But undesirable as is the custom of pharmacists in this respect, it is unreasonable in physicians to grumble at it, until they reform a habit of their own, which encourages the practice which they deprecate. When a physician finds a sick man improving with a certain plan of treatment, and wishes the same medication continued, usually he simply tells the patient to have his bottle refilled at the apothecary’s. The latter, knowing that this is the usage of the medical profession, is accustomed to suppose—constructively, at least—that, when the bottle is returned to be replenished, it is brought at the desire of the doctor; and he again compounds the medicine, as he would not be justified in doing, if the method of physicians was different. If the latter would habitually rewrite their prescriptions, or indite orders for repetition, whenever they wish a continuance of treatment, apothecaries would have the best possible sanction for supplying medicines to patients a second or a thousandth time, and would have no moral warrant for such action without the written direction of the authors of the recipes. When the doctors adopt the plan suggested, a violation of their request that their prescriptions shall not be repeated without their written order will furnish abundant ground for complaint; until such change of method is established, the consistency of their protest does not conspicuously appear. By the practice proposed, the apothecaries would lose some business, indeed, but the community would experience an immeasurable gain.
The sale of so-called patent medicines by pharmacists is a continual irritant to doctors. Their objections have the same basis as in the preceding case, namely, that apothecaries ought not to encourage the people to prescribe for themselves. A distinguished physician once said that drugs do more harm than good—a statement which will not be disputed by those most conversant with the facts. But this is no argument against the employment of medicinal remedies in any proper way. Drugs taken by advice of educated, competent physicians do an immense amount of good; the injury comes almost altogether from their administration independently of the recommendation of qualified medical men. Concocted, not to benefit humanity, but to enrich their manufacturers, advertised as positive cures of diseases which the utmost skill of the medical profession cannot control, sometimes inert, sometimes dangerous from the poisons which they contain, pressed upon the attention of the people with impudent persistence and colossal mendacity, the infamous compounds, called patent medicines, are purchased by the credulous public in almost incredible amounts. Nobody knows as well as the pharmacist what quantities of drugs are sold in this form; nobody knows as fully as the physician the enormously baneful effects which they produce. If apothecaries would refuse to handle this class of goods, they would confer a wonderful blessing on humanity, by demonstrating their belief in the injuriousness of these articles, and thus bringing them into disrepute; and they would vastly dignify their profession by displaying its sense of moral obligation, even at the sacrifice of a lucrative part of its business.