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The  Druggist  and  Tuberculosis. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1909. 
There  are  some  druggists  who  will  take  the  view  that  fresh 
air,  pure  water,  milk,  and  such  things  have  nothing  to  do  with 
his  business,  and  that  he  can  make  more  profit  in  selling  consump- 
tion cures  and  proprietary  medicines  than  he  can  by  joining  in  this 
new  movement;  but  the  alert,  up-to-date  pharmacist  must  read  the 
handwriting  on  the  wall,  "  Mene,  Mene,  Tekel,  Uphfcrsin."  Let 
him  take  out  of  his  windows  the  exhibition  of  consumption  cures 
and  clear  out  the  closet  devoted  to  these  preparations.  He  will 
have  to  keep  such  things  in  stock,  of  course,  for  he  must  sell  what 
the  public  demands,  provided  always  that  they  are  honest  goods, 
but  he  need  not  and  should  not  encourage  their  sale.  Would  it  not 
be  wise  and  business-like  to  show  in  his  bulk  window  sputum  cups, 
napkins,  sanitary  appliances,  paper  blankets,  hoods,  and  mits,  and 
might  he  not  look  forward  to  the  time  when  he  could  become  the 
agent  for  compressed  air  in  cylinders,  obtained  from  the  mountain 
heights  and  the  sea-shore,  guaranteed  under  the  Food  and  Drugs 
Act  to  be  free  from  tuberculosis  germs  ?  He  already  sells  cylinders 
holding  compressed  oxygen,  and  here  in  Philadelphia  where  we 
have  suffered  so  long  from  impure  water,  containing  typhoid  germs, 
has  he  not  established  himself  as  headquarters  for  pure  water  in 
bottles,  guaranteed  to  be  aseptic  and  chemically  clean? 
Dirt  has  been  defined  scientifically  by  a  trite  saying  as  matter 
out  of  place,  and  this  aforesaid  dirt  is  closely  associated  with  dis- 
ease. Cleanliness,  therefore,  is  one  of  the  first  requisites  in  the 
proper  treatment  of  tuberculosis.  It  would  hardly  seem  necessary 
to  impress  upon  the  minds  of  druggists  the  necessity  for  cleanliness. 
One  of  the  means  which  has  tended  in  the  past  to  spread  infection 
has  been  the  employment  of  old  bottles.  It  is  often  false  economy 
to  send  any  old  bottle  which  may  be  lying  around  the  house  to 
the  drug  store  to  have  a  prescription  filled. 
The  habit  which  many  patients  have  of  taking  a  dose  of  medi- 
cine from  a  bottle  by  removing  the  cork  and  taking  what  they  think 
is  about  a  teaspoonful  by  applying  the  lip  of  the  bottle  to  their 
own  lips  is  one  which  is  more  honored  in  the  breach  than  in  the 
observance,  because  in  the  first  place  it  is  a  careless,  inaccurate 
habit,  the  patients  sometimes  getting  more  than  a  teaspoonful 
and  sometimes  less,  on  account  of  their  inability  to  judge  how- 
much  they  are  taking,  and  it  can  readily  be  seen  that  a  patient 
suffering  from  tuberculosis  may  contaminate  the  bottle  through  the 
sputa  and  saliva  filled  with  germs,  and  another  person  following 
