  order  is  legally  issued 
only  by  authorized  officials  or  physicians,  who  have  qualified  them- 
selves for  such  work,  by  becoming  graduates  in  medicine  and 
registrater  of  a  State  Medical  Board. 
A  patient  consulting  a  physician  receives  for  a  consideration — 
what  ?  A  medical  examination  and  medical  directions,  one  of 
which  latter  is  the  taking  of  certain  drugs  properly  prepared.  The 
patient  is  not  competent  to  do  this  any  more  than  he  is  to  prescribe 
for  himself,  so  the  physician  gives  him  an  official  order  or  prescription 
upon  the  pharmacist. 
A  prescription  having  been  received  by  the  pharmacist,  he  marks 
it  with  certain  marks  of  identity,  such  as  the  number,  date  and  year, 
and  labels  it,  when  compounded,  with  similar  markings,  together 
with  the  directions  and  the  physician's  name,  for  the  purpose  of 
future  identification. 
This  official  order  differs  in  nowise  from  any  other  official 
order.  Universal  custom,  that  great  mother  of  human  laws,  requires 
that  it  be  retained  by  the  party  upon  whom  it  is  drawn,  as  prima 
facie  evidence  of  its  execution. 
A  claim  that  a  prescription  is  a  formula,  and,  as  such,  property  for 
which  the  patient  has  given  due  compensation  is  untenable,  for  the 
reason  that  they  are  not  identical.  A  formula,  in  the  accepted 
meaning  of  the  term,  is  a  recipe  of  a  product  yielding  constant, 
uniform  results  on  being  used.  A  prescription  is  an  experimental 
recipe,  which  may  or  may  not  yield  the  desired  results,  even  in  the 
hands  of  a  physician,  and  whose  use  by  unskilled  hands  is  fraught 
with  the  gravest  possibilities.  Medicine  is  not  yet  an  exact  science, 
any  more  than  human  beings  are  exact  structures.  A  prescription 
is  but  a  part  of  the  medical  treatment  and  not  the  whole  of  it,  and 
