EDITORIAL. 
189 
set  at  nought.  The  tinctures  (!)  are  made  up  without  regard  to  quality. 
Cheapness  and  profit  are  the  only  objects  in  view.  A  complete  stock  of 
the  best  imitation  of  genuine  medicines  is  laid  in,  fictitious  transactions 
are  entered  in  the  "  Daily  Cash  Book,"  and  the  daily  sales  are  increased 
by  a  convenient  medical  process.  And  now  the  store  is  ready  for 
sale. 
The  ignorance  of  those  in  the  drug  business,  and  the  negligence  and 
carelessness  of  physicians,  lead  to  innumerable  mistakes,  many  of  which 
prove  fatal. 
The  United  States,  London,  Edinburgh,  and  Dublin,  publish  each  a 
Dispensatory  or  P harmacop&ia,  for  the  guidance  of  apothecaries  and  physi- 
cians. Many  of  the  names  for  the  same  drug  are  entirely  different  in  each 
of  these  works.  It  might  be  supposed  that  our  medical  men  would  con- 
fine themselves  in  writing  their  prescriptions  to  the  nomenclature  of  that 
very  able  work,  the  United  States  Dispensatory. 
Such,  however,  is  not  the  case.  It  would  be  difficultto  say  where  many 
of  them  picked  up  their  Latinity.  It  would  astonish  the  men  of  a  much 
later  period  thau  that  of  Caesar  or  Cicero. 
We  have  recently  had  access  to  upwards  of  two  thousand  prescriptions. 
About  fifteen  hundred  of  them  showed  that  the  writers  were  entirely  igno- 
rant of  the  declensions  to  which  the  various  nouns  used  belonged.  Many 
of  them  were  written  in  pencil,  and  almost  illegible.  If  a  medical  man 
be  applied  to  in  bed  for  a  prescription  he  may  be  excused  for  using  a 
pencil,  but  in  no  other  situation.  Before  a  prescription  reaches  an  apothe- 
cary, it  is,  not  uncommonly,  well  creased  and  thumbed,  and,  if  in  pencil, 
next  to  illegible.  No  patient  who  is  able  to  pay  his  physician  should  accept 
from  him  a  prescription  in  pencil,  or  one  which  is  indistinctly  written. 
Such  lead  only  to  mistakes. 
When  an  erroneous  prescription  is  presented  at  a  drug  store,  the  pre- 
scription, if  the  druggist  be  ignorant  of  his  business,  is  made  up  exactly  as 
it  is  written.  If  the  druggist  knows  the  nature  and  qualify  of  medicines, 
the  prescription  should  be  sent  to  the  physician  to  be  corrected.  But  as 
no  professional  man  likes  to  be  convicted  of  an  error,  it  is  very  seldom  that 
he  hears  of  his  own  mistakes.  A  conscientious  apothecary  informed  us, 
that  when  he  first  commenced  business,  he  made  a  practice  of  sending  all 
erroneous  prescriptions  back,  but  as  he  invariably  lost  the  custom  of  the 
medical  men  to  whom  these  were  sent,  he  changed  his  system  and  cor- 
rected the  mistakes  himself. 
We  are  informed  of  a  fatal  mistake  which  occurred  a  few  weeks  ago. 
A  prescription,  in  which  there  was  a  most  unusual  quantity  of  prussic  acid, 
with  three  or  four  other  ingredients,  was  ordered  and  left  at  a  drug  store.  The 
clerk  of  the  store  hesitated  to  put  up  the  prescription  in  the  absence  of 
his  employer,  and  unwilling  to  lose  a  little  custom,  stated  that  it  was  neces- 
sary to  send  down  town  for  one  of  the  ingredients,  and  that  the  medicine 
would  be  ready  in  an  hour  or  two.  The  patient  was  anxious  for  the  medi- 
cine, and  sent  twice  for  it.  He  soon  called  a  third  time,  and  stated  that  it 
it  was  not  ready,  to  give  him  the  prescription,  and  his  father  would  get  the 
medicine  elsewhere.  The  prescription  was  returned  and  made  up  by 
some  one  more  ignorant  or  less  scrupulous,  and  next  day  the  lady  was 
dead  of  a  diseased  heart !  Diseased  hearts  cover  a  multitude  of  mis- 
takes ! 
It  frequently  happens  that  some  drug  is  ordered  which  is  not  in  the  store 
of  the  apothecary  to  whom  the  prescription  is  presented.  In  such  a  case, 
if  he  be  an  unscrupulous  person,  he  substitutes  some  drug  of  what  he  con- 
siders a  similar  quality  for  the  one  in  question.  A  case  of  this  kind  oc- 
curred some  time  ago  in  the  practice  of  an  acquaintance.    He  was  attend- 
