THE  PHYSICIAN'S  PRESCRIPTION,  ETC. 
205 
are  well  known  to  medical  men,  and  what  will  cure  one  child  will 
either  have  no  good  results  or  injure  seriously  another. 
Take  a  case  of  a  grown  person,  for  example,  who  has  been 
treated  mercurially  for  syphilis  ;  he  may  take  from  10  to  even 
40  grains  of  iodide  mercury  in  one-third  grain  doses  without  ac- 
complishing the  object  of  the  Physician.  He  finally  is  cured, 
and  having  his  accumulation  of  boxes  and  vials,  he  starts  up  in 
the  "  amateur  speciality  "  business,  and  sells  to  his  friends  his 
boxes,  with  directions  on  them,  (so  as  to  get  even,  as  one  of  our 
freedmen  expressed  it  to  me.) 
The  person  who  now  holds  the  "  amulet,"  tries  the  same  quan- 
tity, and  in  about  two  weeks  is  ptyalized,  and  comes  quarrelling 
with  the  dispenser,  saying  that  the  medicine  was  not  compounded 
correctly. 
I  asked  a  white  man,  who  had  been  steadily  getting  iodide  of 
mercury  in  pills,  and  after  that  iodide  potassium  and  sarsapa- 
rilla,  why  it  was  that  he  was  not  well.  Oh !  says  he,  I  have  been 
all  right  for  two  months,  and  these  are  for  my  partner,  who  is 
down  with  the  same  disease. 
The  entire  system  is  wrong,  and,  as  it  is  a  growing  evil,  some- 
thing should  be  done  to  check  it,  either  by  Legislative  enactment 
or  by  preconcerted  action  of  Pharmaceutists  and  Physicians. 
Thus,  let  no  Apothecary  renew  a  recipe,  except  under  the  signa- 
ture of  the  Physician  ordering  it. 
Please  give  the  subject  some  attention. 
Very  truly,  yours, 
W.  P.  C. 
[Note. — The  subject  of  this  letter  is  an  old  one,  and  upon  which  neither 
Physicians  nor  Apothecaries  agree  sufficiently  to  induce  any  general  ac- 
tion. In  the  first  place,  the  constant  habit  of  many  Physicians  is  opposed 
to  the  wish  of  the  writer.  They  direct  their  patients  verbally  to  get  pre- 
scriptions renewed,  and  many  know  that  their  prescriptions  are  used  ha- 
bitually as  family  medicines  by  their  patients,  and  don't  object. 
Other  Physicians  are  directly  opposed  to  this  course,  and  in  some  in- 
stances, on  a  printed  blank,  direct  the  Apothecary  not  to  renew  the  pre- 
scription without  written  directions  from  the  prescriber.  Pharmacy  in 
England  and  France  is  older  than  in  the  United  States,  and  in  those 
countries  when  a  Physician  writes  a  prescription  and  hands  it  to  the  pa- 
tient, it  becomes  his  property  after  the  fee  is  paid,  in  evidence  of  which 
the  Pharmaceutist  returns  it  to  him  after  copying.  This  is  the  view  gene- 
