I once was called to visit a lady who was laboring under great prostration; "sickness at the stomach," with constipation.
"What is the disease?" inquired the anxious husband, who had previously employed two regular physicians for the case, and discharged them both.
I gathered up three of the vials on the table, and, taking them to the designated apothecary's, I demanded the prescriptions corresponding with the numbers on the vials. These were duplicates.
He had made a mistake! that's all. He had compounded an ounce of tincture of nux instead of a drachm! Not that a drachm could be taken at a dose with impunity; but whatever the dose was, the patient was continually taking eight times as much as the physician intended to prescribe.
Another reason of the failure of the prescribing physician meeting the expectation anticipated, is the use of old and inert medicines.
Where a man's treasure is, his heart is also. An apothecary's interest is more in nostrums, tobacco, _soda_, etc., than in medicines; how, then, can he follow the excellent advice of Dr. Bullyn, in article "14, that he peruse often his wares, that they corrupt not."
But the greatest cheat is in the "substituting" business; the "_quid pro quo_." Horse aloes may be bought for ten cents a pound. Podophyllin costs seventy-five cents an ounce. They each act as cathartic, and I have detected the former put in place of the latter. How is the physician to know the cheat? How is the patient to detect it? Perhaps the former _stuff_--aloes--may have given the victim the hemorrhoids. One dose may be quite sufficient to produce that distressing disease. This only calls for another prescription! So it looks a deal like a "you tickle me, and I'll tickle you" profession, at best. Thus the patient becomes disgusted, and resorts to our next--"Patent Medicines."
In closing this chapter on Apothecaries, I must relate a little scene to which I was an eye-witness. Meantime, let me say to the "respectable druggist," Don't be offended if I have slighted you by leaving you out, in my description of the various kinds of apothecaries enumerated above. There is a respectable class of druggists whom I have not mentioned, and doubtless you belong to that order.